Romantic as are many of the events which the Mahomedan annals supply, they are nevertheless all of one tone and colouring. They want the delightful blendings and tintings of social circumstances. Their princes were despots, their nobles warriors, their governments tyrannies, and their people slaves. The lives of their most eminent men, who were distinguished chiefly for their deeds in arms, present little else than a series of battles. Their principal amusement was the chase, in which similar perils to those presented in war were courted for the stern glory which followed desperate achievements. If, therefore, in the following tales the variety should appear less than in those found in the volumes of the same work which have preceded these, the cause, and consequently the excuse, must lie in the materials. Besides this, those beautiful features of domestic life so frequently witnessed in our western world have little or no existence in the land to which the present volumes are devoted. Women confined in harems, and not admitted to the tender and endearing enjoyments of family intercourse, degraded below the dignity of their nature and of their reason, treated as secondary beings, as mere instruments of pleasure, and as created for no better purpose than to perpetuate the human race, are no longer objects either for the rich colouring of romance or the graver delineations of moral narrative. Great variety of character is not to be found among those isolated beings who are so well calculated to cast a glory upon the human pilgrimage,--not that variety of character does not exist, but it is not developed. All the pictures of life, therefore, among such a community will necessarily possess a certain sameness inseparable from their very nature. I have, however, endeavoured to vary the materials as much as was consistent with the régime of the history, though I sometimes found them very intractable. I can scarcely hope that I have succeeded in a labour of no common difficulty, but trust, nevertheless, that this last series of “Romantic Tales of History” may not be found undeserving of public patronage. CONTENTS. PAGE THE TRAVELLER’S DREAM 3 THE IDOL OF SOMNAT 23 THE ROYAL MERCHANT 71 THE ABYSSINIAN SLAVE 100 THE RAJPOOT MARRIAGE 125 THE MAHOMEDAN NIMROD 167 THE RIVAL BROTHERS 203 THE SIEGE OF GUALIOR 240 THE PARIAH 266 THE DEFENCE OF CHITTORE 304