_"Where is thy youth, and thy beauty, and pride?" "Gone, since I parted from thee," she replied. "Where is the light of thine eye?" said he. "Drowned in blood-tears for the loss of thee." "Why is that cypress tree bowed and bent?" "By absence from thee and my long lament." "Where is thy pearl, and thy silver and gold, And the diadem bright on thy head of old?"..._ --Quotation from YUSUF-OU-ZALIKHA (J'AMI). Translation of R.T. GRIFFITH. [Illustration] [Illustration: CHISELLED SILVER BOWL, DECORATED IN FILIGREE AND POLYCHROME ENAMEL. PERSIAN WORK OF THE XVITH CENTURY, PROBABLY EXECUTED IN ASIA MINOR FOR A PRINCELY OTTOMAN PATRON] * * * * * [PAGE 23] and professed unqualified allegiance. A powerful political unity came into existence and continued for a period of SIX centuries uninterrupted. The nations of this united kingdom of ISLAM were thus merged into one unit, under the stimulus of one formal religion, freely transmigrating local ideas. Arts and culture were transformed, but the evolution thus caused by the Religion was essentially political in nature. "There is no God but GOD," said the APOSTLE OF ARABIA, but the poet reflected awhile, and his rejoinder was: "The Ways of God are as the number of SOULS OF MEN." The Prophet's religion was rational, its principles attainable; it secured for the poet social amelioration and physical comfort, but there was a voice from the depth of his soul that he could not silence. It was the voice of mystery; he was concerned with the problems of the "Wherefore, the Whence, and the Whither".... Was he not a Son of the land which PLOTINUS visited to learn mystery of the Orient of Old?[9] [Footnote 9: "Il prit un si grand goût pour la philosophie qu'il se proposa d'étudier celle qui était enseignée chez les Perses et celle qui prévalait chez les Indiens. Lorsque l'empéreur Gordien se prépara à faire son expédition contre les Perses, Plotin, alors âgé de trente-neuf ans, se mit à la suite de l'armée. Il avait passé dix années entières près d'Ammonius. Gordien ayant été tué en Mesopotamie, Plotin eût assez de peine à se sauver à Antioche."--PORPHYRY ON PLOTINUS: Translation of the Enneads of Plotinus (Bouillet; Paris, 1857).] We have to look therefore to the RELIGION, "The Ways" of whose God "are as the number of Souls of Men", to perceive the true nature of the evolution of the artistic expression of these people. Souls with irresistible cravings for Mysticism, poets, artists, philosophers and the like, discovered for the first time from MUHAMMAD'S formal teachings, which contained certain esoteric elements, that the senses, unreal and phenomenal, have yet an important mission to fulfill in the task which aims to escape from SELF (which is an illusion and the root of SIN, PAIN, and SORROW) and to attain the height where the eternal beauty, [CONTINUED ON PAGE TWENTY-SEVEN] * * * * *