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arrative should be guided through the "canal of the pen into the sea of publicity." Bodenstedt demurred, maintaining that the "art-hewn path from the head to the hand" was far more difficult to traverse than the natural one from the mouth to the ear.
"Yes, but it leads farther," rejoined Auerbach, "and what pleases us, who listen, you may rest assured, with critical ears, cannot fail to please in more extended circles."
Upon this foundation arose that delightful book, _A Thousand and One Days in the Orient_, which was the occasion of one of the most amusing mystifications and controversies that ever occupied the German literary world.
Friedrich Bodenstedt was born at Peine in Hanover, April 21, 1819. Notwithstanding his precocious intellectuality and remarkable poetic talents, he was condemned by his parents to a mercantile career. After a mournful apprenticeship he managed, however, to escape from this uncongenial employment, and pursued a course of study at Göttingen, Munich and Berlin, devoting himself chiefly to philology and history. The year 1840 found him in Moscow as private tutor in the family of Prince Galitzin, and shortly after he published his first volume of poetry. Later, he was appointed teacher of languages at the Tiflis Gymnasium, and the result of his learned investigations here were given to the world in his _People of Caucasus_, in which, however, were wholly thrust into the background poetical reminiscences evoked, as we have seen, by gifted and genial friends.
During his sojourn in Tiflis, the mountain-encompassed capital of Georgia, Bodenstedt undertook the study of the Tartar language, finding it to be a universally-employed means of communication with the many-tongued races of Caucasus. Among the numerous teachers recommended to him, he selected one called Mirza-Schaffy, "the wise man of Gjändsha," being attracted to him partly because of his calm, dignified demeanor, partly because he possessed a sufficient knowledge of Russian, with which Bodensted