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vague reminiscence haunts my mind, of a figure with a felt hat, a white cotton turban, and a check shooting coat, rushing up and down the hotel stairs at Beyrout, apparently knocking at every door and shouting to the inmates-for there are no newspapers in Beyrout to record arrivals and departures-"Good-bye, Smith; good-bye, Jones. I'm just off for Aleppo."

Images of gay cavaliers bounding from their ladies' bowers rose in my mind, I remember, as I heard those farewells; and I leaned, romantic, from the balcony-to see the felt hat, and white turban, and check apparel, surmounting a jaded beast, and following a train of pack horses slowly around the corner.

And so with oriental slowness, if not stateliness, the good little Verde Giovane rode out of Beyrout, and out of history.

III.

Che Bause Beautiful.

ARE you disappointed as you thread these streets, by these repulsive walls? Do you tremble lest the dream of Damascus be dissolved by Damascus itself?

But you have already learned, by pleasant experience, that the clumsy, black, forbidding balloons, which passed you in those Cairene streets, enveloped Cairene wives, and were thus only the coarse rind of Hesperidian fruit. Such, too, are the Damascus houses.

O little faith! each Damascus house is a Paradise. The streets know only the exterior of the outer walls, and forbid to the passenger even the suspicion of beauty. Happily for us and for you, there is a Jew in Damascus, —and may his tribe increase,-who is a St. Peter, and holds the keys of many heavens.

He led us to the true House Beautiful, a dream palace, one of those which we frequent, when we are children, with caliphs and ladies. Such a dwelling as you must needs fancy when you look through Lane's illustrated Arabian Nights, as through the mind of an Arabian Poet, arabesqued with dreamy fancies, such a pavilion as Tennyson has built in music, for Haroun El Rashid.

We turned suddenly from the unpromising street into a court, in whose centre played a fountain, surrounded with orange-trees, and from one side of which ascended a lofty staircase to a gallery overlooking the court. The orange-trees threw rich mosaics of shadow upon the pavement, and groups of men sat around, smoking tranquilly, as if they were only part of the furniture of the Among them were Druse Emirs from the Lebanon: Princes not princely enough to be admitted into the inner delights.

scene.

"It is a perfected Seville," said Leisurlie, as we pass

ed on and entered the inner court.

There, for the first time, I felt the just instinct of the Prophet in painting his Paradise from the materials furnished by the genius which he and the Easterns knew. The scene was a poem set to music. The light of the opaline day streamed into the spacious court as into a vase worthy of it. A large marble reservoir occupied the centre of the space, into which fountains of fairy device poured humming rills of water. The pavement was tesselated marble, polished to a glow. Huge pots of flowers stood near the walls, that blazed with all the brilliancy of positive color, and glistening, trailing and blossoming plants were ranged along the marble-margined fountain. Roses, lemons and orange-trees, grouped their foliage, clustered their flowers, and perfumed the

sun.

The light was not a glare, but a thick, odorous luminousness dashed with the cool dusk of shadows from the trees. Gazelles stood and ran in the court, filling the

sunny bliss with the most delicate grace of life; and among the fragrant trees birds sang,-why not the Bulbul, dying a melodious rose-death to crown our joy?

From the end of the court a broad, lofty staircase, with elaborately wrought balusters, ascended to a galleried recess, before which hung a vine of passion-flowers in blossom, transfigured in light, a tapestry of Paradise, and touching the pavement below, it trailed languidly upon the glossy marble.

Slightly raised from the level of the court and entirely open to it, were alcoves loftily-arched, carpeted, and divanned with luxurious stuffs. The sides and ceilings of the alcoves were painted in dreamy arabesque. There are two kinds of arabesque in these houses,-one is pannelled, carved in wood, and so elaborately gilded that the effect is of a tapestry of the richest camel's hair shawls. The other is flat painting,-the modern method,-gayer and brighter, but not so deeply rich and delicate. The former usually surrounds the base of the alcove or apartment. But the latter haunts the depths of the upper walls and the ceiling with suggestions as subtle as the melody of Eastern verse.

The rooms opened into the largest alcove. They were quite empty and resembled grottoes, with their marble pavements, and mosaics of colored marble in the wall, and at the farther end, a raised dais, spread with lounges where, under the arabesques, and in the sound of the falling water, the women lay in voluptuous repose, crusted with jewels and completing the Paradise.

IV.

Bouris..

"The night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away."

SUCH beautiful women we saw.

Not, of course, the Muslim wives, but Hebrews, whose beauty is more imperial.

Many of the finest houses in Damascus are those of Jews, who cling there as they do everywhere else, although they occasionally suffer persecutions of relentless severity. There are about five thousand Jews in Damascus, and they are often the chief financial officers of the Turkish Government. They live in a quarter of the city by themselves, and as we left the shabby street and entered the courts of their houses, those chapters of old romance which relate the hidden luxury of the Hebrews, returned to my mind and were justified.

The best of these houses have two courts, three alcoves opening upon the inner one. Their romantic beauty can hardly be imparted by any description, nor do I know

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