text:  Who has not heard of the reproof thus conveyed through the medium of a vizier skilled in the mystic language of birds to the devastating ambition of Sultan Mahmood of Ghazni? The gates of whose tomb (it may be remarked _par parenthese_ ) the _savans_ have now decided never to have been at Somnat at all--a piece of useful knowledge cheaply acquired no doubt at the expense of a war which has secured the owls of that country for some years to come against any scarcity of ruined villages wherewith to endow their daughters