happiness, and love; spontaneous and vivid, intelligent, nourishing,
and refined; an abundant life that, to a certain point, comes as near
truth as a life well can. It is, in many respects, almost as perfect
in its moral as in its material civilisation. And the pillars on which
this incomparable structure of happiness rests--like pillars of light
supporting the light--are formed of ideas of justice so exquisitely
delicate, counsels of wisdom so deeply penetrating, that we of to-day,
being less fine in grain, less eager and buoyant, have lost the power
to formulate, or to discern, them. And for all that, this abode of
felicity, that harbours a moral life so active and vigorous, so
graciously grave, so noble--this palace, wherein the purest and holiest
wisdom governs the pleasures of rejoicing mankind, is in its entirety
based on so great an injustice, is enclosed by so vast, so profound, so
frightful an iniquity, that the wretchedest man of us all would shrink
in dismay from its glittering, gem-bestrewn threshold. But of this
iniquity they who linger in that marvellous dwelling have not the
remotest suspicion. It would seem that they never draw near to a
window; or that, should one by some chance fly open and reveal to their
sorrowful gaze the misery strewn in the midst of the revels and
feasting, they still would be blind to the crime which was infinitely
more revolting, infinitely more monstrous, than the most appalling
poverty--the crime of the slavery, and the even more terrible
degradation, of their women. For these, however exalted their
position, and at the moment even when they are speaking to the men
round about them of goodness and justice--when they are reminding them
of their most touching and generous duties--these women never are more
than objects of pleasure, to be bought or sold, or given away in a
moment of gratitude, ostentation, or drunkenness, to any barbarous or
hideous master.

26

"They tell us," says the beautiful slave Nozhatan, as, concealed behind
a curtain of silk and of pearls, she speaks to Prince Sharkan and the
wise men of the kingdom; "they tell us that the Khalif Omar set forth
one night, in the company of the venerable Aslam Abou-Zeid, and that he
beheld, far away from his palace, a fire that was burning; and drew
near, as he thought that his presence might perhaps be of service. And
he saw a poor woman who was kindling wood underneath a cauldron; and by
her side were two li