his
irresistible sword as Arthur his Excalibur. The wealth of chiefs and
kings consists in horses and camels; there is no mention of money or
jewelry. When a wager is made the stakes are a hundred camels. The
commercial spirit of the Arabian Nights is wanting in this spirited
romance of chivalry. The Arabs had sunk to a race of mere traders when
Aladdin became possessed of his lamp, and the trickery, greed, and
avarice of peddlers and merchants are exhibited in incident after
incident of the "Thousand and One Nights." War is despised or feared,
courage less to be relied upon than astute knavery, and one of the facts
that strikes us is the general frivolity, dishonesty, and cruelty which
prevail through the tales of Bagdad. The opposite is the case with
Antar. Natural passion has full play, but nobility of character is taken
seriously, and generosity and sensibility of heart are portrayed with
truthfulness and naivete. Of course the whole romance is a collection of
many romantic stories: it has no epic unity. It will remind the reader
of the "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Malory, rather than of the
"Iliad." We have chosen the most striking of these episodes as best
calculated to serve as genuine specimens of Arabian literature. They
will transport the modern reader into a new world--which is yet the old,
long vanished world of pastoral simplicity and warlike enthusiasm, in
primitive Arabia. But the novelty lies in the plot of the tales. Djaida
and Khaled, Antar and Ibla, and the race between Shidoub and the great
racers Dahir and Ghabra, bring before our eyes with singular freshness
the character of a civilization, a domestic life, a political system,
which were not wanting in refinement, purity, and justice. The
conception of such a dramatic personage as Antar would be original in
the highest degree, if it were not based upon historic fact. Antar is a
more real personage than Arthur, and quite as real and historic as the
Cid. Yet his adventures remind us very much of those which run through
the story of the Round Table.

The Arabs, in the days of romance, were a collection of tribes and
families whose tents and villages were spread along the Red Sea, between
Egypt and the Indian Ocean. There were some tribes more powerful than
others, and the result of their tyranny was often bitter war. There was
no central monarchy, no priesthood, and no written law. The only stable
and independent unit was the family. Domestic life w