before the reality. I did not wonder that the Emperor Julian called it the Eye of the East, nor that the Prophet gazed long at it and with tears, murmuring that there could be but one Paradise, and that his must be in heaven-then passed on as from the only Syren he feared.

A forest of sparkling minarets, and the billowy beauty of endless foliage-that was all.

And like weary travellers, before whom flowery lawns of repose glide along the plain-like Princes who see from far the aerial spires dreaming over the Sleeping Beauty-suddenly, as if we heard the cool measures of Damascus fountains and scented its garden odours, we plunged forward through the grain that swayed and sang around us, and loud shouting the cry of the galloping Arabs, Es sham shereef, the beautiful, the blessed, we dashed upon the full run over the plain, nor paused until our brows were cooled in the groves of Damascus.

Then we stopped, and reining up by a broken and greenly-mossed fountain, across which lay a bar of gold-dusted sunshine, in vision returned the September afternoon under the grape trellises and the figs of the Italian lake of Orta, which whispered, as a less of a greater-Damascus.

We moved slowly on over the broken pavement, chiding the walls that inclosed the gardens. But their beauty would not be confined, and overflowed

upon us, and arched the way, and softened it with strewn leaves, and enchanted the light into a soft, green brilliancy, and teemed with promise inexpressible.

At times the low singing of unseen water threaded the air as with faint laughter, laughing all the poets to sweet scorn who had described Damascus. The fig, the almond, the rounded chesnut, the walnut, the olive-all the stately and romantic trees were clustered here, as if the absolute aristocracy of foliage was only to be found in the girdle of the most ancient and the most beautiful of cities.

The path was a narrow lane winding between the walls that separated the groves, and crossing the clear-eyed brooks upon ruinous and pretty bridges. Across the vistas, where the light was brightest, passed women with water-jars upon their heads, or groups of shouting children, or laden camels or donkeys, or single figures stood in gay costumes,—as if a generous destiny knew that only that figure in that spot was necessary to perfect satisfaction.

The lane ended in a gate, and immediately from the spacious and picturesque solitude of the trees we were plunged into the brilliant bewilderment of the bazaar. Golden Sleeve spurred rapidly along, and we were obliged to follow at the same speed to

keep him in sight. The crowd parted before us like a phosphorescent sea, so bright were the flowing robes. My brain reeled with the abrupt change from the luminous green silence of the environs to the twilight dimness of the bazaar, full of spicy odours, and gorgeous colours, and various forms, chequered with the penetrant sunshine that fell in burning drops through rents in the overshadowing matting.

There was scarcely time to see, none to think. We had constantly to keep vanishing Golden Sleeve in sight, nor did I lose him but once, when I saw cheesecakes-cheesecakes in Damascus ! and wondering if they were made without pepper, I was bending to ask Agib, who was looking intently at me, when I saw Leisurlie just disappearing, and hurried rapidly after him, lest I should be implicated before the Grand Vizier, as an accessory in the manufacture of illegal cheesecakes.

Dazzled and overwhelmed by this first swift glance, I felt that Damascus was the most eastern East we had reached. The sunny desert and lonely Syria had erased from memory the West that still lingers in Cairo contaminated with black hats and carriages. Damascus was on the way to no Christian province, and Western trade had, therefore, not purged it of virgin picturesqueness. It was the sacred point of departure for the

Mecca caravan, and the port of caravans from

Bagdad.

And when Golden Sleeve reined up and said"This is the hotel."

CHAPTER II.

EXIT VERDE GIOVANE.

THE superb Syrian calls Damascus Om-el-Donia, the mother of the world. Nor is the traveller's fealty to Damascus disloyalty to Cairo. A poet, who sat in a café, tasting sherbet and singing over the gurgling water a song, which Golden Sleeve interpreted, sang-"O Damascus, O pearl of the East." But it is a crimson-hearted carbuncle rather.

The Damascene is the most mischievous subject of the empire, says the Turk. He is the most eastern of Orientals, says the Frank. Not only like other Muslim does he guard his wife with jealousy, but with the same care he hides the splendour of the house in which she lives.

In the dim, unpaven, silent streets of Cairo, the high latticed house-fronts wear a picturesque charm, and woo you, as I have said, with more than Muslim propriety. But the paved streets,