Of the merits of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, their popularity would be sufficient evidence alone, had not the language of praise both in poetry and prose, long been exhausted on them. They are still the admiration of every person who can appreciate curious and useful information conveyed through the medium of fiction. “They are,” says Colonel Capper, in his Observations on the Passage to India, “by many people erroneously supposed to be a spurious production, and are therefore slighted in a manner they do not deserve. They were written by an Arabian, and are universally read and admired throughout Asia by all ranks of men, both old and young: considered, therefore, as an original work, descriptive as they are of the manners and customs of the East in general, and also of the Arabians in particular, they surely must be thought to merit the attention of the curious; nor are they, in my opinion, destitute of merit in other respects: for, although the extravagance of some of the stories is carried too far, yet, on the whole, one cannot help admiring the fancy and invention of the author, in striking out such a variety of pleasing incidents; pleasing I will call them, because they have frequently afforded me much amusement; nor do I envy any man his feelings, who is above being pleased with them. But before any person decides upon the merit of these books, he should be eye-witness of the effect they produce on those who best understand them. I have more than once seen the Arabians in the desert sitting round a fire listening to these stories with such attention and pleasure, as totally to forget the fatigue and hardship with which an instant before they were entirely overcome. In short, not to dwell any longer on this subject, they are in the same estimation all over Asia, that the adventures of Don Quixote are in Spain; and it is presumed, no man of genius or taste would think of making the tour of that country without previously reading the work of Cervantes.” Nor is the picture of Oriental manners and customs, as exhibited in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, that of a remote age; on the contrary, Mr. Dallaway, one of the recent travellers in the East, in his “Constantinople Ancient and Modern,” says, “Much of the romantic air which pervades the domestic habits of the persons described in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, particularly in inferior life, will be observed in passing through the streets of that city. And we receive with additional pleasure a remembrance of the delight with which we at first perused them, in finding them authentic portraits of every Oriental nation.”