candour, thus: Notwithstanding the observations which I have thought it my duty to make, it is by no means my wish to discourage the young man-so far from it, indeed, that if he will but totally alter his style of writing and thinking, I have very little doubt that I shall be vastly pleased with him." Some days elapsed, after this harangue of the Great Chamberlain, before LALLA ROOKн could venture to ask for another story. The youth was still a welcome guest in the pavilion-to one heart, perhaps, too dangerously welcome ;but all mention of poetry was, as if by common consent, avoided. Though none of the party had much respect for FADLADEEN, yet his censures, thus magisterially delivered, evidently made an impression on them all. The Poet himself, to whom criticism was quite a new operation, (being wholly unknown in that Paradise of the Indies, Cashmere,) felt the shock as it is generally felt at first, till use has made it more tolerable to the patient; the Ladies began to suspect that they ought not to be pleased, and seemed to conclude that there must have been much good sense in what FADLADEEN said, from its having set them all so soundly to sleep ;—while the self-complacent Chamberlain was left to triumph in the idea of having, for the hundred and fiftieth time in his life, extinguished a Poet. LALLA ROOKн alone-and Love knew why-persisted in being delighted with all she had heard, and in resolving to hear more as speedily as possible. Her manner, however, of first returning to the subject was unlucky. It was while they rested, during the heat of noon, near a fountain, on which some hand had rudely traced those well-known words from the Garden of Sadi,-"Many, like me, have viewed this fountain, but they are gone, and their eyes are closed for ever!"-that she took occasion, from the melancholy beauty of this passage, to dwell upon the charms of poetry in general. "It is true," she said, "few poets can imitate that sublime bird, which flies always in the air, and never touches the earth: it is only once in many ages a Genius appears, whose words, like those on the Written Mountain, last for ever: —but still there are some, as delightful, perhaps, though not so wonderful, who, if not stars over a «The Huma, a bird peculiar to the East. It is supposed to fly constantly in the air, and never touch the ground; it is looked upon as a bird of happy omen; and that every head it overshades will in time wear a crown."Richardson. In the terms of alliance made by Fuzzel Oola Khan with Hyder in 1760, one of the stipulations was, "that he should have the distinction of two honorary attendants standing behind him, holding fans composed of the feathers of the humma, according to the practice of his family.”—Wilks's South of India. He adds in a note,The Humma is a fabulous bird. The head over which its shadow once passes will assuredly be circled with a crown. The splendid little bird suspended over the throne of Tippoo Sultaun, found at Seringapatam in 1799, was intended to represent this poetical fancy." b. To the pilgrims to Mount Sinai we must attribute the inscriptions, figures, &c., on those rocks, which have from thence acquired the name of the Written Mountain."-Volney. M. Gebelin and others have been at much pains to attach some mysterious and important meaning to these inscriptions; but Niebuhr, as well as Volney, thinks that they must have been executed at idle hours by the travellers to Mount Sinai, "who were satisfied with cutting the unpolished rock with any pointed instrument; adding to their names and the date of their journeys some rude figures, which bespeak the hand of a people but little skilled in the arts."-Niebuhr. our head, are at least flowers along our path, and whose sweetness of the moment we ought gratefully to inhale, without calling upon them for a brightness and a durability beyond their nature. In short," continued she, blushing, as if conscious of being caught in an oration, "it is quite cruel that a poet cannot wander through his regions of enchantment, without having a critic for ever, like the old Man of the Sea, upon his back!"a-FADLADEEN, it was plain, took this last luckless allusion to himself, and would treasure it up in his mind as a whetstone for his next criticism. A sudden silence ensued; and the Princess, glancing a look at FERAMORZ, saw plainly she must wait for a more courageous moment. But the glories of Nature, and her wild, fragrant airs, playing freshly over the current of youthful spirits, will soon heal even deeper wounds than the dull Fadladeens of this world can inflict. In an evening or two after, they came to the small Valley of Gardens, which had been planted by order of the Emperor, for his favourite sister Rochinara, during their progress to Cashmere, some years before; and never was there a more sparkling assemblage of sweets, since the Gulzar-e-Irem, or Rose-bower of Irem. Every precious flower was there to be found, that poetry, or love, or religion has ever consecrated; from the dark hyacinth, to which Hafez compares his mistress's hair, to the Cámalatá, by a The Story of Sinbad. b See Nott's Hafez, Ode v. As whose rosy blossoms the heaven of Indra is scented. they sat in the cool fragrance of this delicious spot, and LALLA ROOKH remarked that she could fancy it the abode of that Flower-loving Nymph whom they worship in the temples of Kathay," or of one of those Peris, those beautiful creatures of the air, who live upon perfumes, and to whom a place like this might make some amends for the Paradise they have lost, the young Poet, in whose eyes she appeared, while she spoke, to be one of the bright spiritual creatures she was describing, said, hesitatingly, that he remembered a Story of a Peri, which, if the Princess had no objection, he would venture to relate. "It is," said he, with an appealing look to FADLADEEN, "in a lighter and humbler strain than the other:" then, striking a few careless but melancholy chords on his kitar, he thus began:— a "The Camalatá (called by Linnæus, Ipomea) is the most beautiful of its order, both in the colour and form of its leaves and flowers; its elegant blossoms are 'celestial rosy red, Love's proper hue,' and have justly procured it the name of Cámalatá, or Love's Creeper."—Sir W. Jones. “Cámalatá may also mean a mythological plant, by which all desires are granted to such as inhabit the heaven of Indra; and if ever flower was worthy of paradise, it is our charming Ipomea.”—Ib. b "According to Father Premare, in his tract on Chinese Mythology, the mother of Fo-hi was the daughter of heaven, surnamed Flower-loving; and, as the nymph was walking alone on the bank of a river, she found herself encircled by a rainbow, after which she became pregnant, and, at the end of twelve years, was delivered of a son radiant as herself."-Asiat. Res. PARADISE AND THE PERI. ONE morn a Peri, at the gate She wept to think her recreant race "How happy," exclaimed this child of air, "Are the holy Spirits who wander there, "Mid flowers that never shall fade or fall! "Though mine are the gardens of earth and sea, "And the stars themselves have flowers for me, "One blossom of heaven outblooms them all! 150 |