A striking novelty in Captain Burton's translation is the frequent occurrence of passages in cadenced prose, called in Arabic "Saj'a," or the cooing of a dove. These melodious fragments have a charming effect on the ear. They come as dulcet-surprises, and mostly occur in highly-wrought situations, or they are used to convey a vivid sense of something exquisite in art or nature. We give one or two instances of these little eddies of song set like gems in the prose. Their introduction seems due to whim or caprice, but really is due to profound study of the situation, as if the tale-teller felt suddenly compelled to break into the rhythmic strain. The prose ripples and rises to dancing measure when the King of the Age, wandering in a lonely palace, comes upon the half-petrified youth, "the Ensorcelled Prince." "Now when the Sultan heard the mournful voice he sprang to his feet, and following the sound found a curtain let down over the chamber door. He raised it and saw behind it a young man sitting upon a couch about a cubic above the ground: he fair to the sight, a well- shaped wight, with eloquence dight, his forehead was flower-white, his cheek rosy bright, and a mole on his cheek breadth like an ambergris mite." It is broken again to bring into fuller notice the perfections of one of the three merry ladies of Baghdad, sitting under a silken canopy, the curtains "looped up with pearls as big as filberts and bigger." We are told to note how eastern are the metaphors, how confused the flattery. "Thereupon sat a lady bright of blee, with brow-beaming brilliancy, and her eyebrows were arched as for archery; her breath breathed ambergris and perfumery, and her lips were sugar to taste and carnelian to see. Her stature was straight as the letter I (the letter Alif a straight perpendicular stroke), and her face shamed the noon sun's radiancy; and she was even as a galaxy or a dome with golden marquetry, or a bride displayed on choicest finery, or a noble maid of Araby." And prose is not thought adequate to do justice to the natural beauty of a garden "like one of the pleasaunces of Paradise." "It was a garden with trees of freshest green and ripe fruits of yellow sheen; and its birds were singing clear and keen, and rills ran wimpling through the fair terrene."