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walled with low houses of coarse yellow plaster, are ugly and forbidding in Damascus; nor is the city properly beautiful and characteristic, except in the bazaars, which are unimaginable, and in the cafés, whither we will presently go.

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Our own house, the hotel, was characteristic. The great street door opened by a narrow passage into a tesselated marble court, glistening with orange foliage, and musical with fountains. gazelle played upon the pavement, upon which opened a lofty arabesqued alcove, and our own room opposite. From a marble basin upon the chequered marble floor of our room, leaped a delicate fountain, and three recesses were raised around it, each separated by curtains from the common floor, and each serving as a bed-chamber.

In the court, as we entered, the Syrian sun adorning him, and set in all the romance of midDamascus, stood Verde Giovane.

I regarded him gratefully, although I could scarcely forgive his scornful glance at me when I sat, soaped, in the bath at Asyoot, upon the Nile. But Verde had so amply supplied me with the fun -the want of which, and that of music, are the traveller's great wants in the East-that I buried all feud. I remember,—as a man the figure of the waistcoat he wore upon his wedding-day-that smooth, round, English face in the Damascus sun

Have I

shine, the face whose placidity seemed to say, East! vainly you strive to surprise me. not given déjeuners at Phila-have I not gracefully dallied at Esne-have I not jostled on a camel over the desert, and am I not now here, in very Damascus, persuaded that the whole business is not jolly, but slow-that in vain your oriental silence will aim to drown the sound of Bow-bells in my heart?"

I do not remember Verde distinctly again. But some vague reminiscence haunts my mind of a figure with a felt hat, a white cotton turban, and a check shooting-coat, rushing up and down the hotel stairs at Beyrout, apparently knocking at every door and shouting to the inmates-for there are no newspapers in Beyrout to record arrivals and departures" Good-bye, Smith; good-bye, Jones. I'm just off for Aleppo."

Images of gay cavaliers bounding from their ladies' bowers rose in my mind, I remember, as I heard those farewells; and I leaned, romantic, from the balcony, to see the felt hat, and white turban, and check apparel, surmounting a jaded beast, and following a train of pack-horses slowly around the

corner.

And so with oriental slowness, if not stateliness, the good little Verde Giovane rode out of Beyrout, and out of history.

CHAPTER III.

THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL.

ARE you disappointed as you thread these streets, by these repulsive walls? Do you tremble lest the dream of Damascus be dissolved by Damascus itself?

But you have already learned, by pleasant experience, that the clumsy, black, forbidding balloons, which passed you in those Cairene streets, enveloped Cairene wives, and were thus only the coarse rind of Hesperidian fruit. Such, too, are the Damascus houses.

O little faith! each Damascus house is a Paradise. The streets know only the exterior of the outer walls, and forbid to the passenger even the suspicion of beauty. Happily for us and for you, there is a Jew in Damascus—and may his tribe increase— who is a St. Peter, and holds the keys of many heavens.

He led us to the true House Beautiful-a dream

palace-one of those which we frequent, when we are children, with caliphs and ladies. Such a dwelling as you must needs fancy when you look through Lane's "Illustrated Arabian Nights," as through the mind of an Arabian poet, arabesqued with dreamy fancies,—such a pavilion as Tennyson has built in music, for Haroun El Rashid.

We turned suddenly from the unpromising street into a court, in whose centre played a fountain, surrounded with orange-trees, and from one side of which ascended a lofty staircase to a gallery overlooking the court. The orange-trees threw rich mosaics of shadow upon the pavement, and groups of men sat around, smoking tranquilly, as if they were only part of the furniture of the scene. Among them were Druse Emirs from the Lebanon -princes not princely enough to be admitted into the inner delights.

"It is a perfected Seville," said Leisurlie, as we passed on and entered the inner court.

There, for the first time, I felt the just instinct of the Prophet in painting his Paradise from the materials furnished by the genius which he and the Easterns knew. The scene was a poem set to music. The light of the opaline day streamed into the spacious court as into a vase worthy of it. A large marble reservoir occupied the centre of the space, into which fountains of fairy device poured

humming rills of water. The pavement was tesselated marble, polished to a glow. Huge pots of flowers stood near the walls, that blazed with all the brilliancy of positive colour, and glistening, trailing, and blossoming plants were ranged along the marble-margined fountain. Roses, lemons, and orange-trees, grouped their foliage, clustered their flowers, and perfumed the sun.

The light was not a glare, but a thick, odorous luminousness dashed with the cool dusk of shadows from the trees. Gazelles stood and ran in the court, filling the sunny bliss with the most delicate grace of life; and among the fragrant trees birds sang, why not the Bulbul, dying a melodious rose-death to crown our joy?

From the end of the court, a broad, lofty staircase, with elaborately-wrought balusters, ascended to a galleried recess, before which hung a vine of passion-flowers in blossom, transfigured in light, a tapestry of Paradise, and touching the pavement below, it trailed languidly upon the glossy marble.

Slightly raised from the level of the court, and entirely open to it, were alcoves loftily-arched, carpeted, and divanned with luxurious stuffs. The sides and ceilings of the alcoves were painted in dreamy arabesque. There are two kinds of arabesque in these houses,-one is pannelled, carved in wood, and so elaborately gilded that the effect is

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