of their own, and are the helpless creatures of destiny.  Half their talk consists of invocations to Allah, the All-ruling, All-gracious Allah!  This fatalistic element is a leading feature in the Nights.  All that happens is accepted with submission, and with the conviction that nothing can be averted.  The Wazir’s eye is knocked out, “as fate and fortune decreed,” the one pomegranate seed escapes destruction, and the Princess dies in consequence; the beautiful lad secreted in a cave under the earth to keep him from harm, because it is foretold by the astrologers that he will die on a certain day, meets with his death at the appointed hour despite all precautions.  This is one of the myriad instances, says Captain Burton, showing “that the decrees of Anagke, Fate, Destiny, Weird are inevitable.”  And yet, in the face of overwhelming evidence that Moslems in all things bow to the stroke of destiny, it is singular to note that a Turkish scholar like Mr. Redhouse, translator of the “Mesnevi,” fails to realise this most characteristic trait of Mahometan belief, and confuses it with the Christian idea of Providence and Premonition.  The folk in Arabian tales, as might be expected, meet calamity in the shape of death with fortitude.  The end of life is not a terror acutely feared as with us.  They die easily, and when the time comes they give up the ghost without repining, although the mourning by survivors is often loud and vehement, and sometimes desperately prolonged.  This facility in dying is partly due to their fatalistic philosophy, and partly it is the effect of climate.  It is in rugged climes that death is appalling, and comes as the King of Terrors, but the hotter the country the easier it is to enter the Door of Darkness.  All these things which make the difference between Orientals and ourselves must be taken into account by readers of Arabian story, and the coarseness, as Captain Burton shows, is but the shade of a picture which otherwise would be all light;” the general tone of the Nights “is exceptionally high and pure, and the devotional fervour often rises to boiling point.”  We have shown how Captain Burton has rendered the prose of the Nights, how vigorous, yet simple, is the language, how pleasant is his use of antique phrase, serving as it often does to soften the crudity of Oriental expression.  In translating the poetry, which finally will amount to nearly 10,000 lines, he has again started on a path of his own.  He has closely preserved the Arab form, although, as he says, an absolutely exact copy of Arabic metres is an impossibility.

A striking novelty in Captain Burton’s translation is the frequent occurrence of passages in cadenced prose, called in Arabic “Saj’a,” or the cooing of a dove.  These melodious fragments have a charming effect on the ear.  They come as dulcet-surprises, and mostly occur in highly-wrought situations, or they are used to convey a vivid sense of something exquisite in art or nature.  We give