aside opposing flowers, whose souls, by that pressure, exhale in passionate odors to his brain,-look in upon his love.

-"But a simple white muslin and a rose ?”—

Ah! Traddles, they are sweet and pretty, and they suit the "dearest girl." But the Eastern Beauty is another glory than the pale sweetness of your Blonde.

I

Khadra went out, and returned with Sherbet. touched her finger as I took my glass,—I drained it, and in my cup, her beauty was the melted pearl.

She was silent as a phantom. When she had performed the graceful services of hospitality, she sat in a corner, where the sunlight streamed all over her, and looked at me with the large eyes. Gazelle-eyes, perhaps, the Poets would have called them, not so much because the eyes of Gazelles are intrinsically very beautiful, but because every association with the animal is so graceful and delicate, so wild and unattainable.

The Pacha rose, but I lingered. I was loth to lose that strain of the Eastern poem. Ilingered—but turning, slowly followed the Pacha, and that vision follows me forever.

Artoosh forever rides away in the Syrian moonlight,and after the bon giorno is said to the mother, and the last smile is lighting the pleasant face of the old Armenian,— Khadra stands in the sunshine of Jerusalem, looking at me as if the world were a dream, while I press the faded flower to my lips, and look, but do not murmur,—

"Addio Khadra."

XIV.

Coming Away.

"The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land,

"The Fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines, with the tender grape, give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away."

So we sang with Solomon as a soft spring day led us out of the gate of Jerusalem. Our route lay northward toward Damascus, and we paused on the stony way looking back upon the holy city, from the point whence Mary and her child, coming from Nazareth first beheld it.

It is, perhaps, the finest view of Jerusalem. The broad foreground of olive groves narrows into the gorge of the valley of Jehoshaphat, and the gentle rise of the city from Mount Moriah to Mount Zion, reveals the mass of domes and roofs relieved by an infrequent minaret, and based in the green groves of the mosque of Omar. The eye clings to the aerial elegance of the dome, and tries to fashion the architectural splendors which flashed from that very spot upon the eyes of the Nazarenes.

Then returned the same vision which had greeted our

blood, and milk, and other consolations for the half-idolatrous feeling of the church which canonized her.

I say half-idolatrous, because, although the interest in relics is very intelligible, and every man would be glad to have an original manuscript page of Shakspeare,—yet the religious appeal through relics rather than symbols, when addressed to an unrefined and unspiritual nature, is sensual and not spiritual. The fact is lost in the form. The Roman peasant kneeling before the statue of Jupiter, which now stands for St. Peter in his church at Rome, does really worship that identical bronze, as any spectator by observation and conversation may discover-although he is taught by the Church that the statue is only a representation. But deeply as his mind is moved by the statue, when his eyes, and hands, and forehead are touched by the actual bones of a saint, does any man doubt that he ascribes to them, per se, a direct influence upon his spiritual condition?

The Empress Helena was recently emancipated from Paganism, and regarded the new faith in a pagan spirit. The traveller gets very tired of her doings in Palestine, feeling, as he must feel, that, although a Romish Saint, she was very little of a Christian, if measured by any other than the external standards. He is quite able to believe the naïve story of the guides at Jerusalem,—that Helena sought everywhere for the cross but vainly, until, "after spending a great deal of money, she found the true cross.'

Many are the modern travellers who tread closely in the path of the Empress, anxious to see the footprints and

nails, writing huge volumes upon the authenticity of localities, and losing, like most other critics, the spirit in

the science.

It is not necessary to the satisfaction of Syrian travel, to settle the disputed points of position and tradition. The great points are forever settled. Jerusalem, the Jordan, Nazareth and Bethlehem, and, in general, the whole country. Why vex your mind with the study of the surprising erudition that has been lavished upon the question whether the Calvary Chapel in the Church of the Sepulchre is the identical spot of the crucifixion,— knowing, as you do, that here, in or around Jerusalem, Christ was crucified? The surprising erudition displayed will forever forbid the solution of the question. And even were this spot determined to be the true one, after a single glance of reverence and curiosity, you would not willingly look again upon the tawdry disfiguration of the place.

To a man of thought and just religious feeling, it is the contemplation of the landscape and of all the external local influences with which Jesus Christ conversed which is the true point of interest in the Holy Land. The curiosity that hunts the shape, and size, and direction of his footprints, is far from the sympathy of reverence. It is natural to a certain degree, and honorable. But pushed to furious dispute and elaborate research, it becomes petty and wearisome.

-Is it suggested that it strengthens the evidences of Christianity?

But, on the other hand, does Christianity require any such evidences as this?

-Is it thought to influence the authenticity of the narratives?

But is not the essential substance of those narratives entirely independent of localities?

In any case these decisions must all be speculative and relative. It is only quarrelling with great agony of argument, whether the robe of an emperor was edged with red or purple,-and some ingenious commentator suddenly breaks in with the theory that the emperor had no robe at all.

In Palestine, as elsewhere in the world, wherever the peculiar aspects of the climate, the landscape, and the life of the people harmonize with tradition, it is better to believe than to doubt. The Rev. Dr. Duck was dissatisfied with the identity of the tomb of Lazarus, because of the reason already related. On the other hand, the situation of Bethany and the general character of tombs at that period once ascertained, it was not unfair to suppose, for obvious reasons, that tradition had cherished the precise locality. It was simply easier to believe than to disbelieve. And the Pacha feared that the secret of the Rev. Dr. Duck's incredulity lay in the fact that the tradition was "Romish."

If this itching wish to thrust your finger in the hole in the side haunts you constantly-look up and look around you. These are the same eternal sky and mountains his eyes beheld. Whether he suffered here or there,whether this is Pontius Pilate's house or not-whether this is the Via Dolorosa or some other street, you know not, and can never know. If your faith relies in the slight