In quality of doctor I have seen a little and heard much of the harim. It often resembles a European home composed of a man, his wife, and his mother. And I have seen in the West many a “happy fireside” fitter to make Miss Martineau’s heart ache than any harim in Grand Cairo. [p.92] Were it not evident that the spiritualising of sexuality by sentiment, of propensity by imagination, is universal among the highest orders of mankind,—c’est l’etoffe de la nature que l’imagination a brodee, says Voltaire,—I should attribute the origin of “love” to the influence of the Arabs’ poetry and chivalry upon European ideas rather than to mediaeval Christianity. Certain “Fathers of the Church,” it must be remembered, did not believe that women have souls. The Moslems never went so far. In nomad life, tribes often meet for a time, live together whilst pasturage lasts, and then separate perhaps for a generation. Under such circumstances, youths who hold with the Italian that “Perduto e tutto il tempo Che in amor non si spende,” will lose heart to maidens, whom possibly, by the laws of the clan, they may not marry,[FN#23] and the light o’ love will fly her home. The fugitives must brave every danger, for revenge, at all times the Badawi’s idol, now becomes the lodestar of his existence. But the Arab lover will dare all consequences. “Men have died and the worms have eaten them, but not for love,” may be true in the West: it is false in the East. This is attested in every tale where love, and not ambition, is the groundwork of the narrative.[FN#24] And nothing can be more tender, more [p.93] pathetic than the use made of these separations and long absences by the old Arab poets. Whoever peruses the Suspended Poem of Labid, will find thoughts at once so plaintive and so noble, that even Dr. Carlyle’s learned verse cannot wholly deface their charm.