The principal characteristic of this text, which is not exempt from gross mistakes, is the affectation of more care as to style and choice of expressions; it enters more into fastidious and frequently technical particulars. contains more quotations of verses - often, be it remarked inapplicable ones - and uses, in certain circumstances, filthy images, which seem to have had a particular attraction for the author; but as a compensation for these faults, it gives, instead of cold, dry explications, pictures which are often charming, wanting neither in poetry nor originality, nor in descriptive talent, nor even in a certain elevation of thought, and bearing an undeniable stamp of originality. We may cite as an example the `Chapter on Kisses', which is found neither in our translation nor in the other two texts which we have examined, and which we have borrowed.

In our character as Gauls, we must not complain about the obscenities which are scattered about, as if on purpose to excite the grosser passions; but what we must deprecate are the tedious expansions, whole pages full of verbiage, which disfigure the work, and are like the reverse of the medal. The author has felt this himself, as at the conclusion of his work he requests the reader to pardon him in consideration of the good intention which has guided his pen. In presence of the qualities of first rank which must be acknowledged to exist in the book, we should have preferred that it had not contained these defects; we should have liked, in one word, to see it more homogeneous and more earnest; and more particularly so if one considers that the circumstances which we are pointing out raise doubts as to the veritable origin of the new matters which have been discovered, and which might easily be taken for interpolations due to the fancy of one or more of the copyists through whose hands the work passed before we received it.

Everyone knows, in fact, the grave inconveniences attaching to manuscripts, and the services rendered by the art of printing to science and literature by disposing of them. No copy leaves the hands of the copyist complete and perfect, particularly if the writer is an Arab, the least scrupulous of all. The Arab copyist not only involuntarily scatters about mistakes is which are due to his ignorance and carelessness, but will not shrink from making corrections, modifications, and even additions, according to his fancy. The literary reader himself, carried away by the charm of the subject, often annotates the text in the margin, inserts an anecdote or idea which is just current, or some puffed-up medical recipe; and all this, to the great detriment of its purity, finds its way into the body of the work through the hands of the next copyist.

There can be no doubt that the work of the Sheikh Nefzaoui has suffered in this way. Our three texts and the one upon which the translator worked. offer striking dissimilarities, and of all kinds; although, by the way, one of the translations seems to approach more nearly in style to the extended text of which we have spoken. But a question of another sort comes before us with respect to this last, which contains more than four times as much matter as the others. Is this the entire work of the Sheikh Nefzaoui, always bearing in mind the modification to which manuscripts are exposed, and does it so stand by itself as a work for the perusal of voluptuaries, while the others are only abridged copies for the use of the vulgar, serving them as an elementary treatise? Or might it not be the product of numerous successive additions to the original work, by which, as we have already suggested, its bulk has been considerably increased.

We have no hesitation in pronouncing in favour of the first of these hypotheses. In the record which the Sheikh gives of it, he says that this is the second work of the kind which he has composed, and that it is in fact only the first one, entitled the Torch of the World considerably increased pursuance of the advice given him by the Vizir Mohamed Ouana ez Zouaoui. Might it not be possible that a third work, still more complete than the second, had been the outcome of new studies of the author? Subjects of a particular speciality have certainly been treated in the work of which we speak. In looking at the Notes which serve as a preface to this translation, we find reproaches addressed by the translator to the author, because he has merely hinted at two questions of more than ordinary interest, viz., tribady and paederasty. Well, then, the Sheikh would meet his critic triumphantly by appearing before him with the work in question, for the chapter which constitutes by itself more than half of its whole volume is the twenty-first, and bears the superscription: `The twenty-first and last chapter of the book, treating of the utility of eggs and some other substances which favour coitus; of tribady and the woman who first conceived this description of voluptuousness; of paederasty and matters concerned with it; of procuresses