camping-ground, to gurgle in MacWhirter's ear with the guttural harshness that he understands as the welcome signal of rest, and to feel him, not without a growl of illhumor, quaking and rolling beneath you, and finally, with a half sudden start, sinking to the ground.

You tie his bent fore-knee together, with the halter which goes around his head; and you turn to see that the tent is not spread over stones, which would not stuff your pillow softly. Then, returning, you observe that MacWhirter with his fore-leg still bent and bound to his head, is limping upon the three serviceable legs to browse upon chance shrubs, and to assert his total independence of you, and contempt of your precautions.

Meanwhile, Khadra steps out of her palanquin, and while her father's camp is pitched, she shakes out the silken fulness of her shintyan, and strolls off upon the desert. The old Armenian slips the pad from the back of his white mare, for he does not ride in a saddle, and stands in every body's way, in his long, blue broadcloth kaftan, taking huge pinches of snuff.

The Commander, relieved of his arsenal, bustles among our Arabs, swearing at them lustily whenever he approaches the Howadji, apparently convinced that every thing is going well, so long as he makes noise enough.

"Therein not peculiar," murmurs the Pacha, rolled up in his huge woollen capote, and smoking a contemplative chibouque.

The tents are pitched, the smoke curls to the sky, and the howling wilderness is tamed by the domestic preparations of getting tea.

The sun also is tamed, our great romancer, our fervent poet, our glorious painter, who has made the day a poem and a picture, who has peopled memory with sweet and sad imagery, who, like Jesus, brought a sword, yet like him, has given us rest. He, too, is tamed, and his fervor is failing. Yet as he retires through the splendor of the vapory architecture of his pavilion in the West, he looks at us once more, like a king from his palace windows.

D

XI.

Ander the Syrian Stars.

So glides away the slow caravan of desert days.

But when they have passed over the western horizon, out of the East, come the soft-footed evening hours. The camels are tethered, the Arabs crone over the fire, one bursts into a wailing minor song. The night swallows the sound, and only the stars shine.

And even as you might vaguely discern the sheen of Persian silks, and scent the odor of rare fruits in a caravan from Bagdad, passing your camp in the moonlight, so through the twilight of reverie pass the stately forms of noble thoughts, and the night is perfumed with hopes that love the future.

-Like a night of meditation after a busy day, is the desert journey after our busy life.

And still, as in midnight musings, wherever you may be, your whole individual experience lies before you like a transparent lake, into which you look and see the coral and pearl of your childhood lying unchanged at the bottom, and above them, like gold fish that gleam and go, the restless ambitions of your youth,-and floating upon

the surface, the chips and weeds and fading flowers, like the chances of your present life, even so do they recur to you in your desert separation from your ordinary career, and there you can measure them and compare.

Under the Syrian stars, measuring, without the struggle of contact, the purposes of life, you renew your vows to the truth which life forgets; and dedicate anew to the unknown God, the altar of your heart that was sadly overgrown.

That, be sure, is "the improvement" of this long sermon in the wilderness. That is its permanent use to you as a man, however its picturesque and resplendent illustrations may have pleased you as a Scholar and a Poet. At that distance from the Babylons in which your life is led, and in which the building of Babels goes on so zealously, you can better estimate the aims and rewards and cordons bleus, promised by the builders to all diligent workmen.

Under the Syrian stars you can touch the earth again and renew your strength.

Knowing that the reputations and the cordon bleus are not awarded to the sincere, but to the successful, are you ready to serve the veiled Goddess,—the inscrutable Isis, -and let success go?

But if it is hard to say so here, where the shackles of custom are loosened,-hard, although your whole heart should cry within you, as Hamlet's father, from the ground, "Swear !"-yet how much harder will it be when these stars have set to you forever, and you are again confronted with our immitigable Mammon.

We love success, but who are the successful?

Cresus, or Plato, or Napoleon?

For though a man should heap up millions, if he cannot use it, if it goes foolishly, and the world is not alleviated-if he is his own pander and not God's almoner, then money is but a cumbrous armor, which he has rivetted upon his limbs and which prevents his fighting.

Success is something more, I dream in the desert, than gratified vanity or the applause of toadies and zanies.

It is sad to see the Poets shrink before the so-called practical men, because it is an image of the triumph of sense and of material things. I do not quarrel with the violet that it is not a rose. That a man has no love of Letters, or of Science, or of Art, is no reproach to him; it is a misfortune. But that he regards those who have those loves as unwise, dreamy and impracticable men, is the mole's complaint of the eagle. Tasso skulked about the garden of the Villa d'Este, reproved by the sharp common sense of the Duke. But if you rebuke Tasso for skulking, do not forget that it was only the awkwardness of a young nobleman before his exact and accomplished valet, as I remember seeing a gentleman unused to Clubs, confused in a London Club House, by the bland assurance of the smooth flunkey at the door.

-Who, then, are the successful?

Was Shakspeare successful because he was the greatest of Poets, and sowed those twilight groves of meditation in which all men love to walk? I fear no more