Heedless of wind and rain, that thought is our grave companion through the Anti-Lebanon. And, as the lover of woods and fields, going down through crimson autumn to the winter, suddenly perceives in extreme October the ghost of June gliding over the landscape, pallid, and with misty mien,--even the Indian summer renewing the feeling, but not the form, of the vanished year,so we, with faces westward bent, leaving the romance of the East behind us, turn yet another page. For, as that afternoon, we crossed the ridge of the range, the noble panorama of the valley of the Bekaa, which separates the Anti-Lebanon from the Lebanon, unrolled beneath us. The range of the Lebanon towered along its farther side, like the Bernese Alps seen from the Jura over the valley of the Aar.

As we skirted the mountain-side and descended, in the pensive glory of the waning day, we saw the six stately, solitary columns of Baalbec. Their countenance was "as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars," and naturally so, for the Syrians assert that Baalbec is the house of the forest of Lebanon, built by Solomon.

The sun was setting, and its last light flashed far along the snowy peaks of the Lebanon, which rose sublime from the purple evening silence of the valley. At the lower end of the range which we

had just descended, the tawny Hermon crouched over the vale. Birds wheeled and darted around the exquisite portico of the Temple. No triumph of art in my experience was profounder than that of Baalbec in that moment, for the melancholy ruins imparted human grandeur to the sunset splendour of nature.

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CHAPTER IX.

BAALBEC.

BAALBEC is the ecstacy of Corinthian architecture, and impressed by its grandeur and beauty, you remember with a blessing the Roman emperor, Theodosius, I think, who forbade the Christian bishop to destroy the Pagan Temple, the gem of the Antoninian period.

It is Roman, indeed, dating that is, from a time when the prime of Greek art was long, long past, and when the East was Roman. Therefore it is

not of the purest art. It has not the supreme excellence of the Parthenon, or of the early Egyptian temples, each the perfection of their kind.

But whether the inherent inspiration of the East forbade the erection of temples at the very foot of Lebanon, which had not some lingering spirit of the true Greek grace, or whether, as is most probable, they were reared by Grecian artists, in

whom flickered yet some flame of the old Greek fire, yet the ruins of Baalbec are among the most perfect remains in the world. There is nothing in Rome itself so imposing, nothing which so nearly attains that spiritual elegance of impression which marks Greek architecture.

The Roman character is impressed upon Baalbec, in the massiveness, not quite relieved into grace, of which it has yet the imperfect form, and wherein lies, as in all technical Roman architecture, the chief fault. The intrinsic success of the Egyptian architecture is in this, that it completely attains the massiveness at which it aims, and it implies and seeks nothing farther. The Greek, on the other hand, softens that strength, without losing it, into beauty. The Roman, attaining neither, like plated ware grown old, is neither genuine silver nor respectable copper. Its strength is clumsy, not sublime; its beauty is artificial, not sincere.

The eclecticism of Rome pervaded every part of its development. The empire, like a vapour, spread over the earth, and like a vapour, it was variously tinged by the coloured soils on which it rested. Rome was great only in overpowering might,-in what, as characteristic of single men, we call physical strength. Its intellectual, and artistic, and religious aspect, was but an imitation of the Greek. It was not a development, as was Greek

culture, of the

was a decline.

Egyptian; but, like all imitation, it

Rome was a Gladiator, Greece was a Poet; and in that difference lies the difference of their influence upon history.

But here, in Baalbec, is a softer strain. The statue of the Gladiator wins the eye, although the Apollo is unrivalled. And adding to the picturesque variety and intrinsic beauty of Baalbec, its superb landscape setting at the head of the valley of Bekaa, and to these the romantic associations which cling around it and deepen its impression, even as clustering and waving vines wreathe with grace more delicate the grace of Sculpture, Baalbec stands for ever in memory as one of the truly imposing relics of the world.

The six solitary columns are its marked and rememberable features. The temple in which are the niches for the idols is yet elegant, and still suggests the Syrian Baal, under which name our ever-divine Apollo was worshipped. And well worshipped was he in this spacious valley, along whose floor he struck his glory, making perfect summer, whose mountain walls he made his lyre, striking their snow-streaks with quivering light, like chords swept with trembling fingers, until all the loveliness of the plains and the loftiness of the hills flashed a symphony of splendour to the God of Day.