ent, and
the profound sensual element in their religion. Yet there are
exceptions to the rule there as well as elsewhere. It was a woman who
recited the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments" to the Sultan. Oriental
literature boasts many shining names of women. We have a pleasing
introduction to some of them in Garcia de Tassy's essay on "The
Female Poets of India." Ruckert's "Hamiisa," a collection of Arabic
poetry, contains specimens from fifty-five female poets of Arabia.
The genius of the Mohammedan saint, Rabia, has been given to fame by
her wonderful sayings, translated into many modern tongues. In spite
of these examples, however, the superiority of the condition of
Western women over Eastern is not only incontestable, but, as a
whole, incomparable.

The difference of the character of Jesus from that of Mohammed, and
the difference of the spirit which they showed in their personal
relations with women, would legitimate just the difference now
existing in the condition of women, respectively in Christian and
Mohammedan lands. Passing over other more notorious incidents, one
anecdote will illustrate this statement. After the battle of Bedr, a
Jewess of Medina, named Asma, wrote some satirical couplets against
Mohammed. Omeir, at dead of night, instigated by the prophet, crept
into the apartment where Asma, surrounded by her children, lay
asleep. Feeling stealthily with his hand, he removed her infant from
her breast, and plunged his sword into her bosom with such force that
it went through her back. The next morning, at prayers in the Mosque,
Mohammed said, "Hast thou slain the daughter of Marwan?" "Yes; but is
there cause of fear for what I have done?" The implacable prophet
replied, "None whatever: two goats will not knock their heads
together for it."

Lamartine says of the Armenians, with whom he was intimate at
Damascus, "I could not turn my eyes from these beautiful and graceful
women. Our visits and conversations were everywhere prolonged; and I
found them as amiable as they were lovely. The customs of Europe, the
dress and ways of the women of the West, were our chief topics. They
did not seem to envy the lives of our women; and, on observing the
grace, the amiability, the simplicity, the serenity of mind and heart
which they preserved in the seclusion of their domestic life, it
would be difficult to say what they could envy in our women of the
world, who, in the turmoil of society, waste in a few years their