monarch and his courtiers suddenly found their visages simious, their tongues chattering, and their lower portions furnished with tails—­a species of transformation, which, so far as regards visage and tongue, is supposed to be not unfrequent among courtiers to this day.  But this showy tradition goes further still.  The Bostan al Irem (Garden of Paradise) is believed still to exist in the deserts of Aden; though geographers differ on its position.  It still retains its domes and bowers—­both of indescribable beauty; its crystal fountains, and its walks strewed with pearls for sand.  It is true, that no living man can absolutely aver that he has seen this place of wonders; but that is a mere result of our very wicked age.  This has not been always the case; for Abdallah Ibn Aboo Kelaba passed a night in its palace in the reign of Moowiych, the prince of the Faithful.  Lucky the man who shall next find it, but unlucky the world when he does; for then the day of the general conflagration will be at hand.  In the mean time, it remains, like the top of Mount Meru, covered with clouds, or, like the inside of a Chinese puzzle, a work of unrivaled art, conceivable but intangible by man.

In this pleasant mingling of fact, visible to his shrewd eye, and fiction drawn from ancient fancy, Major Harris leads us on.  But Aden is not yet exhausted of wonders—­an island in its bay, Seerah, (the fortified black isle,) is pronounced to have been the refuge of Cain on the murder of Abel; and its volcanic and barren chaos is no unequal competitor for the honour with the rocks of the Caucasus.

But England, which changes every thing, is changing all this.  Within the next generation, the railway will run down the romances of Nutrib; a cotton manufactory will send up its smokes to blot out the celestial blue by day, and shoot forth its sullen illumination by night, over the anointed soil; the minstrel will turn policeman, and the sheik be a justice of peace; political economy will have its itinerant lecturers, enlightening the Bedouins on the principles of rent and taxes; the city will have a lord mayor and corporation of the deepest black; the volcano will be planted with villas; turnpikes will measure out the sands; a hotel will flourish on the summit of Jebel Shemshan; and Aden will differ from Liverpool in nothing but being two thousand miles further from the smoke and multitudes of London.

The Arab is still the prominent person among the native population of this territory.  Major Harris describes him well.  The bronzed and sunburnt visage, surrounded by long matted locks of raven hair; the slender but wiry and active frame, and the energetic gait and manner, proclaimed the untamable descendant of Ishmael.  He nimbly mounts the crupper of his now unladen dromedary, and at a trot moves down the bazar.  A checked kerchief round his brows, and a kilt of dark blue calico round his frame, comprise his slender costume.  His arms have been deposited outside the Turkish wall;