lasses and to the masses in those prehistoric times.

To return to Arab story-books. Mention must be made of 'Antar,' a
Bedouin romance, which has been partially translated from the Arabic
into English by Terrick Hamilton, Secretary to the British Embassy at
Constantinople, and published in London (1820). Mr. Clouston, in his
'Arabian Poetry for English Readers,' Glasgow, 1881, has given an
abstract of the story, with some specimens of translations from the
original.

The work itself is generally supposed to have been written by
Al-Asmai, the philologist and grammarian (born A.D. 740, died A.D.
831), who flourished at the court of Harun-ar-Rashid, and was a great
celebrity in his time. It is probable that many of the stories told
about Antar and his wonderful deeds came down orally and traditionally
to Al-Asmai, who embellished them with his own imagination, aided by a
wonderful knowledge of the language and idioms used by the Arabs in
their desert wilds.

Antar is the hero, and Abla the heroine, of the romance. Antar himself
is supposed to have lived during the sixth century A.D., and to have
been the author of one of the seven famous poems suspended at Mecca,
and known as the Mua'llakat. Besides this he was distinguished as a
great warrior, whose deeds of daring were quite marvellous. The
translator had intended to divide the work into three parts. The first
ends with the marriage of Antar and Abla, to attain which many
difficulties had to be overcome. The second part includes the period
when Antar suspends his poem at Mecca, also a work of considerable
difficulty. The third part gives the hero's travels, conquests, and
death. Mr. Hamilton only translated and published the first part of
the three, and the two others have not yet been done into English.

The romance of Antar, though tedious, is interesting, as it gives full
details of the life of the Arabs before Muhammad's time, and even
after, for the Arab life of to-day is apparently much the same as it
was three thousand years ago. It appears to be an existence made up of
continual wanderings, constant feud and faction, and perpetual
struggles for food, independence and plunder. But in the deserts on
the frontiers of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Baghdad, it is said
that the various tribes are now kept much more in subjection by the
Turks, owing to the introduction of the breech-loader, against which
the Arab and his matchlock and his peculiar mode of warfa