Ruba'yat

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Few of Mrs. Cadell's letters are without traces of her devotion to her children, but the care of their education could not engross the energies of her active mind. She had studied Persian to a slight extent in India, mainly to relieve the tedium ofa military station, and with no View to linguistic research. Fascinated by the gorgeous charm of India, she had conceived the idea of writing its his tory. She found that a knowledge of Persian would be indispensable, and actively resumed her studies soon after her settlement in Edinburgh. Persian poetry, however, is generally more attractive than Persian prose, and affords an easier introduction to the language. Mrs. Cadell's attention was thusgradually diverted from the more ambitious under taking, which would indeed have greatly overtaxed her fragile constitution.