when he came again he had no use for him. He told him so. But the undaunted Delyl came regularly to Burckhardt's dinner, and, after satisfying his present hunger, he produced a small basket which he ordered his host's slave to fill with biscuits, meat, vegetables, or fruit, which he carried away with him. Every three or four days he asked for money-saying loftily, "It is not you who give it; it is God who sends it to me." Burckhardt soon wearied of this arrangement, and told the Delyl, with great emphasis, that he could endure it no longer. ས In three days the Delyl returned and begged a dollar. —“God does not move me to give you any thing," replied Burckhardt gravely, "if he judged it right he would soften my soul, and cause me to give you my whole purse. “Pull my beard," said the Delyl, "if God does not send you ten times more hereafter than I beg at present." "Pull out every hair of mine,” replied Burckhardt, "if I give you one para until I am convinced that God will regard it as a meritorious act." Upon hearing which the Delyl arose suddenly and walked away, saying sublimely, "We fly for refuge to God, from the hearts of the proud, and the hands of the avaricious.” Legless old Beppo, of the Spanish steps in Rome, was more cheerful, if less sublime under disappointment. If you refused the baioccho to his hat held toward you with a broad leer of confidence, he only smiled and said, 66 Dunque domani, Signore (To-morrow then, sir).” VIII. Bethlehem. THE scenery of the Gospel story is vague until you are in Palestine. Literature and Art, forgetting climate and costume, set the events of that history in the landscape and atmosphere they know. All the religious pictures lack local truth. The temple in Raphael's Spozalizio, is of the Roman architecture of his day. Paul Veronese's Suppers and Marriage Feasts are gorgeous chapters of Venetian life, and this, which is fair enough in Italian pictures, of which the essential character was so striking and beautiful-reaches the extremest absurdity in the Dutch sacred pictures, especially Tenier's St. Peter in Prison. It is fair enough, viewed by strict art, yet it is a loss to the pictures, for this golden air and picturesque costume, and lovely landscape, would have singularly deepened their effect. So we said as we rode over the bare hills to Bethlehem, and paused at the well of which David longed to drink, but poured out the water unto the Lord. Seant patches of grain and banks of wild flowers waxed gayly to us as we mounted again, wondering if The haply, from this spot the wise men saw the star. distant hillsides were the fields of Boaz. The artistic eye of Leisurelie was struck with the sweeps of the mountain lines, whose sides uniting at the base, allowed no proper valleys, but only a narrow water-course. The landscape was bare and sere with the melancholy olive, and, above a grove of figs and olives rose, upon a hilltop, the gray walls of Bethlehem. "How beautiful," said Leisurelie, "would be this landscape in a picture of Ruth. How just in a religious picture, of which the chief interest is a woman, this olive mountain-side crowned with gray Bethlehem, in which a woman gave the world its best gift." He too, we mused, as our eyes wandered over the lands of Boaz, but a gleaner in the fields of Time,—yet whose harvests heap the future like a granary. Our way rolled through the billowy land, and we reached, at length, stern little Bethlehem, sitting, like a fortress, upon the mountain. A large church is its chief feature, and as you stand in its cold vastness, you would be in Italy, except for the swarthy faces, whose mysterious eyes follow your movements with grave curiosity. It is nothing but a large, cold church, garrisoned by a few friars, and seems discordant with that spot where nothing cold or bare should be. With very mingled emotions you descend toward the grotto, directly under the church, which makes Bethlehem famous. Winding with tapers down narrow steps, you emerge in the irregular excavations among the rock, and behold H |