empire, extending from Egypt to India, and gave a feast or succession of
festivities, which continued for more than the third of a year.

All that oriental splendour and magnificence could contribute, all the
expedients that eastern luxury could desire, to multiply the resources
and to heighten the enjoyment of pleasure, were brought to aid the
designs of the monarch and to add to the festivities of his court.

Yet motives of policy may have combined with the designs of pleasure. In
all ages the despot has sought to blind and dazzle the people by a
display of power and magnificence; and the princes and nobles around,
from distant provinces, have swelled the retinue of their attendants.

The amusements of monarchs and of courts have, through all varieties of
manners and degrees of refinement, been much the same. The ancient
Syrian or Persian, like the modern British or French monarch, had his
royal parks and forests for hunting.

All nations have patronized the various trials of skill and strength,
and the mimic fight has ever been an amusement where war was the great
business of life. And the royal pageantry was doubtless intermingled
with the religious ceremonies which allowed a license to criminal
indulgence and at the same time offered a supposed expiation for crime.

While these employed the day, the games of chance, the wine, the music,
the movements of the degraded dancing-girl, and the tricks of the
buffoon and the jester, amused the late hours and varied the festive
scenes of the night.

The feast was drawing to a close, and, at the termination of this long