am in torments, ineffable torments!” said he.  “An unrelenting fire preys upon my heart.”  Having uttered this exclamation, Soliman raised his hands towards heaven in token of supplication, and the caliph discerned through his bosom, which was as transparent as crystal, his heart enveloped in flames.  At a sight so full of horror, Nouronihar fell back like one petrified into the arms of Vathek, who cried out with a convulsive sob:  “O Mohammed! remains there no more mercy?”

“None, none!” replied the malicious Dive.  “Know, miserable prince, thou art now in the abode of vengeance and despair!  A few days are allotted thee as respite, and then thy heart also shall be kindled like those of the other worshippers of Eblis.”

This, indeed, was the dreadful fate of Vathek and Nouronihar, a fate indeed to which the Princess Carathis was also most righteously condemned; for Vathek, knowing that the principles by which his mother had perverted his youth had been the cause of his perdition, summoned her to the palace of subterranean fire and enrolled her among the votaries of Eblis.  Carathis entered the dome of Soliman, and she too marched in triumph through the vapour of perfumes.

* * * * *

APHRA BEHN

Oroonoko:  the Royal Slave

In her introduction to “Oroonoko,” Mrs. Aphra Behn states that her strange and romantic tale is founded on facts, of many of which she was an eye-witness.  This is true.  She was born at Wye, England, July 10, 1640, the daughter, it is said, of a barber.  As a child, she went out to Dutch Guiana, then an English colony named after the Surinam River, returning to England about 1658.  After the death of her husband, in 1666, she was dispatched as a spy to Antwerp by Charles II., and it was she who first warned that monarch of the Dutch Government’s intention to send a fleet up the Thames.  She died on April 16, 1689, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.  It was while in Dutch Guiana that she met Oroonoko, in the circumstances described in the story.  No doubt she has idealised her hero somewhat, but she does not seem to have exaggerated the extraordinary adventures of the young African chief.  In the licentious age of the Restoration, when she had become famous—­or, rather, notorious—­as a writer of unseemly plays, she astonished the town, and achieved real fame by relating the story of Oroonoko’s life.  There are few plots of either plays or novels so striking as that of “Oroonoko.”  It is the first of those romances of the outlands, which, from the days of Defoe to the days of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, have been one of the glories of English literature.

I.—­The Stolen Bride