hryar summoned chronicles and
copyists, and bade them write all that had betided him with his wife,
first and last; so they wrote this and named it 'The Stories of the
Thousand Nights and A Night.' The book came to thirty volumes, and these
the King laid up in his treasure. And the two brothers abode with their
wives in all pleasaunce and solace of life and its delights, for that
indeed Allah the Most High had changed their annoy into joy; and on this
wise they continued till there took them the Destroyer of delights and
the Severer of societies, the Desolator of dwelling-places, and Garnerer
of grave-yards, and they were translated to the ruth of Almighty Allah;
their houses fell waste and their palaces lay in ruins, and the Kings
inherited their riches. Then there reigned after them a wise ruler, who
was just, keen-witted, and accomplished, and loved tales and legends,
especially those which chronicle the doings of Sovrans and Sultans, and
he found in the treasury these marvelous stories and wondrous histories,
contained in the thirty volumes aforesaid. So he read in them a first
book and a second and a third and so on to the last of them, and each
book astounded and delighted him more than that which preceded it, till
he came to the end of them. Then he admired what so he had read therein
of description and discourse and rare traits and anecdotes and moral
instances and reminiscences, and bade the folk copy them and dispread
them over all lands and climes; wherefore their report was bruited
abroad and the people named them 'The marvels and wonders of the
Thousand Nights and A Night.' This is all that hath come down to us of
the origin of this book, and Allah is All-knowing. So Glory be to Him
Whom the shifts of Time waste not away, nor doth aught of chance or
change affect His sway! Whom one case diverteth not from other case, and
Who is sole in the attributes of perfect grace. And prayer and the Peace
be upon the Lord's Pontiff and Chosen One among His creatures, our Lord
MOHAMMED the Prince of mankind, through whom we supplicate Him for a
goodly and a godly end.

ARABIC LITERATURE

BY RICHARD GOTTHEIL

Of no civilization is the complexion of its literary remains so
characteristic of its varying fortunes as is that of the Arabic. The
precarious conditions of desert life and of the tent, the more certain
existence in settled habitations, the grandeur of empire acquired in a
short period of enthusiastic rap