silence, to be a hundred miles from men, so is it here, except that here is the golden atmosphere of romance and of the natural picturesque. But the London parks are only pastoral landscapes hung upon the city walls. The cafés of Damascus are passionate poems. There is the difference between a mild-eyed milkmaid and the swart magnificence of Zenobia.

The best western suggestions of these Damascus delights are those German gardens where you sit smoking and sipping in pleasant arbours, listening to pleasant music, as at Nuremberg, under the picturesque old walls. But here again is all the difference between Albrecht Dürer and Hafiz. There is a marked vein of prose in everything German. The cafés of Damascus are pure poetry.

Damascus in this regard makes Paris poor. The most brilliant cafés of the Boulevards are only rococo and artificial, measured by this natural art. They are elaborated à merveille. But the place itself differs from the Damascene type not less than the pretty Grisette, in her piquant perfection of French attire, differs from the loosely robed, and jewelled, and golden-complexioned Syrian woman, not less than the clarified French coffee differs from the thick richness of Mocha. You sit upon the broad, gay street in Paris eating ices thicker and richer than those of the East, which are thin and

watery like snow, watching the gaudy equipages, the staring parvenu houses, the hats, coats, bonnets, and dresses-all the bright tinsel of Parisian life; and over your eager mind, like a lull in a gusty day, steals the vision of Damascus, with the silent coolness of green shadows, and the gurgling coolness of rushing streams.

Art, in Oriental luxury, is only the hint of Nature broadly developed. The luxury of Paris is the perfection of artificiality. Nature is as much banished from it as simple instincts and natural feeling from Parisian society. From the Boulevards your eyes rise to the calm blue sky with wonder and insatiable longing. It hangs over the city like the long-suffering grace of God over human sin.

But as we sit enchanted by the gushing waters of Damascus, and anticipate Paris, as full-hearted boys the heartlessness of manhood, and long for music, the instinctive complement of such luxury, even as the boy sings when he is happiest, we are made aware, in the shrill shriek and discord of the Arabian instruments and voices, of the imperfection of Oriental luxury. It is fragmentary, and not complete. The love of nature in an Oriental is rather an animal instinct than a spiritual appreciation. Hence the universal absence of what we call taste, which does not imply that the universal appearance of richness in the East is positively

tasteless, but simply unworked into genuine artistic results. The effect is often that of the finest art. But the difference, as I said, is that of a palette covered with rich pigments and a brilliant picture. Yet remember how much more valuable for subtle suggestion is Titian's palette than most pictures that were ever painted.

This luxury is fragmentary and incomplete. A Pacha, clad in the costliest robes, and smoking a gemmed chibouque, receives you in a coarselyplastered chamber, where you recline upon cushions which no Parisian salon possesses. Or in these fine Damascus houses, between the ceiling wrought in dream-arabesques, and the delicate print-lace-like work of the walls, a broad strip of dingy plaster intervenes, broken with irregular, shapeless windows. Nor have the houses the slightest air of home or domestic comfort.

It is the general character of magnificence, and the occasional pursuit of details into the most subtle and aerial perfection, which gives the tone to your impression. It is the splendour of a mine, streaked with earth, but in which some happy touch has wrought certain points into marvellous beauty: the wealth of a quarry, in which occasional genius has carved single blocks into more than Grecian grace.

CHAPTER VII.

UNCLE KUHLEBORN.

So meditating luxury, and leaving the bubbling waters, we stroll into the city, confessing with the Turkish poet, that green trees, and flowing waters, and beautiful faces combined, are antidote against melancholy.

an

Pausing at a small door, we enter the bath. For as becomes a city so affluent in water, the baths of Damascus are the finest in the East, and so fantastic is the spectacle of their life, that you must needs fancy them temples of Undine's uncle Kühleborn.

The lofty hall which we enter is lighted through a dome, and is paved with varied marbles. Three deep alcoves are raised above the court in the sides of the hall, and in the centre of the pavement is a fountain, upon whose margin stand clusters of nargilehs, wreathed with their serpentine tubes. A mat is spread for us in the most spacious alcove.

A boy holds a fine linen veil before us while we disrobe, and instantly an attendant girds us with linen over the shoulders and around the loins, and a flat turban of the same is pressed upon our heads. Then carefully treading in clumsy wooden pattens, which slide upon the polished floor, we enter a small

room.

It is misty with steam and warm, entirely bare, and of smooth marble walls and floor. We pass into another of the same kind, hotter and more misty, and a group of parboiled spectres regard us languidly as we advance.

Then we emerge in a long oblong hall, reeking with moist heat, in which we gasp and stare at the figures, some steeped to the neck in a cauldron of steaming water, their shaven heads floating, like livid pipkins, upon the surfacesome lying at full naked length upon the floor, in a torpor of sensual satisfaction-some sitting meekly upright upon little stools, and streaming with soap-suds, while nude official individuals with a linen fig-leaf, rush rapidly about with a black horse-hair mitten upon the right hand, making occasional sallies upon the spectres, and apparently flaying them with the rough hand of hair.

These spectres are all shaven, and profoundly solemn. They undergo parboiling, boiling, soaping, and flaying, with the melancholy seriousness