innocence or sparkling freshness. Their beauty, voluptuous and soulless, appeals only to the senses; it has none of that pure and ennobling influence "That made us what we are-the great, the free- The Moslem purchases his wife as he does his horse he laughs at the idea of honor and of love; the armed eunuch and the close-barred window are the only safeguards of virtue that he relies on. Every luxury lavished on the Odalisque is linked with some precaution, like the iron fruit and flowers in the madhouse at Naples, that seemed to smile round those whom they imprison. Nor is it for her own sake, but that of her master, that woman is supplied with every luxury that wealth can procure. As we gild our aviaries, and fill them with exotics native to our foreign birds, in order that their song may be sweet, and their plumage bright; so the King of Babylon built the Hanging Gardens for the mountain girl, who pined and lost her beauty among the level plains of the Euphrates. The Egyptian is quite satisfied if his Nourmahal* be in "good condition:" mindless himself, what has he to do with the mind? And thus woman lives and dies, as if she were indeed the mere animal his miserable creed would make her. Utterly uncultivated, her education limited to staining her eyes with kohl, and her fingers with henna, the Egyptian girl's mind wanders, like the river Shannon, "at its own sweet will;" and, between human nature and the conversation of the old Jezebels who haunt the hareems, the result is not very favorable. I grieve to say it, but I am credibly informed that a denizen of Billingsgate would be rather startled at the copiousness and strength of expression, and the knowledge of human nature that flows from the rosy lips of these Haidees and Zuleikas. Then they become mothers these wife-children-and the education of their offspring is entirely their work. Whence can these poor children learn those lessons of honor, truth, and faith, which should seem to be intuitive, being heard with the first intelligence of the • Light of the hareem. young heart? Woman, degraded herself, most unconsciously avenges her degradation upon man, by sending him forth to the world without one manly thought. And yet, amidst all these disadvantages, Nature vindicates herself in one redeeming virtue-that of filial affection: the child, though a bad patriot, a bad subject, and a bad citizen, is yet a good son. The Egyptian woman, obliged to share her husband's affections with a hundred others in this world, is yet further supplanted in the next by the Houris, a sort of she-angel, of as doubtful a character as even a Moslem paradise could well tolerate; nay, more, it is a very moot point among Mussulmen D.D.'s whether women have any soul at all, or not. I believe their chance of immortality rests chiefly on the tradition of a conversation of Mahomet with an old woman who importuned him for a good place in paradise. "Trouble me not," said the vexed husband of Cadijah ;* ;* "there can be no old women in paradise." Where. upon the aged applicant made such troublous lamentation, that he added, "because the old will then all be made young again." This is but poor comfort for those whom "angels were painted fair to look like ;" but I can find no allusion to woman's immortality in all the Koran, except incidentally, as where "all men and women are to be tried at the last day." There is something touching in the yearnings after religious privileges that are exhibited by some Moslem women, and the devotedness with which they discharge any religious duties or penances that are permitted to them. A comparatively small part of the faith of Islam is comprised in the Koran: the greater part of the observances, and all the heresies, having originated from the Sonna, or traditionary oral teaching of the Prophet. Some of the less stern commentators have gleaned some heavenly hope for women out of this confused and contradictory mass of doctrine, but the result is not very encouraging; the drowning, however, catch at straws, and there are female devotees as earnest as any Moollah. Women are not enjoined to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, * She was fifteen years older than himself, the foundress of his fortune, and yet more useful to him as his first convert. but they are permitted to do so. They are not enjoined to pray; but the Prophet seemed to think it could do them no harm, provided they prayed in their own houses and not in the mosques, where they might interfere with, or share, the devotion of those who had real business there. As may be supposed, there being some difficulty on the subject, woman's faith burns high at the prospect of a pilgrimage to Mecca; and numbers, accordingly, of those doubtful immortalities join themselves to each caravan that issues from the gates of Cairo. The privations they undergo, and the hardships they surmount are incredible; yet the mortality among them is not so great as that of the men in proportion to their numbers. When arrived at Mecca, a new difficulty arises: the most important part of the pilgrimage is performed on the summit of Mount Arafat, about twenty miles from Mecca, whereon Abraham is said to have brought Isaac to the sacrifice. No woman is allowed to approach this most holy spot without her husband; and as many of them are not possessed of these appendages, they are obliged to borrow or to hire such for the occasion, faithfully repaying to the accommodating man the loan of his liberty on their return from the mountain, by a divorce at Mecca. After all that has been asserted by philo-Moslemites on the subject, I am convinced that Moslem women have no chance of the Moslem man's heaven worth talking of, except in one case, and this exception proves the rule. If a Mahometan in paradise should feel that his wife's company was essential to his happiness she would be re-created for him there: thus Mahomet confers upon his follower that divinest privilege, which, in another sense, the Queen of Navarre declared was the poet's also—that of conferring immortality on her he loves! In fine, women receive no religious education; they seldom, if ever, pray; and their heaven, if they have one, is some second-hand sort of paradise, very different from that of their husbands-unless, as I have observed, "by particular desire." Is not this in itself a sufficient commentary on the position which she occupies in the Moslem world? And what must be the blindness, the selfishness, and the bigotry of a mind, that can lend itself to such a doctrine? While the stars in the bright skies he lives under afford intimations of eternity which he eagerly believes, can the eloquent eyes of woman plead vainly for immortality? When he leaves his home for the battle-field, can he feel that a whole heaven of Houris would compensate for the loss of "a mutual home beyond the skies" with her who shared his sorrows and his joys on earth? The dark and das tardly doctrine of fatalism is a ready excuse to his indolent mind from exercising itself in such matters. Were the future fate of his helpmate of any anxious moment to him, the priests would long since have distilled an express heaven for her out of that accommodating crucible, the Koran. There is not an Egyptian woman who can read and write, except a daughter of Mehemet Ali's, and the few that have been educated in the school of Mr. Lieder, the Church of England missionary; while the Maronite women of the Lebanon, who are Christians, though of the same Arab race, are generally instructed. Nothing can be more hideous than the Arab woman of the street; nothing more picturesque than her of the hareem. The former presents a mass of white, shroud-like drapery, waddling along on a pair of enormous yellow boots, with one brilliant eye gleaming above the veil which is drawn across the face. The lower classes wear only a very loose, long, blue frock, and appear anxious to conceal nothing except their faces, in which they consider that identity alone consists. As these women cannot spare the hands to the exclusive use of their veils, they wear a sort of snout, or long, black, tapering veil, bound over the cheek-bones, and supported from the forehead by a string of beads. Take one of these, an ugly, old, sun-scorched hag, with a skin like a hippopotamus, and a veil-snout like an elephant's trunk; her scanty robescarcely serving the purposes of a girdle; her hands, feet, and forehead tattooed of a smoke color; and there is scarcely a more hideous spectacle on earth. But the Lady of the Hareem, on the other hand-couched gracefully on a rich Persian carpet strewn with soft pillowy cushions—is as rich a picture as admiration ever gazed on. Her eyes, if not as dangerous to the heart as those of our country, where the sun shine of intellect gleams through a heaven of blue, are, nevertheless, perfect in their kind-and at least as dangerous to the senses. Languid, yet full-brimful of life; dark, yet very lustrous; liquid, yet clear as stars; they are compared by their poets to the shape of the almond, and the bright timidness of the gazelle's. The face is delicately oval, and its shape is set off by the gold fringed turban, the most becoming head-dress in the world; the long, black, silken tresses are braided from the forehead, and hang wavily on each side of the face-falling behind in a glossy cataract, that sparkles with such golden drops as might have glittered upon Danae after the Olympian shower. A light tunic of pink or pale blue crape is covered with a long silk robe, open at the bosom, and buttoned thence downward to the delicately slippered little feet, that peep daintily from beneath the full silken trousers. Round the loins, rather than the waist, a cachemire shawl is loosely wrapt as a girdle, and an embroidered jacket, or a large silk robe with loose open sleeves, completes the costume. Nor is the water-pipe, with its long variegated serpent, and its jewelled mouth-piece, any detraction from the portrait. Picture to yourself one of Eve's brightest daughters, in Eve's own loving land. The woman-dealer has found among the mountains that perfection in living woman which Praxiteles scarcely realized, when inspired fancy wrought out its deal in marble. Silken scarfs, as richly colored and as airy as the rainbow, wreathe her round, from the snowy brow to the finely rounded limbs, half buried in billowy cushions: the attitude is the very poetry of repose-languid it may be-but glowing life thrills beneath that flower-soft exterior, from the varying cheek and flashing eye, to the henna-dyed taper-fingers that capriciously play with her rosary of beads. The blaze of sunshine is round her kiosk, but she sits in the softened shadow so dear to the painter's eye. And so she dreams away the warm hours in such a calm of thought within, and sight or sound without, that she starts when the gold fish gleams in the fountain, or the breezeruffled rose sheds a leaf upon her bosom. The mystery, the seclusion, and the danger that surrounds the Odalisque may be perilously interesting to the romantic; but, |