THE STORY OF BOZALDAB.

THE STORY OF BOZALDAB.

Bozaldab, Calif of Egypt, had dwelt securely for many years in the silken pavilions of pleasure, and had every morning anointed his head withthe oil of gladness, when his only son Aboram, for whom he had crowded his treasuries with gold, extended his dominions with conquests, and secured them with impregnable fortresses, was suddenly wounded, as he was hunting, with an arrow from an unknown hand, and expired in the field.

Bozaldab, in the distraction of grief and despair, refused to return to his palace, and retired to the gloomiest grotto in the neighbouring mountain: he there rolled himself on the dust, tore away the hairs of his hoary beard, and dashed the cup of consolation that Patience offered him to the ground. He suffered not his minstrels to approach his presence; but listened to the melancholy birds of midnight, that flit through the solitary vaults and echoing chambers of the Pyramids. “Can that God be benevolent,” he cried, “who thus wounds the soul, as from an ambush, with unexpected sorrows, and crushes his creatures in a moment with irremediable calamity? Ye lying Imans, prate to us no more of the justness and the kindness of an all-directing and all-loving Providence! He, whomye pretend reigns in heaven, is so far from protecting the sons of men, that he perpetually delights to blast the sweetest flowerets in the garden of Hope; and like a malignant giant to beat down the strongest towers of happiness with the iron mace of his anger. If this Being possessed the goodness and the power with which flattering priests have invested him, he would doubtless be inclined and enabled to banish those evils which render the world a dungeon of distress, a vale of vanity and woe.—I will continue in it no longer!”

At that moment he furiously raised his hand, which Despair had armed with a dagger, to strike deep into his bosom; when suddenly thick flashes of lightning shot through the cavern, and a being of more than human beauty and magnitude, arrayed in azure robes, crowned with amaranth, and waving a branch of palm in his right hand, arrested the arm of the trembling and astonished Calif, and said with a majestic smile, “Follow me to the top of this mountain.”

“Look from hence,” said the awful conductor; “I am Caloc, the Angel of Peace; Look from hence into the valley.”

Bozaldab opened his eyes and beheld a barren, a sultry, and solitary island, in the midst of which sat a pale, meagre, and ghastly figure: it was a merchant just perishing with famine, and lamenting that he could find neither wild berries, nor a single spring in this forlorn and uninhabited desert; and begging the protection of heaven against the tigers that would now certainly destroy him, since he had consumed the last fuel he had collected to make nightly fires to affright them. He then cast a casket of jewels on the sand, as trifles of no use; and crept, feeble and trembling, to an eminence, where he was accustomed to sit to watch the setting sun, and to give signal to any ship that might haply approach the island.

“Inhabitant of heaven,” cried Bozaldab, “suffer not this wretch to perish by the fury of wild beasts!”

“Peace,” said the angel, “and observe.”

He looked again, and behold a vessel arrived at the desolate isle. What words can paint the rapture of the starving merchant, when the captain offered to transport him to his native country,if he would reward him with half the jewels of his casket? No sooner had this pityless commander received the stipulated sum, than he held a consultation with his crew, and they agreed to seize the remaining jewels, and leave the unhappy exile in the same helpless and lamentable condition in which they discovered him. He wept and trembled, intreated and implored in vain.

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