Two other experiences of mine of the same class had been earlier, and these I had shared with my sister Elizabeth. The first was derived from the "Arabian Nights." Mrs. Barbauld, a lady now very nearly forgotten, [4] then filled a large space in the public eye; in fact, as a writer for children, she occupied the place from about 1780 to 1805 which, from 1805 to 1835, was occupied by Miss Edgeworth. Only, as unhappily Miss Edgeworth is also now very nearly forgotten, this is to explain _ignotum per ingnotius_, or at least one _ignotum_ by another _ignotum_. However, since it cannot be helped, this unknown and also most well-known woman, having occassion, in the days of her glory, to speak of the "Arabian Nights," insisted on Aladdin, and secondly, on Sinbad, as the two jewels of the collection. Now, on the contrary, my sister and myself pronounced Sinbad to be very bad, and Aladdin to be pretty nearly the worst, and upon grounds that still strike me as just. For, as to Sinbad, it is not a story at all, but a mere succession of adventures, having no unity of interest whatsoever; and in Aladdin, after the possession of the lamp has been once secured by a pure accident, the story ceases to move. All the rest is a mere record of upholstery: how this saloon was finished to-day, and that window on the next day, with no fresh incident whatever, except the single and transient misfortune arising out of the advantage given to the magician by the unpardonable stupidity of Aladdin in regard to the lamp. But, whilst my sister and I agreed in despising Aladdin so much as almost to be on the verge of despising the queen of all the bluestockings for so ill-directed a preference, one solitary section there was of that tale which was fixed and fascinated my gaze, in a degree that I never afterwards forgot, and did not at that time comprehend. The sublimity which it involved was mysterious and unfathomable as regarded any key which I possessed for deciphering its law or origin. Made restless by the blind sense which I had of its grandeur, I could not for a moment succeed in finding out _why_ it should be grand. Unable to explain my own impressions in "Aladdin," I did not the less obstinately persist in believing a sublimity which I could not understand. It was, in fact, one of those many important cases which elsewhere I have called _involutes_ of human sensibility; combinations in which the materials of future thought or feeling are carried as imperceptibly into the mind as vegetable seeds are carried variously combined through the atmosphere, or by means of rivers, by birds, by winds, by waters, into remote countries. But the reader shall judge for himself. At the opening of the tale, a magician living in the central depths of Africa is introduced to us as one made aware by his secret art of an enchanted lamp endowed with supernatural powers available for the service of any man whatever who should get it into his keeping. But _there_ lies the difficulty.