of state and ancientry,” displayed by the heroes of the desert towards defenceless maidens, and the mere existence of so general an ideal of conduct in the poems is a strong argument for Arab chivalry; for with the Arabs the abyss between the ideal accepted of the mind and the attaining thereof in action was narrower than it is among more advanced nations. We remember the story of Antar, the Bayard of pagan Arabia, who gave his life to guard some helpless women; and recall these verses of Muweylik, which breathe a tender chivalrous regret for an only love:-- Take thou thy way by the grave wherein thy dear one lies-- Umm el-´Alā--and lift up thy voice: ah! if she could hear! How art thou come, for very fearful wast thou, to dwell in a land where not the most valiant goes but with quaking heart? God’s love be thine and His mercy, O thou dear lost one! not meet for thee is the place of shadow and loneliness. And a little one hast thou left behind--God’s ruth on her! she knows not what to bewail thee means, yet weeps for thee, For she misses those sweet ways of thine which thou hadst with her, and the long night wails, and we strive to hush her to sleep in vain. When her crying smites in the night upon my sleepless ears, straightway mine eyes brimful are filled from the well of tears. If anywhere poetry is a gauge of national character, it was so in Arabia, for nowhere was it more a part of the national life. That line, “to think how his work to-day would live in to-morrow’s tale,” is a true touch. The Arabs were before all things a poetical people. It is not easy to judge of this poetry in translation, even in the fine renderings which I have taken above from Mr. C. J. Lyall, but its effect on the Arabs themselves was unmistakeable. Damiri has a saying, “Wisdom hath alighted on three things, the brain of the Franks, the hands of the Chinese, and the tongue of the Arabs,” and the last is not the least true. They had an annual fair, the _Académie française_ of Arabia, where the poets of rival clans recited their masterpieces before immense audiences, and received the summary criticism of the multitude. This fair of Okadh was a literary congress, without formal judges, but with unbounded influence. It was here that the polished heroes of the desert determined points of grammar and prosody; here the seven “Golden Songs” were sung, although (alas for the legend!) they were _not_ afterwards suspended in the Kaaba; and here “a magical language, the language of the Hijaz,” was built out of the dialects of Arabia and made ready to the skilful hand of Mohammad, that he might conquer the world with his Korān.