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~ EOTHEN; OR, TRACES OF TRAVEL BROUGHT HOME FROM THE EAST, 39
ed, and that tremulously, but his fiery eyes spoke
out their triumph in long and loud hurrahs: “I,
too, am a Christian. My foes are the foes of the
English. We are all one people, and Christ is
our King.”
If I poorly deserved, yet I liked, this claim
of brotherhood. Not all the warnings which I
heard against their rascality could hinder me
from feeling kindly toward my tellow-Christians
in the East. English travellers, from a habit,
perhaps, of depreciating sectarians in their own
‘country, are apt to look down upon the Oriental
Christians as being ‘‘ dissenters ” from the estab-
lished religion of 2» Mohammedan empire. I
‘never did thus. By a natural perversity of dis-
position, which my nurse-maids called contrairi-
uess, I felt the more strongly for my creed when
‘I saw it despised among men. — I quite tolerated
the Christianity of Mohammedan countries, not-
withstanding its humble aspect and the damaged
character of its followers: I went farther, and
extended some sympathy toward those who, with
all the claims of superior intellect, learning, and
industry, were kept down under the heel of the
Mussulmans by reason of their having our faith.
I heard, as I fancied, the faint echo of an old
Crusader’s conscience, that whispered and said,
“*Common cause!” The impulse was, as you
may suppose, much too feeble to bring me into
trouble; it merely influenced my actions in a
way thoroughly characteristic of this poor slug-
gish century—that is, by making me speak al-
most as civilly to the followers of Christ as I
did to their Mohammedan foes.
This “ Holy” Damascus, this ‘‘ earthly para-
dise” of the Prophet, so fair to the eyes that he
dared not trust himself to tarry in her blissful
shades, she is a city of hidden palaces, of copses,
and gardens, and fountains, and bubbling streams.
The juice of her life is the gushing and ice-cold
‘torrent that tumbles from the snowy sides of
Anti-Lebanon. Close along on the river’s edge,
through seven sweet miles of rustling boughs
and deepest shade, the city spreads out her whole
length; as a man falls flat, face forward, on the
brook, that he may drink and drink again, so
Damascus, thirsting forever, lies down with her
lips to the stream and clings to its rushing waters.
The chief places of public amusement, or,
rather, of public relaxation, are the baths and
the great café; this last, which is frequented at
night by most of the wealthy men, and by many
of the humbler sort, consists of a number of
sheds, very simply framed, and built in a laby-
rinth of running streams, which foam and roar
on every side. The place is lit up in the sim-
plest manner by numbers of small, pale lamps,
strung upon loose cords, and so suspended branch
to branch that the light, though it looks so quiet
among the darkening foliage, yet leaps and bright-
ly flashes as it falls upon the troubled waters.
All around, and chiefly upon the very edge of
the torrents, groups of people are tranquilly seat-
ed. They all drink coffee and inhale the cold
fumes of the nargile; they talk rather gently the
one to the other, or else are silent. A father
will sometimes have two or three of his boys
around him; but the joyousness of an Oriental
child is all of the sober sort, and never disturbs
the reigning calm of the land.
It has been generally understood, I believe,
that the houses of Damascus are more sumptu-
ous than those of any other city in the East,
Some of these—said to be the most magnificent
in the place—I had an opportunity of seeing.
Every rich man’s house stands detached from
its neighbors, at the side of a garden; and it is
from this cause, no doubt, that the city has hith-
erto escaped destruction. You know some parts
of Spain, but you have never, I think, been in
Andalusia; if you had, I could easily show you
-the interior of 2 Damascene house by referring
you to the Alhambra, or Alcanzar, of Seville.
‘The lofty rooms are adorned with a rich inlay-
ing of many colors, and illuminated writing on
the walls. ‘he floors are of marble, One side of
any room intended for noonday retirement is gen-
erally laid open to a quadrangle, in the centre of
which there dances the jet of a fountain. There
is no furniture that can interfere with the cool,
palace-like emptiness of the apartments. - A di-
yan (which is a low and doubly broad sofa) runs
round the three walled sides of the room; a few
Persian carpets (which ought to be called Per-
sian rugs, for that is the word which indicates
their shape and dimension) are sometimes thrown
about near the divan. They are placed without
order, the one partly lapping over the other; and
thus disposed, they give to the room an appear-
ance of uncaring luxury. Except these (of which
I saw few, for the time was summer and fiercely
hot), there is nothing to obstruct the welcome
air; and the whole of the marble floor, from one
divan to the other, and from the head of the
chamber across to the murmuring fountain, is
thoroughly open and free.
So simple as this is Asiatic luxury! The Ori-
ental is not a contriving animal—there is noth-
ing intricate in his magnificence. The impossi-
bility of handing down property from father to
son for any long period consecutively seems to
prevent the existence of those traditions by which,
with us, the refined modes of applying wealth are
made known to its inheritors. We know that
in England a newly-made rich man cannot, by
taking thought and spending money, obtain even
the same looking furniture as a gentleman. The
complicated character of an English establish-
ment allows room for subtle distinctions between
that which is comme il faut and that which is
not. All such refinements are unknown in the
East; the pasha and the peasant haye the same
tastes. The broad, cold marble floor; the sim-
ple couch; the air freshly waving through a
shady chamber; a verse of the Koran embla-
zoned on the walls ; the sight and the sound of
falling water; the cold, fragrant smoke of the
nargile; and a small collection of wives and
children in the inner apartments—all these, the
utmost enjoyments of the grandee, are yet such
as to be appreciable by the humblest Mussulman
in the empire. .
But its gardens are the delight—the delight
and the pride of Damascus. They are not the
formal parterres which you might expect from
the Oriental taste; they rather bring back to
your mind the memory of some dark old shrub-
bery in our northern isle that has been charm-
ingly ‘‘un-kept up” for many and many a day.
When you see a rich wilderness of wood in de-
cent England, it is like enough that you see it
with some soft regrets. The puzzled old wom-
an at the lodge can give small account of ‘‘the
family.” She thinks itis ‘‘Italy” that has made
the whole circle of her world so gloomy and sad,
house-keeper, but you make your way on by the
stables. You remember that gable, with all its
neatly nailed trophies of fitches, and hawks, and
owls, now slowly falling to pieces; you remem-
ber that stable, and that; but the doors are all
fastened that used to be standing ajar, the paint
of things painted is. blistered and cracked, grass
grows in the yard. ' Just there, in October morn-
ings, the keeper would wait with the dogs and
the guns—no keeper now. You hurry away,
and gain the small wicket that used to open to
the touch of a lightsome hand: it is fastened
with a padlock (the only new-looking thing), and
is stained with thick, green damp. You climb
it, and bury yourself in the deep shade, and strive
but lazily with the tangling briers, and stop for
long minutes to judge and determine whether you
will creep beneath the long boughs and make
them your archway, or whether, perhaps, you will
lift your heel and tread them down underfoot.
Long doubt, and scarcely to be ended till you
wake from the memory of those days when the
path was clear, and chase that phantom of a
muslin sleeve that once weighed warm upon your
arm,
Wild as that the nighest woodland of a de-
serted home in England, but without its sweet
sadness, is the sumptuous garden of Damascus.
Forest-trees, tall and stately enough, if you could
see their lofty crests, yet lead a tussling life of
it below, with their branches struggling against
strong numbers of bushes and wilful shrubs.
The shade upon the earth is black as night,
High, high above your head, and on every side
all down to the ground, the thicket is hemmed
in and choked up by the interlacing boughs that
You avoid the house in lively dread of a lone,
droop with the weight of roses, and load the slow
air with their damask breath.* ‘There are no
other flowers. Here and there there are patches
of ground made clear from the cover; and these
are cither carelessly planted with some common
and useful vegetable, or else are left free to the
wayward ways of nature, and bear rank weeds,
moist-looking and cool to your eyes, and fresh-
ening the sense with their earthy and bitter fra-
grance. There is a lane opened through the
thicket, so broad in some places that you can
pass, along side by side—in some so narrow (tha
shrubs are forever encroaching) that you ought,
if you can, to go on the first and hold back the
bough of the rose-tree. And through this wil-
derness there tumbles a loud, rushing stream,
which is halted at last in the lowest corner of
the garden, and there tossed up in a fountain by
the side of the simple alcove. ‘This is all.
Never for an instant will the people of Da-
mascus attempt to separate the idea of bliss from
these wild gardens and rushing waters. Even
where your best affections are concerned, and
you—prudent preachers ‘‘hold hard,” and turn
aside when they come near the mysteries of the
happy state, and we (prudent preachers too), we
will hush our voices and never reveal to finite
beings the joys of the ‘‘ Earthly Paradise.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
PASS OF THE LEBANON,
‘*Tue ruins of Baalbec!” Shall I scatter the
vague, solemn thoughts and all the airy phanta-
sies which gather together when once those words
are spoken, that I may give you instead, tall col-
umns, and measurements true, and phrases built
with ink? No, no; the glorious sounds shall
still float on as of yore, and still hold fast upon
your brain with their own dim and infinite
meaning.
Come! Baalbec is over: I got ‘‘ rather well”
out of that.
The pass by which I crossed the Lebanon is
like, I think, in its features to one which you
must know, namely, that of the Foorca in the
Bernese Oberland. - For a great part of the way
I toiled rather painfully through the dazzling
snow, but the labor of ascending added to the
excitement with which I looked for the summit
of the pass, ‘The time came. There was a min-
ute in the which I saw nothing but the steep
white shoulder of the mountain, and there was
another minute, and that the next, which showed
me a nether heaven of fleecy clouds that floated
along far down in the air beneath me, and showed
me beyond the breadth of all Syria west of the
Lebanon, But chiefly I clung with my eyes to
the dim, steadfast line of the sea which closed
my utmost view. I had grown well used of late
to the people and the scenes of forlorn Asia—
well used to tombs and ruins, to silent cities and
deserted plains, to tranquil men and women sad-
ly veiled; and now that I saw the even plain of
the sea, I leaped with an easy leap to its yonder
shores, and saw all the kingdoms of the West in
that fair path that could lead me from out of this
silent land straight on into shrill Marseilles, or
round by the pillars of Hercules to the crash and
roar of London. My place upon this dividing
barrier was as a man’s puzzling station in eterni-
ty, between the birthless Past and the Future that
has no end, Behind me I left an old decrepit
world—religions dead and dying—calm tyran>
nies expiring in silence— women hushed and
swathed, and turned into waxen dolls —love
flown, and in its stead mere royal and ‘‘para-
dise” pleasures, Before me there waited glad
bustle and strife—love itself, an emulous game—
religion a cause and a controversy, well smitten
and well defended—men governed by reasons and
suasion of speech—wheels going—steam buzz-
ing—a mortal race and a slashing pace, and tho
devil taking the hindmost—taking me, by Jove!
(for that was my inner care), if I lingered too
long upon the diflicult pass that leads from
thought to action,
* The rose-trees which I saw were all of the kind
We call “damask ;” they grow to an immense height
and size, , oO .