“Captain Burton’s experience in the East seems to have obliterated any (all?) sentiments of chivalry, for he is never weary of recording disparaging estimates of women, and apparently delights in discovering evidence of ‘feminine devilry"’ (p. 184).  This argumentum ad feminam is sharpish practice, much after the manner of the Christian “Fathers of the Church” who, themselves vehemently doubting the existence of souls non- masculine, falsely and foolishly ascribed the theory and its consequences to Mohammed and the Moslems.  And here the Persian proverb holds good “Harf-i-kufr kufr nist”—­to speak of blasphemy is not blasphemous.  Curious readers will consult the article “Woman” in my Terminal Essay (x. 167), which alone refutes this silly scandal.  I never pretended to understand woman, and, as Balzac says, no wonder man fails when He who created her was by no means successful.  But in The Nights we meet principally Egyptian maids, matrons and widows, of whose “devilry” I cannot speak too highly, and in this matter even the pudibund Lane is as free-spoken as myself.  Like the natives of warm, damp and malarious lowlands and river-valleys adjacent to rugged and healthy uplands, such as Mazanderan, Sind, Malabar and California, the passions and the sexual powers of the females greatly exceed those of their males, and hence a notable development of the crude form of polyandry popularly termed whoredom.  Nor have the women of the Nile valley improved under our rule.  The last time I visited Cairo a Fellah wench, big, burly and boisterous, threatened one morning, in a fine new French avenue off the Ezbekiyah Gardens, to expose her person unless bought off with a piastre.  And generally the condition of womenkind throughout the Nile-valley reminded me of that frantic outbreak of debauchery which characterised Afghanistan during its ill-judged occupation by Lord Auckland, and Sind after the conquest by Sir Charles Napier.

“Captain Burton actually depends upon the respectable and antiquated D’Herbelot for his information” (p. 184).  This silly skit at the two great French Orientalists, D’Herbelot and Galland, is indeed worthy of a clique which, puff and struggle however much it will, can never do a tithe of the good work found in the Bibliotheque Orientale.  The book was issued in an unfinished state; in many points it has been superseded, during its life of a century and a half, by modern studies, but it is still a mine of facts, and a revised edition would be a boon to students.  Again, I have consulted Prof.  Palmer’s work, and the publications of the Palaeographical Society (p. 184); but I nowhere find the proofs that the Naskhi character (vol. i. 128) so long preceded the Cufic which, amongst vulgar Moslems, is looked upon like black letter in Europe.  But Semitic epigraphy is only now entering upon its second stage of study, the first being mere tentative ignorance:  about 80 years ago the illustrious De Sacy proved, in a learned memoir, the non-existence of letters in Arabia before the days of Mohammed.  But Palmer[FN#454], Halevy, Robertson Smith, Doughty and Euting have changed all that, and Herr Eduard Glaser of Prague is now bringing back from Sana’a some 390 Sabaean epigraphs—­a mass of new-old literature.