[FN#193] It has been suggested that Japanese tobacco is an indigenous growth and sundry modern travellers in China contend that the potato and the maize, both white and yellow, have there been cultivated from time immemorial.
[FN#194] For these see my “City of the Saints,” p. 136.
[FN#195] Lit. meaning smoke: hence the Arabic “Dukhán,” with the same signification.
[FN#196] Unhappily the book is known only by name: for years I have vainly troubled friends and correspondents to hunt for a copy. Yet I am sanguine enough to think that some day we shall succeed: Mr. Sidney Churchill, of Teheran, is ever on the look-out.
[FN#197] In § 3 I shall suggest that this tale also is mentioned by Al-Mas’udi.
[FN#198] I have extracted it from many books, especially from
Hoeffer’s Biographie Générale, Paris, Firmin Didot, mdccclvii.;
Biographie Universelle, Paris, Didot, 1816, etc. etc. All are
taken from the work of M. de Boze, his “Bozzy.”
[FN#199] As learning a language is an affair of pure memory, almost without other exercise of the mental faculties, it should be assisted by the ear and the tongue as well as the eyes. I would invariably make pupils talk, during lessons, Latin and Greek, no matter how badly at first; but unfortunately I should have to begin with teaching the pedants who, as a class, are far more unwilling and unready to learn than are those they teach.
[FN#200] The late Dean Stanley was notably trapped by the wily Greek who had only political purposes in view. In religions as a rule the minimum of difference breeds the maximum of disputation, dislike and disgust.
[FN#201] See in Trébutien (Avertissement iii.) how Baron von
Hammer escaped drowning by the blessing of The Nights.
[FN#202] He signs his name to the Discours pour servir de
Préface.