desarts of Arabia. The old lady, indeed, might as well have fallen under
the dagger of the Domdanielite; for she dies, without doing anything for
her child, in the end of the first book; and little Thalaba is left
crying in the wilderness. Here he is picked up by a good old Arab, who
takes him home, and educates him like a pious mussulman; and he and the
old man's daughter fall in love with each other, according to the
invariable custom in all such cases. The magicians, in the meantime, are
hunting him over the face of the whole earth; and one of them gets near
enough to draw his dagger to stab him, when a providential _simoom_ lays
him dead on the sand. From the dead sorcerer's finger, Thalaba takes a
ring, inscribed with some unintelligible characters, which he is enabled
to interpret by the help of some other unintelligible characters that he
finds on the forehead of a locust; and soon after takes advantage of an
eclipse of the sun, to set out on his expedition against his father's
murderers, whom he understands (we do not very well know how) he has
been commissioned to exterminate. Though they are thus seeking him, and
he seeking them, it is amazing what difficulty they find in meeting:
they do meet, however, every now and then, and many sore evils does the
Destroyer suffer at their hands. By faith and fortitude, however, and
the occasional assistance of the magic implements he strips them of, he
is enabled to baffle and elude their malice, till he is conducted, at
last, to the Domdaniel cavern, where he finds them assembled, and pulls
down the roof of it upon their heads and his own; perishing, like
Samson, in the final destruction of his enemies.

From this little sketch of the story, our readers will easily perceive,
that it consists altogether of the most wild and extravagant fictions,
and openly sets nature and probability at defiance. In its action, it is
not an imitation of anything; and excludes all rational criticism, as to
the choice and succession of its incidents. Tales of this sort may amuse