LALLA ROOKH.

In the eleventh year of the reign of Aurungzebe, Abdalla, king of the Lesser Bucharia, a lineal descendant from the Great Zingis, having abdicated the throne in favour of his son, set out on a pilgrimage to the shrine of the prophet; and, passing into India through the delightful valley of Cashmere, rested for a short time at Delhi on his way. He was entertained by Aurungzebe in a style of magnificent hospitality, worthy alike of the visitor and the host, and was afterwards escorted with the same splendour to Surat, where he embarked for Arabia. During the stay of the Royal Pilgrim at Delhi, a marriage was agreed upon between the prince, his son, and the youngest daughter of the emperor, LALLA Rookh;*-a princess described by the poets of her time, as more beautiful than Leila, Shirine,

* Tulip Cheek.

intended that the nuptials should be celebrated at Cash- the proc

Dewilde, or any of those heroines whose names and loves cended embellish the songs of Persia and Hindostan. It was

Aurung

mere; where the young king, as soon as the cares of empire would permit, was to meet, for the first time, his lovely bride, and, after a few months' repose in that enchanting valley, conduct her over the snowy hills into il pala Bucharia.

Seli superb.

gallant :

tinguish

the feat and the

their se ried, Keder

The day of LALLA Rookh's departure from Delhi was as splendid as sunshine and pageantry could make it. The bazars and baths were all covered with the richest tapestry; hundreds of gilded barges upon the Jumna 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;* 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 as

keen beari little

Roof

veils of

thro

• Gul Reazee.

loves cended the palankeen prepared for her; and, while It was Aurungzebe stood to take a last look from his balcony, Cash. the procession moved slowly on the road to Lahore.

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Delhi

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Seldom had the eastern world seen a cavalcade so at en superb. From the gardens in the suburbs to the impeIs into rial palace, it was one unbroken line of splendour. The

gallant appearance of the Rajas and Mogul lords, dis-
tinguished by those insignia of the emperor's favour,
the feathers of the egret of Cashmere in their turbans,
and the small silver-rimmed kettle-drums at the bows of

their saddles;—the costly armour of their cavaliers, who the

vied, on this occasion, with the guards of the great water,

Keder Khan, in the brightness of their silver battlehildren

axes and the massiness of thair maces of gold;the glit-
tering of the gilt pine-apples on the tops of the palan-
keens;—the embroidered trappings of the elephants,

bearing on their backs small turrets, in the shape of
e prin little antique temples, within which the ladies of LALLA
it part Rookh lay, as it were enshrined,—the rose-coloured
•ck, on veils of the princess's own sumptuous litter, at the front
od bar of which a fair young female slave sat fanning her
o kept through the curtains, with feathers of the Argus phea-
kly as sant's wing;—and the lovely troop of Tartarian and Cash-

merian maids of honour, whom the young king had sent

Roses," aravan

beal

tere

at e

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 Chamber. lain of the Haram, who was borne in his palankeen immediately after the princess, and considered himself not the least important personage of the pageant.

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West

FADLADEEN was a judge of every thing,—from the penciling of a Circassian's eye-lids 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 tast 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, was about as disinterested as that of the goldsmith, who fell in love with the diamond eyes of the idol of Jaghernaut.

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who

During the first days of their journey, LALLA Rooks, who had passed all her life within the shadow of the Royal Gardens of Shalimar, found enough in the

lulle

her

fair

side o

critica hamber

een im

from the

adow of lulled the princess to sleep with the ancient ditties of

beauty of the scenery through which they passed to inrilliant

terest 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 nself no

the banks of a small rivulet, as clear as the waters of the
Lake of Pearl; 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, emest ques

bowered spots, described by one from the isles of the
west, 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

Rooks was young, and the young love variety; nor that you

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,

ure of

an epil the va

poets of

luct and < should

religion

or, wai vho fell lernaut

LALLA

in the

her country, about the loves of Wamak and Ezra, the
fair-haired Zal and his mistress Rodahver; not forgetting