floated with their banners shining in the water; while through the streets groups of beautiful children went strewing the most delicious flowers around, as in that Persian festival called the Scattering of the Roses 6; till every part of the city was as fragrant as if a caravan of musk from Khoten had passed through it. The Princess, having taken leave of her kind father, who at parting hung a cornelian of Yemen round her neck, on which was inscribed a verse from the Koran, and having sent a considerable present to the Fakirs, who kept up the Perpetual Lamp in her sister's tomb, meekly ascended the palankeen prepared for her; and, while Aurungzebe stood to take a last look from his balcony, the procession moved slowly on the road to Lahore. Seldom had the Eastern world seen a cavalcade so superb. From the gardens in the suburbs to the Imperial palace, it was one unbroken line of splendour. The gallant appearance of the Rajahs and Mogul lords, distinguished by those insignia of the Emperor's favour 7, the feathers of the egret of Cashmere in their turbans, and the small silver-rimm'd kettle-drums at the bows of their saddles; the costly armour of their cavaliers, who vied, on this occasion, with the guards of the great Keder Khan 8, in the brightness of their silver battleaxes and the massiness of their maces of gold-the glittering of the gilt pineapples 9 on the tops of the palankeens; the embroidered trappings of the elephants, bearing on their backs small turrets, in the shape of little antique temples, within which the Ladies of LALLA ROOKH lay as it were enshrined; the rose-coloured veils of the Princess's own sumptuous litter 10, at the front of which a fair young female slave sat fanning her through the curtains, with feathers of the Argus pheasant's wing 11;- and the lovely troop of Tartarian and Cashmerian maids of honour, whom the young King had sent to accompany his bride, and who rode on each side of the litter, upon small Arabian horses; all was brilliant, tasteful, and magnificent, and pleased even the critical and fastidious FADLADEEN, Great Nazir or Chamberlain of the Haram, who was borne in his palankeen immediately after the Princess, and considered himself not the least important personage of the pageant. FADLADEEN was a judge of every thing, - from the pencilling of a Circassian's eyelids to the deepest questions of science and literature; from the mixture of a conserve of rose-leaves to the composition of an epic poem and such influence had his opinion upon the various tastes of the day, that all the cooks and poets of Delhi stood in awe of him. His political conduct and opinions were founded upon that line of Sadi,-" Should the Prince at noon-day say, It is night, declare that you behold the moon and stars." And his zeal for religion, of which Aurungzebe was a munificent protector 12, was about as disinterested as that of the goldsmith who fell in love with the diamond eyes of the idol of Jaghernaut.13 During the first days of their journey, LALLA ROOKн, who had passed all her life within the shadow of the Royal Gardens of Delhi 14, found enough in the beauty of the scenery through which they passed to interest her mind, and delight her imagination; and when at evening, or in the heat of the day, they turned off from the high road to those retired and romantic places which had been selected for her encampments-sometimes on the banks of a small rivulet, as clear as the waters of the Lake of Pearl 15; sometimes under the sacred shade of a Banyan tree, from which the view opened upon a glade covered with antelopes; and often in those hidden, embowered spots, described by one from the Isles of the West 16, as "places of melancholy, delight, and safety, where all the company around was wild peacocks and turtle-doves; -she felt a charm in these scenes, so lovely and so new to her, which, for a time, made her indifferent to every other amusement. But LALLA ROOKH was young, and the young love variety; nor could the conversation of her Ladies and the Great Chamberlain, FADLADEEN, (the only persons, of course, admitted to her pavilion,) sufficiently enliven those many vacant hours, which were devoted neither to the pillow nor the palankeen. There was a little Persian slave who sung sweetly to the Vina, and who, now and then, lulled the Princess to sleep with the ancient ditties of her country, about the loves of Wamak and Ezra 17, the fair-haired Zal and his mistress Rodahver 18; not forgetting the combat of Rustam with the terrible White Demon.19 At other times she was amused by those graceful dancing-girls of Delhi, who had been permitted by the Bramins of the Great Pagoda to attend her, much to the horror of the good Mussulman FADLADEEN, who could see nothing graceful or agreeable in idolaters, and to whom the very tinkling of their golden anklets 20 was an abomination. But these and many other diversions were repeated till they lost all their charm, and the nights and noon-days were beginning to move heavily, when, at length, it was recollected that, among the attendants sent by the bridegroom, was a young poet of Cashmere, much celebrated throughout the Valley for his manner of reciting the Stories of the East, on whom his Royal Master had conferred the privilege of being admitted to the pavilion of the Princess, that he might help to beguile the tediousness of the journey, by some of his most agreeable recitals. At the mention of a poet, FADLADEEN elevated his critical eyebrows, and, having refreshed his faculties with a dose of that delicious opium 21 which is distilled from the black poppy of the Thebais, gave orders for the minstrel to be forthwith introduced into the presence. The Princess, who had once in her life seen a poet from behind the screens of gauze in her Father's hall, and had conceived from that specimen no very favourable ideas of the Caste, expected but little in this new exhibition to interest her; she felt inclined, however, to alter her opinion on the very first appearance of FERAMORZ. He was a youth about LALLA ROOKн's own age, and graceful as that idol of women, Crishna 22,-such as he appears to their young imaginations, heroic, beautiful, breathing music from his very eyes, and exalting the religion of his worshippers into love. His dress was simple, yet not without some marks of costliness; and the Ladies of the Princess were not long in discovering that the cloth, which encircled his high Tartarian cap, was of the most delicate kind that the shawl-goats of Tibet supply.23 Here and there, too, over his vest, which was confined by a flowered girdle of Kashan, hung strings of fine pearl, disposed with an air of studied negligence; nor did the exquisite embroidery of his sandals escape the observation of these fair critics; who, however they might give way to FADLADEEN upon the unimportant topics of religion and government, had the spirit of martyrs in every thing relating to such momentous matters as jewels and embroidery. For the purpose of relieving the pauses of recitation by music, the young Cashmerian held in his hand a kitar; such as, in old times, the Arab maids of the West used to listen to by moonlight in the gardens of the Alhambra- and, having premised, with much humility, that the story he was about to relate was founded on the adventures of that Veiled Prophet of Khorassan 24, who, in the year of the Hegira 163, created such alarm throughout the Eastern Empire, made an obeisance to the Princess, and thus began :— THE VEILED PROPHET OF KHORASSAN.25 IN that delightful Province of the Sun, Were ev'n the gleams miraculously shed O'er MOUSSA's 28 cheek 29, when down the mount he trod, All glowing from the presence of his God! On either side, with ready hearts and hands, Young fire-eyed disputants, who deem their swords, Fill'd with the stems 32 that bloom on IRAN's rivers; 33 |