of the world to find her countrymen and women obeying the instincts of their Viking ancestors, and going up and down upon the earth like another roaring lion' beside the British king of beasts! We ask an Italian, or a French or German woman, whom we meet by chance straying from the 'fatherland' into some neighbouring country, 'Does Madame travel for health or pleasure? We ask an English lady by her own fireside, 'What on earth keeps you at home this year? It is almost too much, this Anglicizing of the world. Under the vast shade of Cheops, as I rode up in solemn thought, it was startling to be addressed by some kindly unknown compatriot, Would you like to join our lunch, ma'am?

our

Here is some capital Bass's ale!' Reclining in our tent in Hebron, within a few stones'-throw of the grave of Abraham, it was mortifying to find our Druse dragoman serve evening meal on willow-pattern plates! But, for all the absurd associations such nationalities produce, I envy not him who could make a great journey in our day, and not come back proud and thankful to belong to our Saxon race. The trust in our word, the respect for our courage (assumed even in a woman), the belief in the steadfastness of our resolution, is something that does one good to meet. I know not that I did not like as much as any compliment I ever heard, the remark of a poor Italian camereria, Si dice sempre, "Pulito come gli Inglesi," (We always say, Clean as the English.)

Ill-luck (or perhaps special goodluck) ruled that I should find nobody at Beyrouth, English or otherwise, intending to go to Baalbec at the time of my visit. I remained, therefore, a few days at the hotel, waiting to decide what I should do, and enjoying delightful solitary walks across the little triangular peninsula whose base is Lebanon and whose apex extends seven or eight miles into the blue Levant, a little way north of Tyre. One morning I remember having strolled through the gardens of mulberry and almond, kindly guided

VOL. LXIII. NO. CCCLXXVIII.

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everywhere by the courteous peasants, till at last I sat down to read close over the sea, which broke with its delicate fringe of foam on the low rocks below. Overhead an immense hedge of cactus sheltered me from the warm spring sun; while to the right rose up the glorious Lebanon, with his feet in the sea and his snowy crown towering over the fir-woods up into the intense blue sky. I took out the littleShelley' which I had loved to read in the green old woods of the home of my youth; but nature was unrolling a poem before me more wondrous than the 'Prometheus,' more balmy than the 'Sensitive Plant,' and I could only gaze, and dream, and be thankful. sently there came by a young mother, with a little girl running beside her, and a baby of a year old in her arms. Like nearly all the Syrian women she had a sweet soft face, and the lithesome figure and pretty colours of the graceful dress made her a charming picture. I touched my breast and head, of course, with the usual salutation, 'Salaam aleik!' (Peace be with you!), and received the fitting reply,

Pre

Aleik salaam! and I suppose I looked at the little child as mothers like their infants to be looked at, for without a word or a hesitation she placed the little fellow in my lap, and then in the gentle Eastern fashion seated herself silently close beside me. We talked a long while, if talking it could be called, when signs and smiles and my dozen words of Arabic had to do all the duty; and then she rose and kissed my hand, and passed away down the shore, singing some sweet monotonous song. Good-bye!' I thought; pretty Amina, and dear little Mustapha,-we shall not meet again; but your ready claim of human relationship has done my heart good, and will not soon be forgotten.'

When it became evident that I should find no companions to Baalbec, I was obliged to resolve for myself the problem, Should I venture on the journey alone? and having obtained from our kind Consul the recommendation of a

trustworthy old Turk as a dragoman, I did not long hesitate. It was a lovely soft morning in March as we rode out of Beyrouth, Hassan and I, on our good Syrian steeds, and the muleteer on foot beside his beast laden with all my worldly concerns,-for that blessed week, at all events. My tent, my kitchen, my cooking and eating utensils, my food and drink, my bed and bedding, and table, and stool, my bath and carpet-bag, and leather travelling-case, all the things with which we crowd so many rooms dwindled to the burden of a single mule. Springing on my English side-saddle and riding quickly out of the entangled mass of filthy alleys which forms 'the rising emporium of Beyrouth,' I inhaled with ecstasy the perfumed air of the orange and almond groves outside the town, and gloried in the prospect of another week of the free life of tents; Lebanon before me and Baalbec beyond! Baalbec! the name alone seemed teeming with sublime mysteries. Miss Martineau says, that when she was a school-girl she had 'taken on herself to despise Baal,' but that he appeared a very different personage in his own magnificent Heliopolis! For me the old forms of heathenism had long possessed a strong fascination. Amid all their hideous aberrations, their gross pollutions, I had delighted to find traces of the 'light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,' the law written on the hearts' of those who knew not Moses. Highest of these ancient faiths, of course in moral purity, stands the Persian fire-worship, and far may we look, save in the Hebrew writings, for grander thoughts or more spiritual prayers than those of the Zend Avesta.

'Hurt not thy neighbour; be not wrathful; do not evil from shame. Fall not into avarice, nor violence, nor envy, nor pride. Answer gently thine enemy.' 'The procrastination of a good action is a sin.' 'There are those who love not to give. The place which awaits them is below.' 'Oh, Thou who dwellest in primæval light, glory,

happiness, and intelligence-absolute master of all excellent, and pure, and holy beings, Ormusd, Lord of Light in heaven, make me perfect! Give me an holiness which nothing can shake, in my actions and my words; give me the power to do that good which I desire.' 'I pray thee, oh Ormusd, that the wicked become believers, that they be henceforth without sin.' I believe in God and in his law. Hell shall be destroyed at the resurrection. I am resolved to do right. Come to my help, oh Ormusd!'-(Jeschts Sade, Vendidad Sade, and Patêts from the Zent Avesta, translated by Du Perron). In what degree this high Persian faith (still existing in no ignoble type among the Parsees of India) was connected with the sun-worship of the gross Phoenician mythology, it is hard to conjecture. Perhaps there was no relation at all, and Baal (or Bel) the sun-god, never received in his impure fanes the homage of a true worshipper of Ormusd 'the supremely wise Lord,' of whom the Zend "Avsta only tells us his light is hidden under all that shines.' At least the faith of which Heliogabalus was hierophant had fallen as low as ever the religious sentiment of human nature may be_debased Yet does the golden star,' Zoroaster, throw a mysterious halo over the fire-worship of East and West; that faith which blazed out in the Bactrian plains before the dawn of history, and which lights yet its memorial fires each midsummer eve in the vales of Christian Scotland and Ireland.

To return to my journey.

Nothing can be conceived more delicious than the odours of these lower slopes of Lebanon. I do not know the name of half the trees and plants flowering round the path, some with pungent aromatic perfumes, others luscious, like the orange blossoms; and then, again, clumps of odoriferous pines, wild and pure, and under them growing the dwarf lavender in the crevices of the rocks. We hardly guess, I think, how much of our enjoyment of summer in every

climate comes from the gratification of our sense of smell, not only from the recognised perfume of special flowers, but the united fragrance of all the vegetation around us, and of the ground itself when freshened by rain or tillage. The sweetness of the violet in spring is, as Shelley says,

Mixed with fresh odour sent

From the turf, like the voice and the instrument,

and a music more subtle than that of sound steals into our hearts. It must have happened to us all, sometimes, I suppose, to have been startled by the vividness of some feelings thus derived, some sense of sudden joy, some grasp of happy memory of the love which blessed our childhood, some aspiration of heaven breathing through the cares of earth. What has happened to us? Only that we have passed near a jessamine or a honeysuckle, or driven past a hawthorn hedge, or ridden under a few fir-trees on the hill-side. And He, to whom the world is 'as the dust in the balance' in the immensity of His universe, He has fitted those flowers and trees to yield that fragrance to our senses, fitted our brain and heart to receive from it those softening influences! Methinks, if there were no other proofs in the world of God's goodness, the flowers would supply them in abundance. Answer it to thyself, poor soul, that doubtest of His love, that darest not trust the voice in thine own heart telling thee that thy Father in heaven is all which that heart can adore. Why has He made these flowers? why does He send to thee these little joys, as gentle and unnoticed often as a mother's kiss upon a sleeping child? There is not, it would seem, a conceivable reason to be given for the existence of flowers (at least for their beauty and perfume), other than the intention to provide for man a pure and most delicate pleasure. Geologists tell us that in the earlier epochs there are few traces of flowers; such as there were being small, and probably of the secondary colours, mere vessels for the ripen

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ing of the seeds. Only when the human era approached, the order of the rosacea appeared, the fruit trees with their luxurious burdens, and all our brightest and sweetest flowers, till the wilderness rejoiced and blossomed as the rose.' Thus, as the coal, and the iron, and the stone were laid up in the dawn of time for our use to-day, so the flowers sprang up over the earth for our delight and to deck the cradle God had prepared for his child! The incense in the churches of the Greek and Latin communion does not fail to awaken holy thoughts in those who have associated it with their earliest worship and purest devotion. A pitiful thing is it that God's own censers of the flowers should ever open before us without some happy and tender thoughts of Him who has made them

Spring from every spot of earth
To show His love is there.

As I ascended slowly up the giant staircase of hills piled on one another, the scene became more and more beautiful, and the vast expanse of the sea below seemed marvellous. I could scarcely believe that the line which divided the sky half-way from the zenith was that of the horizon. On the spot where my tent was pitched for the night, I could still see the promontory of the old Berytus, while a wilderness of verdant slopes and huge spurs of the mountains lay between. The pine-trees fringing the far-off summits to the west, stood out for awhile against the evening sky, and the valleys grew slowly grey and dim, and then after a little time the lights twinkled here and there in the Maronite villages in the hollows of the great hills, and high up in the convents perched on the snowy summits, and the stars came out in the radiance of the Syrian heavens, and Orion strode over Lebanon.

Regretfully I turned at last for the night to my little tent, just large enough for my bed and table and stool and bath. Close by was the picturesque Khan,' an open shed, where Hassan and the mule

teer slept, and where, as usual, we found a man to supply us with a fowl and eggs and delicious fresh water. These Khans' give us Europeans a strange idea of the nations which from immemorial time have erected and preserved such harbours of refuge open to every wayfarer at scarcely above an hour's journey from each other; and yet, while providing the inns, have never dreamed of forming roads even in the rudest and sim

plest manner. I had asked my Piedmontese dragoman Abengo, riding out of Jerusalem near Colonia,

'Why do not the people throw these shocking boulders off the roads?

'Off the road, Signora? They always throw them on it and off their fields.'

'But has the government nothing to say in the matter?'

'Il governo? Cosa sia il governo, qui, Signora?

My tent was of course close to the mule-track which passed the Khan, and formed the regular highway from Beyrouth to Damascus. I had not been long asleep on my little gridiron of a bed before I was awakened by the arrival of a caravan with mules tumbling over the tent-pegs, and a general hubbub and chattering of Arabic. It was not very pleasant, but courage had come in my long wanderings, and neither that nor many subsequent similar disturbances prevented me from rest. We rose early next morning, and breakfasted before dawn, not too luxuriously, in the chill drizzle, while my tent was struck and placed on the mule, and our horses saddled. Reader, do not envy that luxurious meal shocking bread (dry, of course), two eggs, and a cup of tea without milk in a tin cup, which possessed a peculiar flavour of its own, contracted (I could not but surmise) from being used as the receptacle of Hassan's private store of onions! Soon I was on a beautiful young chestnut which the poor old fellow had designed for his own especial delight, and in a few hours we were scrambling up such snowy heights

as put both the horse's mettle and mine to the test. Nothing can be conceived more unlike what we call a road than these tracks over Lebanon, to which the worst of Alpine passes ever used for mules or horses is a joke. My journey chanced to be at an unlucky moment, when the snows were beginning to melt, but the good summer passes still quite unattainable. Frequently the bed of a torrent formed our path, and scrambling on foot over the adjacent heights, I watched with amazement the horses driven by Hassan up actual cataracts with rocks as high as their breasts, the fine animals clambering up them like so many cats in the midst of the roar and rush of the waters. On one occasion, when we had been making an ill-advised short cut, Hassan informed me there was nothing for us but to descend a certain tremendous declivity on which the untracked snow lay thick, and whereon (as there was no track at all down that hill-side) it was impossible to guess into what hollows our horses might fall. At the bottom there was a sharp ledge and precipice, on which the snow I could not lie, falling sheer into a deep valley below. The affair was to make our horses go down to the ledge, and there turn short, and ride along the edge till we could descend more safely. Down we went in a moment up to the horse's knees, and then, according to the irregular rocks under us, to the girths, the poor brutes floundering on, and the steep declivity forcing them, helplessly tumbling forward, till in a few moments we were on the ledge over the precipice. The impetus with which we had descended, added to my weight, rendered it apparently impossible for my horse to stop himself. The fine young creature knew his own danger, however; and as we hung for a few seconds on the edge, his struggles were frantic.

The grandeur of the scene in some of these defiles is indescribable. It does not in the least partake of the Alpine character, having no pointed 'aiguilles' or