the _gola_[G] slave-girls are singing plaintive songs, drum and conch
answer from the open courtyards. The palace is awake. The Raja, we
will romantically presume, bounds lightly from his horse and dances
gaily to the harem to fling himself voluptuously into the luxurious
arms of one of the five-and-twenty queens, or one of the
five-and-twenty grand duchesses; and they stand for one delirious
moment wreathed in each other's embraces--

While soft there breathes
Through the cool casement, mingled with the sighs
Of moonlight flowers, music that seems to rise
From some still lake, so liquidly it rose,
And, as it swell'd again at each faint close,
The ear could track through all that maze of chords
And young sweet voices these impassioned words--

"Ho, you there! fetch us a pint of gin! and look sharp, will you!"

For who, in time, knows whither we may vent
The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent,
To enrich unknowing nations with our stores!
What worlds in the yet unformed Orient
May come refined with accents that are ours!

But, dear Vanity, I can see that you are impatient of scenes whose
luxuries steal, spite of yourself, too deep into your soul; besides, I
dread the effect of such warm situations on a certain Zuleika to whom
the note of Ali Baba is like the thrice-distilled strains of the
bulbul on Bendemeer's stream. So let us electrify ourselves back to
prose and propriety by thinking of the Political Agent; let us plunge
into the cold waters of dreary reality by conjuring up a figure in
tail-coat and gold buttons dispensing justice while H.H. the romantic
and picturesque Raja, G.C.S.I., amuses himself. Yet we hear cries from
the gallery of "Vive M. le Raja; vive la bagatelle!"

So say we, in faint echoes, defying the anathemas of the Foreign
Office. Do not turn this beautiful temple of ancient days into a mere
mill for decrees and budgets; but sweep it and purify it, and render
it a fitting shrine for the homage and tribute of antique
loyalty--"that proud submission, that subordination of the heart which
kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted
freedom." With tail-coat and cocked-hat government "the unbought grace
of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment
and heroic enterprise is gone."--ALI BABA.

No. VIII

WITH THE P