224 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



statues suddenly carven to our sight among green 

 branches. But they are also something more than a 

 satisfaction to our love of what is large, bright, coloured, 

 in high relief. Every one knows how, at a passage like 

 that in the J£7ieid, when the exiled i^neas sees upon the 

 new walls of the remote city of Carthage pictures of 

 that strife about Troy in which he was a great part, or 

 at a verse in a ballad like — 



" It was na in the ha', the ha' ; 



It was na in the painted bower ; 

 But it was in the good greenwood, 

 Amang the lily flower." 



— how the cheek flushes and the heart leaps up with a 

 pleasure which the incidents themselves hardly justify. 

 We seem to recognize in them symbols or images of 

 ideas which are important to mortal minds. They are 

 of a significance beyond allegories. They are as powerful, 

 and usually as mysterious in their power, as the landscape 

 at sight of which the gazer sighs in his joy, he knows not 

 why. In such passages the Nights abound. 



One of the finest is in Seifebnolouk and Bedia EljemaL 

 The hero and his memlooks were captured by a gigantic 

 Ethiopian king. Some were eaten. The survivors so 

 pleased the king by the sweetness of their voices while 

 they were crying and lamenting that they w^ere hung up 

 in cages for the king to hear them. Seifelmolouk and 

 three of his companions the king gave to his daughter, 

 and when the youth sat thinking of the happy past, and 

 crying over it, she was overjoyed at the singing of her 

 little captive. Perhaps more pleasing still is the door in 

 the grass which has only to be removed to discover a 

 splendid subterranean palace and a " woman whose aspect 



