“They were concealed in vehicles, whose sides were well covered with awnings and carpets, with fine-spun curtains and pictured veils.”--_Moallakat_, by SIR W. JONES, pp. 46, 35. See also LADY M. W. MONTAGU, Let. xxvi. PAGE 224. _... dislodged_ Our language wants a verb, equivalent to the French _dénicher_, to convey, in this instance, the precise sense of the author. PAGE 225. _... those nocturnal insects which presage evil_ It is observable that, in the fifth verse of the Ninety-first Psalm, “the terror by night,” is rendered, in the old English version, “the bugge by night.”[1] In the first settled parts of North America, every nocturnal fly of a noxious quality is still generically named a bug; whence the term bugbear signifies one that carries terror wherever he goes. Beelzebub, or the Lord of Flies, was an Eastern appellative given to the Devil; and the nocturnal sound called by the Arabians _azif_ was believed to be the howling of demons. [1] Instances are not wanted, both in the English and Greek versions, where the translators have modified the sense of the original by their own preconceived opinions. To this source may be ascribed the BUGGE of our old Bible. PAGE 225. _... the locusts were heard from the thickets on the plain of Catoul_ The insects here mentioned are of the same species with the τεττιξ of the Greeks, and the _cicada_ of the Latins. The locusts are mentioned in Pliny, b. xi, 29. They were so called, from _loco usto_, because the havoc they made wherever they passed left behind the appearance of a place desolated by fire. How could then the commentators of Vathek say that they are called _locusts_, from their having been so denominated by the first English settlers in America? PAGE 226. _Vathek ... with two little pages_ “All the pages of the seraglio are sons of Christians made slaves in time of war, in their most tender age. The incursions of robbers in the confines of Circassia afford the means of supplying the seraglio, even in times of peace.”--HABESCI’S _State of the Ottoman Empire_, p. 157. That the pages here mentioned were _Circassians_, appears from the description of their complexion--_more fair than the enamel of Franguestan_. PAGE 226. _... confectioners and cooks_ What their precise number might have been in Vathek’s establishment it is not now easy to determine; but in the household of the present Grand Signior there are not fewer than a hundred and ninety.--HABESCI’S _State of the Ottoman Empire_, p. 145. PAGE 227. _... hath seen some part of our bodies; and, what is worse, our very faces_ “I was informed,” writes Dr. Cooke, “that the Persian women, in general, would sooner expose to public view any part of their bodies than their faces.”--_Voyages and Travels_, vol. ii, p. 443. PAGE 228. _... vases of snow, and grapes from the banks of the Tigris_