and the studied insults of vol. iii. 318, we also come upon an admirable sketch of conjugal happiness (vol. vii. ? 43); and, to mention no other, Shahryar’s attestation to Shahrazad’s excellence in the last charming pages of The Nights.[FN#342] It is the same with the Katha whose praise and dispraise are equally enthusiastic; e.g., “Women of good family are guarded by their virtue, the sole efficient chamberlain; but the Lord himself can hardly guard the unchaste.  Who can stem a furious stream and a frantic woman?” (i. 328).  “Excessive love in woman is your only hero for daring” (i. 339).  “Thus fair ones, naturally feeble, bring about a series of evil actions which engender discernment and aversion to the world; but here and there you will find a virtuous woman who adorneth a glorious house as the streak of the moon arrayeth the breadth of the Heavens” (i. 346).  “So you see, King, honourable matrons are devoted to their husbands and ’tis not the case that women are always bad” (ii. 624).  And there is true wisdom in that even balance of feminine qualities advocated by our Hindu-Hindi class-book the Toti-nameh or Parrot volume.  The perfect woman has seven requisites.  She must not always be merry (1) nor sad (2); she must not always be talking (3) nor silently musing (4); she must not always be adorning herself (5) nor neglecting her person (6); and, (7) at all times she must be moderate and self possessed.

The legal status of womankind in Al-Islam is exceptionally high, a fact of which Europe has often been assured, although the truth has not even yet penetrated into the popular brain.  Nearly a century ago one Mirza Abu Talib Khan, an Amildar or revenue collector, after living two years in London, wrote an “apology” for, or rather a vindication of, his countrywomen which is still worth reading and quoting.[FN#343] Nations are but superficial judges of one another:  where customs differ they often remark only the salient distinctive points which, when examined, prove to be of minor importance.  Europeans seeing and hearing that women in the East are “cloistered” as the Grecian matron was wont
             and ; that wives may not walk out with
their husbands and cannot accompany them to “balls and parties”; moreover, that they are always liable, like the ancient Hebrew, to the mortification of the “sister-wife,” have most ignorantly determined that they are mere serviles and that their lives are not worth living.  Indeed, a learned lady, Miss Martineau, once visiting a Harem went into ecstasies of pity and sorrow because the poor things knew nothing of—­say trigonometry and the use of the globes.  Sonnini thought otherwise, and my experience, like that of all old dwellers in the East, is directly opposed to this conclusion.