Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/410

376 music the multiform progressions of the various keys inform the unity of the unchanging gamut with limitless variations of combination and effect, so the play of sentiment and circumstance in the Arabian tales perpetually induces in the rigid scale of their ornaments fresh permutations of shifting colour and new harmonies of phantasy and expression.

The grace of pathos that hallows so many of its pages constitutes perhaps the chief charm of the collection, although the other features whose presence should contribute to the unity of a great romantic work are no less conspicuous, when the occasion calls for their display. What can be more poignant in its sad simplicity than or The Lovers of the Benou Udhreh, more dramatic in its almost tragic intensity than, more engaging, in its homely pathos, than the story of the forlorn royal children in Jerusalem and their adventures with the rascal Bedouin and the kind simple-souled stoker? Where shall we find a more fervid conte bleu of devotion than or  or “legendes dorées” more instinct with the austere poetry of asceticism than ,