We stroll musing among the ruins. We have no compass or yardstick. We neither measure the columns nor calculate the weight of the stones. Wood and Hawkins have exhausted that department, and Wood, the best authority on Baalbec, wonders that the Roman authors are so silent about it, and can find only in John of Antioch any mention of the temples. An image of the great temple appears upon medals of Septimius Severus, but Antoninus Pius is supposed to have built it. Saracens, Persians, Earthquakes, and Christians have raged against it. In the time of Heraclius, the Saracens captured it, and incredible riches rewarded them, and in the year 1401 Timour the Tartar smote the beauty of Baalbec. When he thundered against it, it was called by the Greeks, Heliopolis, City of the Sun. And its vague fame

shines through history, as I dreamed of beholding Jerusalem glitter among the Judean Mountains.

Listen for the last time in Syria for the sounds which have long died away into the dumbness of antiquity, and you shall hear the hum of this city of Solomon, the great point of the highway from Tyre to India, when Zenobia's Palmyra was but a watering-station in the desert. Then nearer, the clang of Roman arms and trumpets, the scream of the eagles of Augustus, and the peal of religious pomp around a temple dedicate to Jupiter, and

ranking among the wonders of the world.

Nearer still, the hushed cry of desert hordes of Bedoueen, of Persians, the muttering of Christian priests, shreds and fragments all of its old pæan, one more death-struggle of another memorable life.

The oriental authors praise Baalbec as the most splendid of Syrian cities, proud with palaces, graceful with gardens; and with the triumphant mien of imperial remembrance, it looks after you as you ride slowly down the valley of the Bekaa, and its glance leaves in your mind a finer strain in your respect for Rome.

All day it watches you: all day you turn in your saddle as you advance through the valley which has Egyptian warmth of climate, and in which water never stagnates, and look back upon the six stately columns. All the men in the valley salute you. Even the women are less chary of their charms, and when the tent is pitched at evening, and Leisurlie begins to sketch, the children crowd around and look wonderingly upon his work and its results. But if he attempts to draw them, the handsome boys bound away, because he looks at them, and only the unhandsome remain.

But one stands leaning against a tree at a little distance, heedless of his fellows and of the Howadji. The pensive grace of his posture, the dark beauty of his face, and the suppleness of his limbs, arrest

the artist's eye. He sketches him, and a figure more graceful than the Apollino has justified Art and asserted Nature upon the twilight plain of Baalbec, whose columns glimmer and fade in the distance and the dark.

CHAPTER X.

NUNC DIMITTIS.

THE Arabian poets sing well of Lebanon, that he bears winter upon his head, spring upon his shoulders, and autumn in his bosom, while summer lies sleeping at his feet.

Up from that summer, Baalbec its last blossom for us, the Howadji sadly climbed. The mountain sides were terraced to the highest practicable point, and planted in grain. But wherever the sun favours, the lustrous vines lie along the ground, goldening and ripening the life that is immortal in the Vino d'Oro of the Lebanon. The path is thronged with laden mules coming from Beyrout. The sun blisters our faces. They are set westward now, but our hearts cling to the sleeping summer at the feet of Lebanon.

At noon the ridge is passed, and we look toward the sea. The broad valleys and deep gorges of the

mountains open themselves to the illimitable West, which streams into them full of promise and the sun. Lebanon is a country, rather than a mountain, and our way is not a swift descent, but a slow decline. Little villages are perched upon various points, and a Druse woman passes, crowned with the silver horn. Across a broad ravine, miles away, we see, as the westering sun slants down the mountain, a melancholy, fortified old building, and remember Lady Hester Stanhope. But there is no longer eagerness in our glances, and there is profound sadness in our hearts.

In a golden sunset, the tent was pitched for the last time, upon a high mountain point, overlooking the sea. As we watched the darkening Mediterranean, from a little gray village high upon a cliff beyond, fell the sweet music of the evening bell.

It was the knell of the East. Sweet and clear it rang far down the dark calm of the valley, and out upon the evening sea. The glory of Oriental travel was a tale told. The charm of nomadic life was over. Like youth, that travel and charm come but once, and because the East is the most picturesque phase of travel possible to us, the moon in rising over our last camp, and flowing dreamily over the placid slopes of the Lebanon, was but the