that gracious memory over the human heart. In Palestine that figure is for ever present. On these infinite, solitary grain-tracts moves that form, as in Uhland's ballad the reapers see the image of their benignant pastor walking in the pleasant morning. It informs the landscape with an inexpressible pathos. A man of sorrows, and broken-hearted. Reviled, persecuted, and martyred, now as then, and more than ever at Jerusalem.

Passing this tract upon a grassy path, we crossed a belt of low hills, and descended into a series of basins, or dry lake-like reaches of arable land. There were infrequent groves of olives, whose silvery, sere foliage, and rough, gnarled trunks, did not disturb the universal sadness by any gaiety of form or feeling. All day the blue line of the Judean hills waved along the horizon, pointing the way to Jerusalem. Patches of grain sang in the low wind. Grain makes the landscape live, thrilling it with soft motion. Grass or turf is like lining, but grain like long silken hair.

Presently we were in the midst of ploughing. Hundreds of acres of ploughed land stretched beyond sight, and the general agricultural activity was strange to see. The plough was the same that Joseph and Mary saw when they fled along this land to Egypt, and the teams of camels and

donkeys harnessed together, and the turbaned husbandmen in flowing garments, would have dismayed our most antiquated cattle-show.

the sun

A warm wind blew with the waning day, and drifted westward in a vaporous air. The camp was pitched upon one of the belts of low hills dividing the basins of land-and the sea, which we could discern from the tent, moaned vaguely as the Judean mountains sank into night.

CHAPTER II.

MOHAMMAD ALEE.

I Do not wonder that Mohammad Alee burned to be master of Syria, and struck so bravely for it.

His career was necessarily but a brilliant bubble; and his success purely personal. That career was passed before the West fairly understood it. It was easier for the Jews to believe good from Nazareth than for us to credit genius in Egypt, and we should as soon have dreamed of old mummied Cheops throned upon the great pyramid and ruling the Pharaohs' realm anew, as of a modern king there, of kingliness unsurpassed in the century, except by Napoleon, working at every disadvantage, yet achieving incredible results.

He was the son of a fisherman,-made his way by military skill,-recognised the inherent instability of the Mameluke government then absolute in Egypt, and which was only a witless tyranny, sure

to fall before ambitious sense and skill. He propitiated the Sublime Porte, whose Viceroy in Egypt was only a puppet of state, practically imprisoned by the Mamelukes in the citadel-and he gained brilliant victories in the Hedjaz, over the Wahabys, infidel and schismatic Muslim.

In 1811, he accomplished the famous massacre of the Mamelukes in the court of the citadel, of which Horace Vernet has painted so characteristic a picture, and for which Mohammad Alee has been much execrated.

But in Turkish politics, humanity is only a question of degree. With Mohammad Alee and the Mamelukes it was diamond cut diamond. They were a congregation of pestilent vapours, a nest of hoary-headed tyrants, whom it was a satisfaction to humanity and decency to smoke out and suffocate in any way. Mohammad Alee had doubtless little enough rose-water in his policy to satisfy the grimmest Carlyle. The leader of sanguinary Albanians and imbruted Egyptians against wild Arab hordes is not likely to be of a delicate stomach.

But he was clear-eyed and large-minded. He had the genius of a statesman rather than the shrewdness of a general, although as a soldier he was singularly brave and successful. Of all his

acts the massacre of the Mamelukes was perhaps the least bloody, because, by crushing the few heads he had won the victory. A sudden and well-advised bloodshed is often sure to issue in a peace which saves greater misery. It was Cromwell's rule and it was Napoleon's-it was also Mohammad Alee's, and the results usually proved its wisdom.

Moreover, in the matter of this massacre, the balance of sympathy is restored by the fact that only a short time previous to the Mamelukes' Banquet of Death in the citadel, they had arranged Mohammad Alee's assassination upon his leaving Suez. By superior cunning he ascertained the details of this pleasant plan, and publicly ordered his departure for the following morning, but privately departed upon a swift-trotting dromedary in the evening. There was great consequent frustration of plan and confusion of soul among the Mamelukes, who had thought, in this ingenious manner, to cut the knot of difficulty, and they were only too glad to hurry with smooth faces to the Pacha's festival-too much in a hurry, indeed, to reflect upon his superior cunning and to be afraid of it. They lost the game. They were the diamond cut, and evidently deserve no melodious tear.

Mohammad Alee thus sat as securely in his seat as a Turkish Pacha can ever hope to sit. He

H