[FN#347] Nazaranah prop. = the gift (or gifts) offered at visits by a Moslem noble or feoffee in India to his feudal superior; and the Kalichah of Hindu, Malabar, Goa and the Blue Mountains (p. 197).  Hence the periodical tributes and especially the presents which represent our “legacy-duty” and the “succession-duty” for Rajahs and Nabobs, the latter so highly lauded by “The Times,” as the logical converse of the Corn-laws which ruined our corn.  The Nazaranah can always be made a permanent and a considerable source of revenue, far more important than such unpopular and un-Oriental device as an income-tax.  But our financiers have yet to learn the A. B. C. of political economy in matters of assessment, which is to work upon familiar lines; and they especially who, like Mr. Wilson “mad as a hatter,” hold and hold forth that “what is good for England is good for the world.”  These myopics decide on theoretical and sentimental grounds that a poll-tax is bad in principle, which it may be, still public opinion sanctions it and it can be increased without exciting discontent.  The same with the “Nazaranah;” it has been the custom of ages immemorial, and a little more or a little less does not affect its popularity.

[FN#348] Pers. = City-queen.

[FN#349] Compare with this tale its modern and popular version Histoire du Rossignol Chanteur (Spitta-Bey, No. x, p. 123):  it contains the rosary (and the ring) that shrinks, the ball that rolls and the water that heals; etc. etc.  Mr. Clouston somewhere asserts that the History of the Envious Sisters, like that of Prince Ahmad and the Peri-Banu, are taken from a Ms. still preserved in the “King’s Library,” Paris; but he cannot quote his authority, De Sacy or Langles.  Mr. H. C. Coote (loc.  Cit.  P. 189) declares it to be, and to have been, “an enormous favourite in Italy and Sicily:  no folk-tale exists in those countries at all comparable to it in the number of its versions and in the extent of its distribution.”  He begins two centuries before Galland, sith Straparola (Notti Piacevoli), proceeds to Imbriani (Novajella Fiorentina), Nerucci (Novelle Montalesi), Comparetti (Nivelline Italiane) and Pitre (Fiabe Novelle e Racconti popolari Italiani, vol.  I.); and informs us that “the adventures of the young girl, independently of the joint history of herself and her brother, are also told in a separate “Fiaba” in Italy.  A tale called La Favenilla Coraggiosa is given by Visentini in his Fiabe Mantovane and it is as far as it is a counterpart of the second portion of Galland’s tale.”  Mr. Coote also finds this story in Hahn’s “Griechische M„rchen” entitled “Sun, Moon and Morning Star”—­the names of the royal children.  The King overhears the talk of three girls and marries the youngest despite his stepmother, who substitutes for her issue a puppy, a kitten and a mouse.  The castaways are adopted by a herdsman whilst the mother is confined in a henhouse; and the King sees