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 warfare is somewhat powerless. While the 'Arabian Nights' are supposed to treat more of the inhabitants of the towns, the romance of Antar deals more with the inhabitants of the desert. To the student of the Arabic language both works are interesting, as they occupy a prominent and standard place in Arabian literature, and afford much information about the manners and customs, ideas and peculiarities of an ancient and interesting race of people. It must be admitted that both Antar and the 'Arabian Nights' are so long that they rather try the patience of readers not particularly interested in them. Nowadays in England the daily press supplies such a mass of information of all sorts in connection with every branch of society, that a constant and persistent reader of our daily and weekly newspapers can find in them quite an 'Arabian Nights Entertainment' without going further afield. Indeed, the stories concerning the cures effected by certain patent medicines are as wonderful as anything one ever reads in the 'Nights' themselves.