calumny, and the right of private judgment, sentence and execution.  In hopes that his splenetic and vindictive fiction might bear fruit, at one time the Pall Mall Gazette has “heard that the work was to be withdrawn from circulation” (when it never circulated).  Then, “it was resolved by the authorities to request Captain Burton not to issue the third volume and to prosecute him if he takes no notice of the invitation;” and, finally, “Government has at last determined to put down Captain Burton with a strong hand.”  All about as true as the political articles which the Pall Mall Gazette indites with such heroic contempt for truth, candour and honesty.  One cannot but apply to the “Gutter Gazette” the words of the Rev. Edward Irving:—­“I mean by the British Inquisition that court whose ministers and agents carry on their operations in secret; who drag every man’s most private affairs before the sight of thousands and seek to mangle and destroy his life, trying him without a witness, condemning him without a hearing, nor suffering him to speak for himself, intermeddling in things of which they have no knowledge and cannot on any principle have a jurisdiction * * * I mean the ignorant, unprincipled, unhallowed spirit of criticism, which in this Protestant country is producing as foul effects against truth, and by as dishonest means as ever did the Inquisition of Rome” (p. 5 “Preliminary Discourse to Ben Ezra,” etc.).

Of course men were not wanting to answer the malevolent insipidities of the Pall Mall Gazette, and to note the difference between newspaper articles duly pamphleted and distributed to the disgust of all decency, and the translation of an Arabian limited in issue and intended only for the few select.  Nor could they fail to observe that black balling The Nights and admitting the “revelations” was a desperate straining at the proverbial gnat and swallowing the camel.  My readers will hardly thank me for dwelling upon this point yet I cannot refrain from quoting certain of the protests:—­

Sir,

To the Editor of the “Pall Mall Gazette.”

Your correspondent “Sigma” has forgotten the considerable number of “students” who will buy Captain Burton’s translation as the only literal one, needing it to help them in what has become necessary to many—­a masterly knowledge of Egyptian Arabic.  The so-called “Arabian Nights” are about the only written half-way house between the literary Arabic and the colloquial Arabic, both of which they need, and need introductions too.  I venture to say that its largest use will be as a grown-up school-book and that it is not coarser than the classics in which we soak all our boys’ minds at school.

               AngloEgyptian
               September 14th, 1885.

And the Freethinker’s answer (Oct. 25, ’85) to these repeated and malicious assaults is as follows:—­