perhaps, though not so wonderful, who, if not stars over 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!"*-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,

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.

*The Story of Sinbad.

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 whose rosy blossoms the heaven of Indra is scented. + As they sat in

* See Nott's Hafez, Ode v.

"The Cámalatá (called by Linnæus, Ipomæa) is the most beautiful of its order, both in the colour and form of its

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

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.

* "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.

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:

156

PARADISE AND THE PERI.

ONE morn a Peri at the gate
Of Eden stood, disconsolate;
And as she listen'd to the Springs
Of Life within, like music flowing,
And caught the light upon her wings
Through the half-open portal glowing,
She wept to think her recreant race
Should e'er have lost that glorious place!

"How happy," exclaim'd 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 out-blooms them all!

"Though sunny the Lake of cool CASHMERE, "With its plane-tree Isle reflected clear*,

# "Numerous small islands emerge from the Lake of Cash