Though mystery shrouds them now from mortal eyes,
Save when upon some lone lost wanderer's sight,
Its diamond turrets like a day-dream rise.

Here in a corner, shrinking from the light,
A rosebud blossomed, whose enchanting hue
Rivalled the cheeks of her whose beauty bright

O'er earth's great conqueror such enchantment threw.
Each morn, when issuing from his ocean bed,
Bright Phoebus beaming burst upon the view;

And o'er the awakening world his radiance shed.
The garden's guardian left his humble room,
And paced the parterres by the path that led

To that calm nook which saw the floweret bloom;
As some fond lover to an arbour creeps,

Where, lulled to rest by eve's encircling gloom,

The maid he loves in guileless beauty sleeps,
And lingering looks, till at his soft sigh's sound
Her startled eye from out its curtain peeps.

So gazed the gardener as the days wore round,
And watched the bud its opening charms disclose,
And breathed the perfume it diffused around.

But lo! one luckless morn, beside the rose

A mournful nightingale, with grief o'erpressed,
In wistful warblings wailed his wearying woes,

And sought in song to soothe his saddened breast,
And in the wantonness of wild despair,
Still plucked the leaflets from their fragrant nest,

Till all the tree was desolate and bare.

The rose was ruined, but the thorn remained,
Stern sentry still, though no fair charge was there,

With bitter sighs the gardener complained,

And cursed the culprit in his maddening rage;
His passion's steed no gentle patience reined,

And nought but vengeance could his wrath assuage.
With treacherous traps the hapless bird he lured,
And kept him captive in a cruel cage,

Nurmahall, the wife of Jehanger, Emperor of Hindustan, for whom the celebrated mausoleum known as the Taj Mahall at Agra was built.

Mocking the pangs his prisoner endured,

To whom the nightingale thus made his moan: 'Ah, wherefore now within these bars immured

'Am I thus left to mourn and die alone?

Dost thou then fancy that my notes will ring
Here in this prison with a sweeter tone

'Than 'midst the branches where I sit and sing?
Or is there nothing that can heal the smart
Of thy great loss, but my poor breast to wring,

'From all I love thus dooming me to part?
If one rose ruined costs so dear to me,
What shalt thou suffer for a broken heart?'

The plaintive prisoner by this piteous plea

So moved his captor, that the selfsame hour
He loosed his fetters, and dismissed him free,

To flutter fearless 'midst each favourite flower.
Then sang the bulbul from the tangled wood,
The great archangel on the "night of power"

'Revealed that "good must be repaid with good;
So for thy kindness will I make return.

Beneath the tree whereon at first I stood

There lies a treasure in a hidden urn.'

The gardener, digging, found the precious prize,
And thus responded, 'I would gladly learn

'How thou divinedst what thus buried lies,

Yet dust spread lightly o'er a clumsy snare
Should be sufficient to deceive thine eyes?'

6

To whom the bulbul, Thou shouldst be aware
That when from heaven the high decrees descend,
'Tis vain to struggle; man his fate must bear,

For God shapes all things to some useful end.'

But with all their mysticism and speculative philosophy, the Sufi poets are by no means deficient in an appreciation of the beauties of nature. What can be more fresh or spontaneous than the following-Hafiz's description of a morning walk in a garden?

'Twas morning, and the lord of day

Had shed his light o'er Shiraz' towers,
Where bulbuls trill their love-lorn lay,
To serenade the maiden flowers.

Like them, oppressed with love's sweet pain,
I wander in a garden fair;

And there, to cool my throbbing brain,
I woo the perfumed morning air.

The damask rose with beauty gleams,
Its face all bathed in ruddy light,
And shines like some bright star that beams
From out the sombre veil of night.

The very bulbul, as the glow

Of youth and passion warms his breast,
Forgets awhile his former woe,

In pride that conquers love's unrest.

Yon lily seemed to menace me,

And showed its curled and quivering blade ;
While every frail anemone

A gossip's open mouth displayed.

And here and there a little group

Of flowers, like men who worship wine,

Each holding up his little stoup,

To catch the dewdrop's draught divine.

And others yet like Hebes stand,

Their dripping vases downward turned;

As if dispensing to the band

The wine for which their hearts had burned.

This moral it is mine to sing,

Go learn a lesson of the flowers;

Joy's season is in life's young spring,

Then seize like them the fleeting hours.

However, we have quoted enough of the poetry to prove that the Dervishes are not devoid of poetical inspiration, however strange to us the mode in which they woo it may appear. In conclusion, we must anticipate the question which the reader of this article will no doubt ask-Whither does all this tend? This we can only do by a very brief recapitulation of the chief points of our hypothesis.

The Oriental nature is sluggish and impassive until roused, when it becomes impulsive and emotional; and this would

almost of necessity lead to an emotional and physically demonstrative kind of religious service,—that kind of worship which we are accustomed to call revivalism, and which even upon Northern temperaments produces such striking results. It is easy then to understand that meetings might be held, and societies formed, for the express purpose of encouraging the development of this enthusiasm; and that such was the case, is evident from the existence of the Schools of the Prophets in the ancient times, and of the Dervish Colleges of the present day, with the numerous sects and secret societies which have existed during the intermediate period throughout the East. We may therefore, without carrying the theory too far, look upon prophecy- that is, upon emotional religious utterance under the influence of physical religious excitement, as the natural form of worship amongst Eastern peoples; and, having obtained this standpoint, we shall, we venture to believe, be better able to realise the accounts which history, sacred and profane, gives us of the working of the system.

So long as these services were merely perfunctory, and so long as they were performed by men of ordinary calibre, their effect was small; but when they were conducted by master minds, when the prophetic utterances were great truths, then their influence began to be really felt, and the schools became the centres of most important religious and political movements. In support of this view, we would call attention to the fact that the first mention of the prophets in the Bible is almost simultaneous with the appearance of Samuel upon the scene, although the schools must already have been in existence for a considerable time previously.

No doubt the very association of the names Dervish and Prophet will sound shocking to some readers, but it must not be supposed that because we maintain the identity of the two institutions, we do not appreciate the difference between the utterances of the one and the other. The immense impulse given to religious thought and action amongst their contemporaries by such inspired preachers as Samuel and Elijah, can never be over-estimated; while the influence their teaching has had upon the religious life and thought of so many ferent races in after ages, is alone sufficient to prove the absurdity of endeavouring to reduce them to the level of

dif

ordinary Mussulman Moulvies or Sheikhs. What we contend for is simply this-that the system through which the Jewish prophets worked was in the main the same as that which the modern dervishes employ. If this proposition be true, an examination of the modern system will be of similar use to the theologian and philosopher to that which the physician finds in the researches of comparative anatomy; and although the lucubrations of a Dervish poet may not be comparable with the outpourings of the inspired soul of a Hebrew prophet, yet they will possess a greater importance in our eyes if we recognize them as generated by the same system, and developed by similar external surroundings.

ART. III.--The Hindu Woman, Real and Ideal. (1.) The Hindu Pantheon. By EDWARD MOOR, F.R.S. Madras:

1864.

(2.) La Femme dans L'Inde Antique.

Par Mlle. C. BADER, Membre de la Sociéte Asiatique de Paris. Paris: Duprat. 1864.

IN presence of the steadily increasing study of the ancient literature of India, the question is often upon our lips: What will be the ultimate impression upon European thought of thediscovery of Sanskrit,' as it has not been inaptly termed? When we think of the vast influence of the classics of Greece and Rome upon the modern world, of how they colour and permeate, in one form or another, almost all our ideas, can we refrain from seriously inquiring whether this new source of an earlier antiquity, from which we are every day drawing deeper and yet deeper draughts, will affect the world's intellect in anything like the same degree or with anything approaching a similar intensity? No conclusive answer may yet be given, for although some eighty or ninety years have elapsed since Sir William Jones discovered' Sanskrit, and notwithstanding the unbroken succession of great Sanskrit scholars from his day to the present time, from Colebrooke and Wilson to Burnouf and Fauche, down to Goldstücker and Max Müller, it is only now that the general public is beginning to take a real interest in Indian lore, or that any signs can be detected of the possibility of a