lay with his face in the dust, now that the pure spirit of the Almighty had complied with his prayer. One of the true faith, whose sincere adoration had been ever clouded with calamity, expressed himself astonished at what had come to pass, and said, "Here is a despicable and obstinate worshipper of the fire, whose mind is still intoxicated with the wine of his temple; his heart full of infidelity, and hand soiled with perfidy; yet has God fulfilled the object of his wish!" This holy man's mind was occupied in trying to resolve this difficulty, when a message from heaven was revealed into the ear of his soul, intimating to him, "This old and perverted sinner often implored his idol, and his prayers were disregarded; but were he to quit the threshold of my tribunal disappointed, then where would be the difference between a dumb and perishable idol, and the Lord God Eternal?" Put your trust, oh! my dearly beloved friends! in Providence, for nothing is more helpless than a stock or a stone idol. It were lamentable, when you might lay your heads on this threshold, if you should come to leave it disappointed of your object.

Sadi's second pologue is as follows:

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 natural goodness of his heart, he could never partake of his morning repast, till some weary stranger had entered his dwelling. He took himself forth, and explored every quarter; he viewed the valley to its uttermost border, and descried from afar a man, solitary as a wil low, whose head and beard were whitened with the snow of years. In order to administer comfort, he went up and gave him a hearty welcome, and, after the custom of the generous, thus kindly entreated him, saying "Oh! precious apple of mine eye! be courteously pleased to become my guest!" The old man consented, and getting up, stept briskly forward; for he well knew the beneficent disposition of Abraham (on whom be God's blessing). The domestic companions of that beloved friend 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. When the company began to ask God's blessing before meat, nobody could hear the stranger utter a word. Then did Abraham say to him, "Oh! 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 that Providence, who has graciously bestowed it?" The old man replied, "I follow no religious rite, that has not had the sanction of my priest of the fire!" The wellomened prophet was now made aware that this depraved old wretch had been bred a Guebre; as an alien to his faith, he thrust him forth with scorn; for the pure abhor the contamination of the vile. From glorious Omnipotence an angel came down, and in the harshness of rebuke called aloud, "Oh! Abraham, for a century of years I bestowed on him life and food, whom thou hast taken to abominate on an hour's acquaintance; for though he is offering adoration to the fire, why art thou to withhold the hand of toleration from him?”' ·

We are told by oriental writers-for the Persians claim Abraham as one of their forefathers-that the Almighty often communed with him thus, and was pleased to impart to him the secret counsels and purposes of his Providence; whence he was styled the

Khalil Khoda, or beloved friend of God. See Isaiah xli. 8. He was the second son, according to them, 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 of those days to do evil, and became on their account a maker of images in the city of Bamian Balkh. 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 came to buy them; when his father took him for chastisement before Nimrod; who, instead of punishing him, was diverted by his miracles and wit. After this he removed to the eastern border of the Persian empire, and was famed for his love and piety to the deity, and justice and hospitality to his fellow-creatures; for which last purpose he often pitched his tents on the edge of the wilderness, near the city of Haran, that he might, as the above apologue informs us, entertain travellers passing towards that place. Oriental scholars, who are aware of the peculiar and fierce prejudices that the Mussulmans entertained against the Guebres, cannot sufficiently admire the benevolent spirit displayed by Sadi, in these and many of his apologues, where he has occasion to notice different religious sects; and many well-meaning Christians might learn good manners on this head, by studying such parts of his works. We may all read, and equally apply the moral of such parables to our own conduct, so as to enable us to set aside all narrow and violent prejudices, and imbibe in their room, proper and liberal notions of tolerance in religious matters, particularly towards such as differ from us perhaps in little else than what is ceremonial; recollecting to this purpose that excellent maxim of our own gospel:- Forbid him not; for he that is not against us (in the propagation of the knowledge of one only and true God) is on our part.' Were indeed the Socrateses, the Pliny's, the Fenelons, the Addisons, and the Sadis of distant ages and nations thus benevolently to talk over the subject of religion and morality, that spleen of the soul, superstition, might be cured of its gloomy brooding; and that bane of humanity, fanaticism, reduced to sobriety and reason; and the soundness and integrity of our simple, as it is superior, Christian doctrines, might all the sooner gain, what every considerate man among us would wish and hope to see, that ultimate victory over all other faiths. To the avoiding evil inclinations and practices, and to improvement in sentiments and habits of piety and virtue, we cannot be indifferent certainly without being criminal; yet we may assuredly tolerate, without impatience or animosity, the errors, whether of our own dissenting sects of faith, or those of Muhammadans and idolaters, so long as their peculiar tenets are not active in sapping the foundations of our own special belief; and we ought to combat their errors only by reason, argument, and truth, and not as some of us have lately done, by abuse, falsehood, and misrepresentation. If in the course of such discussions the opposite parties should have opportunities of promulgating some errors, that, without this provoca- . tion, might have remained within their own narrower sphere, as

this would nevertheless lead to a freer and more open inquiry, so it were the most likely and best means of combatting the obstinate part of them with success, and of converting the reasonable. In our own now extensive settlements in the East Indies (and where can we fix a limit to those settlements, and the liberality of our governments there?) we have readier means of making converts than any other Christian nation; and from the liberality of the British press, abler vindications of the Old and New Testaments have been published in England than in all the world beside. Maracci's translation and refutation of the Koran (Sale's is only a copy of part of it) is an able work; but then he was a papist, and had the worship of images, and other objectionable tenets, to defend, which neither Mussulman nor Hindu could be ever reconciled to. The plain faith and simple doctrine of the gospel, according to the acceptation of our best and ablest divines, may be compared to our system of British government, which required only a thorough and impartial discussion to distinguish the licentiousness, which wild theorists and hot-headed enthusiasts have, at different times, inculcated from true liberty; and a memorable example of this has, in the temporary madness of the French revolution, passed in review before the eyes of mankind, and may deter other governments, for some time, from meddling with their constitutions.

Nihil dictum, quod non dictum prius: there is nothing new under the sun, if we believe our own Scripture, and the reproof given to Abraham in the above apologue of Sadi, is so similar to what Moses is said, by oriental writers, to have received on a like occasion, that I may safely trace him to his original. By the by, it would scarcely be believed, that Parnell borrowed the beautiful story of his hermit through a Risallah or sermon of Sadi from the Koran, which I was first made aware of by proposing to my Munshi, many years ago, to translate it into the Persian language, as a fine specimen of our English apologue. The oriental writers tell us, that:

Karun, (the Korah of our Scriptures, Numb. xiv.) was notorious for his riches and stinginess; and there is a Hadis or tradition of the prophet (Muhammad), that Moses, the cousin of Karun, had the divine permission to punish this wickedness. Accordingly, in the midst of his kindred and wealth, Moses ordered the earth to open and swallow him up. This it did gradually, for he at first sunk no deeper than the knees, then to the waist, after that to the shoulders, and lastly to the chin; and he after each pause called aloud; "have mercy on me, oh! Moses!"— but Moses felt no compassion, and the earth finally swallowed him up. Upon which God appeared to Moses and said;-" thou hadst no mercy "on thy own cousin Karun, notwithstanding he asked thy forgiveness four "sundry times, whereas had he repented and asked me but once, how"ever iniquitous he had been, I might have compassioned him."

Yet if Sadi was in this instance a plagiary, men of no contemptible literature have, among ourselves, made free with his story of Abraham. One indeed restores it to the Jewish Talmud, from which Muhammad had no doubt taken it; for the historical part of his Koran is chiefly borrowed from that, our Scriptures, and the twenty

one Nosks or canons of Zartasht; and the consciousness of his theft made his immediate followers so savage with the Guebres, Jews, and Christians: Sadi's other debtor for this apologue claimed it as his own, after having amused himself for years by imposing it on his clerical friends as a portion of Scripture. The first is that excellent bishop of Down and Conner, Jeremy Taylor, who, had he needed the lesson himself, lived in an age of calamity of church and state, sufficient to have taught humility to the proudest dignitary among us; and died in 1667.

He says, at the conclusion of a chapter of his Liberty of Prophesying:

"I end with a story I find in the Jewish books:-" When Abraham sat at the door of his tent, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man, stooping and bearing on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was a hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, and caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man eat and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven? The old man told him; he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God: at which answer, Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night, and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him, where the stranger was? He replied, " I thrust him away, because he "did not worship thee." God answered him and said, "I have suffered "him these hundred years, although he dishonoured me; could'st thou "not endure him for one night, when he gave thee no trouble?" Upon which, saith the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction." The worthy bishop adds:-"Go and do thou likewise, and thy charity shall be rewarded by the God of Abraham!"

Dr. Franklin's imitation of Sadi's apologue I shall not here quote, as it is to be met with in so many late periodical works.* In his well-known story of the Whistle, the doctor has also copied verbatim another apologue of Sadi's Bustan ix. 13; but as that book has not, to my knowledge, been translated into any language of Europe, I cannot fancy through what channel he got them. A comparison may be drawn between all the three apologues of Abraham's intolerance, and notwithstanding its priority of date, and the lameness of my verbal translation, I cannot doubt to which the man of taste will give his preference. In all the three, Abraham is represented as comfortable in his domestic circle, grateful for the benefits of Providence, and hospitable to strangers; but from an ignorant zeal he is also represented as instigated to an act of intolerance, which the Deity notices and reproves. So far the parable is complete, having a beginning, a middle, and an end; and I cannot but admire both the bishop's and doctor's oriental phraseology and happy imitation of the narrative simplicity of the original; but actuated by our Eu

* The Latin translation from Sadi, by George Gentz (Georgio Gentio) in his Sebeth Jehudae, 1689, was published by Mr. Cooper in Dr. Priestley's Life.

ropean taste of amplifying their subject, the bishop proceeds in the detail of bringing the old man back, and the doctor adds to it the particulars of Abraham's punishment; and thus both destroy the unity and integrity of the fable and plot, which together constitute the chief beauty of a real Persian apologue. Many think, that the stories, like the manners of the east, must undergo an ordeal to adapt them to the ideas of modern Europe; but they will find, that the point of the epigram is blunted, and that they are thus refined into a vitiated and spiritless imbecility. The abstraction of modern European philosophy, that fashion of a day, enters too much into all our translations from the Persian language; and the simplicity of sentiment and forcible diction of the original is frittered away; and thus the highly expressive is sacrificed to the neat, the pathe tic to the brilliant, the strong to the frivolous, and the energetic to the clear.

A writer in narrating a story, expresses either in the sentiments of another man, or in his own: the first mode is the simple narrative, and that generally adopted in Europe; the second the dramatic, which is most consistent with the oriental idiom, and particularly with that of the Persian language. With his usual fine taste, Addison caught the real oriental knack of telling a story, and has often availed himself of it in giving an English dress to the many oriental parables with which he has decorated the pages of the Spectator; and I shall finish with quoting two of his stories, and giving literal translations of them out of Sadi's works, from which he drew them, through that best of oriental travellers, sir John Chardin; and would it be believed, that though he travelled under the patronage of our Charles the IId., we have not to this date a complete translation of his travels into English, but a valuable edition of the original was lately published in France.

Sadi in his Risallah ii. Sermon 4, for like our Saviour he introduces many of his most beautiful apologues as parables; in his theological discourses, tells us that:

One day Ibrahim Adham, let the glory of God encircle his majestic state, had seated himself in the porch of his palace with all his retinue standing around him in attendance; when, behold! a poor Dervise with a patched cloak about his shoulders, a scrip in one hand, and a pilgrim's staff in the other, presented himself before him, and was making his way into the inner hall of the palace. The servants called to him and said, "Oh! reverend sir! where are you going?" He replied, "I am going "into this public inn." The servants said; "this is the palace of the king of Balkh." Ibrahim commanded that they would bring him forward: he now said; "Oh! Dervise! this is my palace, and no inn." The Dervise asked him, saying; "Oh! Ibrahim, whose house was this origi"nally?" He replied;" it was the house of my grandfather." The Dervise said, "when he departed this life, whose house was it?" He replied; "it was my father's:" he said; " and when thy father also died, "whose house did it become?" he replied; "it became mine:" he said; and when thou departest, to whom will it belong" he replied; "it will then belong to the prince my son!" Then did the Dervise say, "Oh! Ibrahim! a house, which one man is after this manner entering and