precedence to the Gulistan, when a reference to its introduction might have satisfied them that its date was next year, or that of A. H. 656.

Apologue of Sadi's Bostan ii. 4:-a literal version.

"I have heard, that no son of the road, or traveller, had approached the hospitable abode of that friend of God, Abraham, for a whole week: from the goodness of his heart he would never partake of his morning repast till some way-worn stranger had entered his dwelling. He went forth and explored every quarter, and reviewed the valley to its uttermost border; and he descried from afar a man solitary as a willow, whose head and beard were whitened with the snow of years. In order to administer comfort he went up to him and gave him a hearty welcome, and after the custom of the generous thus kindly entreated him, saying, O precious apple of my eye! be courteously pleased to partake of my bread and salt, and become my guest. The old man gave his assent, got up, and stept briskly forward; for he well knew the disposition of Abraham, on whom be God's blessing! The domestic companions of that beloved favorite of God seated with reverence the poor old man: orders were issued, and the table spread, and the family took their respective stations around it. Now the company began to ask God's blessing before meat, but none of them could hear the stranger utter a word: then did Abraham say to him, O sage of ancient times! thou seemest not to be holy and devout, as is usual with the aged: is it not their duty, when they break his bread, to call upon the name of that Providence who bestowed it? The old man replied, I follow no religious rite that has not been. sanctioned by my fire-worshipping priest. The well-omened prophet was now made aware that this wicked old wretch had been bred a Guebre; as an alien to his faith he thrust him forth with scorn, for the pure abominate the contamination of the vile. From glorious Omnipotence an angel was sent down, who in the harshness of rebuke called aloud, saying, O Abraham! for a century of years I gave him life and food, whom thou hast turned away with contumely upon an hour's acquaintance; for though he was offering adoration to the fire, why art thou withholding the hand of toleration from him?"

It may be proper to notice, that Sadi's Bostan is entirely written in the common couplet of ten or eleven syllables, as in fact are all the great Persian poems, whether upon heroic or moral subjects, and corresponding, as Sir W. Jones observes, with that which Pope brought to such perfection in English. Nothing can be more simple, as indeed the grammar through

out of the Persian language is, than its Prosody; all its four and twenty letters being considered by the Persian grammarians as what Europeans call consonants, and including the ↑ alif,, waw, and s ya, which we absurdly call their long vowels. Their real vowels, nearly corresponding with our three chief vowels a, i, u, are understood, but seldom represented; or, when represented, it is each by a mark, as expressed by its name, as Zabar above, Zeyr below, and Peish before, one of which uniformly follows every letter that is accented; and this letter, thus accented with its vowel point, constitutes a short syllable, unless followed by another letter which is mute, when it constitutes a long syllable: thus xú nă-gah, the first syllable of which being a accented with a Zabar, is a short syllable, and the accented with a Zabar and followed by a mute ¿ is long: in the same

way birun having the Iambic foot for the sake of the poe

برون

tical measure, being the contraction of bīrūn, which is a spondee and in the last syllable the, waw is mute, and as much a consonant as the nun, which follows it: but this

becomes more evident in the word sarv, a cypress, where the waw by being the last letter of a Persian word is mute by

position; and the same of Mary, a word also of one syllable, and the name of two famous cities in Khorasan, again absurdly called by Europeans Maru, or a word of two syllables! As represented thus in the European character and measure I shall here copy the third couplet of the Persian text of Sadi's apologue, and its prosody form, thus:

bĭrūn räftŭ hār jānībi bingărid

ba atrafe wadi nagah hardu did

With the three narratives before him, the reader can make his comparison; and, notwithstanding its priority of date, and the disadvantage of my verbal translation, the man of taste will, I doubt not, agree with me in giving a preference to that of Sadi. The Bishop questionless had his direct from the Talmud; and the Doctor is believed to have, without avowal, however, copied him; but I think I can trace him immediately to Sadi, in this as well as his other well-known story of the Whistle. In his

Bostan ix. 13. Sadi says:-"I remember during the days of my father, upon whom I every moment pray for the dew drops of God's mercy, that in my boyhood he bought me a book and slate, and he gave me also a ring of gold. A dealer in fruit got me all at once to give him up the ring from my finger for a single date. As a little child knows not the value of a ring of gold, they may coax it from him for a piece of sweetmeat: nor didst thou, O man! know the value of life, who didst let it run to waste in luscious enjoyment."

one.

Franklin says in a letter to Madame Brillon, Memoirs of his life and writings, 4to. iii. 318:- "When I was a child of seven years old, my friends one holiday filled my pocket with coppers. Going directly to a toy-shop, and being charmed with the sound of a whistle, that I heard by the way in the hands of another urchin, I voluntarily offered and gave all my money for When I came home, I went whistling all over the house, much pleased with my bargain, but disturbing all the family. My brothers and sisters laughed at my folly, for having given four times as much as it was worth for such a bauble; putting me in mind of the good things I might have bought with the rest of the money. I cried with vexation; and this reflection gave me more chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure: but the impression remained on my mind, so that when often tempted to buy any unnecessary article, I would say to` myself, Don't give too much for a whistle; and saved my money."

Sadi's Gulistan has been translated into Latin, English, and most of the dialects of Europe, but his Bostan never to my knowledge has; nor can I fancy through what channel the Doctor could get at both these stories. In the first he differs from the Bishop and Sadi in making his old man an idolater, instead of a fire-worshipper; but in this he also accords with the last, who often confounds the two characters with the pristine worship of the Parsis. For in the days of Abraham the ancient Persians were Nighūshāks, or, what the ancient Arabs called themselves, Sabiyans," which Newton," says Sir W. Jones, "calls the oldest and noblest of all religions, or a firm belief, that one Supreme God made the world by his power, and continually governed it by his providence; a pious fear, love and adoration of him; a due reverence for parents and aged persons; a fraternal affection for the whole human species, and a compassionate tenderness even for the brute creation."

We have reason to believe, that the Brahmans were the idolaters whom the Nighūshāks, or professors of this creed,

drove out of Persia, on descending from the Kurdistan hills, and on possessing themselves of it; and that they long continued to keep up occasionally an amicable, but generally a hostile intercourse with that Demon sect, especially at Balkh and along the eastern border of Iran; and they admit that they owed to them their first knowledge of the arts and sciences, and early civilisation. Our scriptures charge the Persians with idolatry: be this, however, as it may, about five hundred years before Christ they had so essentially swerved from their ancient purity of faith, that during the reigns of Lahrasp and Garhtasp, the successors of Kai-khosraw, Zartosht, or our Zoroaster, introduced his reformation, and established an immediate worship of fire, an element, which they would seem always to have held in reverence, but not before this downright to have adored for speaking of Kai-khosraw and his court, Firdosi, indignant at the charge of such adoration, spiritedly says, " For a whole week he and his train remained in the presence and stood by the altar of the Deity; but you must not fancy that they were worshippers of the fire that burnt on that altar; for fire was at that place a sort of table of communion, where the eye of the adorer partook of the divine glory: if you will give the imagination the least range, you must also acknowledge your dependence upon a pure and holy divinity."-And Doctor Thomas Hyde, who in his profound researches into ancient literature knew them well, adds of the Parsis, that they-"fideles erant, et veri Dei cultui addicti."

The Persians under their name of Ipraham confound Abraham with Zartosht, or a Zoroaster, and one of their fifteen prophets, who flourished many centuries before the one that legalised the immediate worship of fire. They say, that God often communed with him in the manner as related in this parable, and was pleased to impart to him the secret counsels and purposes of his providence; whence Sadi, and all the modern Persian poets, mention him by the epithet of la Jul Khalil Khoda, or the beloved friend of God: see Isaiah xli. 8. According to them he was the second son of Azar, and had in his youth been educated in the idolatries of his father, who though descended from the prophets had followed the multitude in those days to do evil, and became on their account a maker of images in the city of Bamiyan Balkh, a place still abounding with more ancient and stupendous monuments of the arts than any in the world, and which that intrepid traveller Brown was on his way to visit, when he was unaccountably murdered in Persia in 1811! But Abraham, being recalled to the true faith, went

while yet a youth into his father's shop, and breaking the images, ridiculed such as had come to buy them, when his father took him for chastisement before Nimrod; but he, instead of punishing him, was diverted by his miracles and wit. After this he removed to the western border of Persia, and was famed for his love and piety to the Deity, and justice and hospitality to his fellow-creatures; for which last purpose he pitched his tents on the edge of the wilderness near the city of Haran, that he might, according to this apologue, entertain travellers passing towards that famous mart.

The Turks are a savage race of Mussulmans, and we have of late heard much of their barbarities; but the present degenerate race of Greeks are well-nigh as savage and ignorant as they are; whereas the Persians, as our latest and best informed travellers have uniformly found them, even when religion has been made the topic, are more tolerant and liberal than any sect of Christians. On one occasion one of their Muftis quoted from the Coran, that "Jew, Christian, or Sabian, and indeed whoever believeth in God and the last day, and doeth that which is right, shall have his reward with the Almighty, and no fear shall come upon him, neither needeth he to grieve."-And that Sadi, in reference to this passage, adds in one of his Majlis or Sermons

"that any fellow-creature, who believes in God after his own fashion and heart, and thus accomplishes good works, may expect a favorable reception and final sentence on the last day, notwithstanding his failure in ritual duty: and that there is salvation for a virtuous infidel, but none for a vicious believer."

Our present territory in the East Indies (and where can we fix a limit to it, or to the liberality of our governments there?) is more extensive, better governed and cultivated, and more populous than all Europe; and we have readier means of making converts than any other Christian nation; and from the openness of the British press abler vindications of the old and new Testaments have been published in England, than in the whole world beside. Maracci's translation of the Coran and refutation (Sale's is only a copy of part of it) was much esteemed in its day; but then he was a Papist; and a Papist, as well as a Greek, has images, and plurality in the Godhead, and free-will, and other doctrines to defend, which Mussulman and Hindoo would respectively object to. And though both sects are superiorly sober and temperate, and exmeplarily moral and industrious, above any other such subjects; and the lower classes attached and obedient, and the better sort polite and intelligent in their respective social intercourses with Euro