in the wilderness was the pre-qualification for their entrance into the Holy Land of promise. All the great movements in Islamic history have been engendered and nourished in the desert, from the time of Mohammed himself down to that of the modern Wahebis, Mahdists, and Senoussis. —The desert has conserved the pure joy of living, and though it has trained its dwellers to hardiness of body and firmness of purpose, it has at the same time preserved in them a simplicity of mind. It is these characteristics that have enabled the Arabian desert to produce the only other Semitic epic of which we have any knowledge. The exploits of the black hero Antara, his deeds of prowess and his magnanimity may be heard to-day in prose and verse as one sits to coffee in Cairo, Alexandria, or Beirut. But, though told in the city, they breathe the true air and spirit of the desert. And, though pitched in a minor key and entirely free from every supernatural admixture, they are truly epic in character, as they depict all the virtues dear to the roving spirit of the Arab, intrepidity, courage, and hos- pitality.
It is in lyric poetry that the Semitic muse has found its fullest literary expression. A great deal of this poetry is, it is true, religious in character, because religion has played so large a part in the life of Semitic peoples. But, from time to time, secular poetry has been cultivated as well. Whether such secular poetry ever existed in ancient Babylonia and Syria, we cannot tell. Whatever has come down to us engraven upon clay tablets is in the form of prayers, of psalms, and of litanies, expressive entirely of the higher aspirations of the people, or of their fears of evil that could be warded off only by the right word spoken at the proper moment. That this poetry affects the style, known to Egyptian and early Hebrew Literature, called parallelismus membrorum, in which the clauses of a verse bear a definite relation to each other, is certain. Whether it passed beyond that and attained to an accentuating rhythm has not yet been proven. But some of
