The Arabian tales had their birth after this period; and when the Arabians had yielded to the Tartars, Turks, and Persians, the empire of the sword. Soldiers are seldom introduced; the splendours of the just Caliph's reign are dwelt upon with fond remembrance; the style is that of a mercantile people, while riches and artificial luxuries are only rivalled by the marvellous gifts of the genii and fairies. This brilliant mythology, the offspring of the Arabian imagination, together with the other characteristics of the Arabian tales, has had an extensive influence on our own literature. Many of these tales had found their way into our poetry long before the translation of the _Arabian Nights_; and are met with in the old _Fabliaux_, and in Boccacio, Ariosto, and Chaucer. But while these tales are Arabian in their structure, the materials have been derived, not only from India, Persia, and China, but also from ancient Egypt, and the classical literature of Greece. I shall content myself at present with adducing one example of such probable derivation from the source last mentioned. The stories to be compared are too long for quotation, which, as they are well known, will not be necessary. I shall therefore merely give, in parallel columns, the numerous points of resemblance, or coincidence, between the two. The Arabian tale is that of "Ali Baba and the Forty Robbers;" the corresponding story will be found in Herodotus, b. II. c. cxxi.; it is that of Rhampsinitus and the robbery of his royal treasury: THE EGYPTIAN TALE. 1. The king constructs a stone edifice for the security of his vast riches. 2. In the wall of this treasury is a stone so artfully disposed that a single person can move it, so as to enter and retreat without leaving any trace of his having done so. 3. Two brothers become acquainted with the secret opening into the treasury, and enter it for the purpose of enriching themselves. 4. One of the brothers becomes rich by abstracting large sums of money from the royal treasury. 5. The other brother is caught in the snare which the king had laid within the treasury, for the detection and apprehension of the intruders. 6. At his own request the brother thus caught is beheaded by the other to avoid recognition, and to secure the escape of one. The dead body is hung from the wall of the treasury, for the purpose of discovering his accomplice. 7. The surviving brother, at his mother's earnest request, carries off the dead body, and brings it home on the back of one of his asses. 8. The king, unable to ascertain how his treasury had been entered, is enraged at the removal of the body, and alarmed at finding that some one who possesses the secret still survives. 9. The king has recourse to stratagem, for the purpose of detecting the depredator, but without success.