The imaginative varnish of The Nights serves admirably as a foil to the absolute realism of the picture in general.  We enjoy being carried away from trivial and commonplace characters, scenes and incidents; from the matter of fact surroundings of a work-a-day world, a life of eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, fighting and loving, into a society and a mise-en-scene which we suspect can exist and which we know does not.  Every man at some turn or term of his life has longed for supernatural powers and a glimpse of Wonderland.  Here he is in the midst of it.  Here he sees mighty spirits summoned to work the human mite’s will, however whimsical, who can transport him in an eye-twinkling whithersoever he wishes; who can ruin cities and build palaces of gold and silver, gems and jacinths; who can serve up delicate viands and delicious drinks in priceless chargers and impossible cups and bring the choicest fruits from farthest Orient:  here he finds magas and magicians who can make kings of his friends, slay armies of his foes and bring any number of beloveds to his arms.  And from this outraging probability and out-stripping possibility arises not a little of that strange fascination exercised for nearly two centuries upon the life and literature of Europe by The Nights, even in their mutilated and garbled form.  The reader surrenders himself to the spell, feeling almost inclined to enquire “And why may it not be true?’’[FN#245] His brain is dazed and dazzled by the splendours which flash before it, by the sudden procession of Jinns and Jinniyahs, demons and fairies, some hideous, others preternaturally beautiful; by good wizards and evil sorcerers, whose powers are unlimited for weal and for woe; by mermen and mermaids, flying horses, talking animals, and reasoning elephants; by magic rings and their slaves and by talismanic couches which rival the carpet of Solomon.  Hence, as one remarks, these Fairy Tales have pleased and still continue to please almost all ages, all ranks and all different capacities.

Dr. Hawkesworth[FN#246] observes that these Fairy Tales find favour “because even their machinery, wild and wonderful as it is, has its laws; and the magicians and enchanters perform nothing but what was naturally to be expected from such beings, after we had once granted them existence.”  Mr. Heron “rather supposes the very contrary is the truth of the fact.  It is surely the strangeness, the unknown nature, the anomalous character of the supernatural agents here employed, that makes them to operate so powerfully on our hopes, fears, curiosities, sympathies, and, in short, on all the feelings of our hearts.  We see men and women, who possess qualities to recommend them to our favour, subjected to the influence of beings, whose good or ill will, power or weakness, attention or neglect, are regulated by motives and circumstances which we cannot comprehend:  and hence, we naturally tremble for their fate, with the same anxious concern, as we should for a friend