and immediately wrote to her requesting her interference. She sent a note to the pacha, and an order was speedily transmitted to his soldiers to set the camels and their cargo at liberty.

Lady Stanhope lived at Damaseus for twelve months in a handsome house in the suburbs; and often, when she rode out in her Mameluke dress, the people would flock around her in admiration. When on her journey to Palmyra, she was pursued by a hostile tribe of Arabs for a whole day; and on the day when the Palmyrenes hailed her as the queen of the ruined city, she felt, no doubt, vivid and undissembled pleasure, being the first lady who had ever achieved such a journey; and her excellent horsemanship and capability of enduring fatigue, soon made the deserts a home to her. The Orientals never speak of her but with the highest respect. It is certain that a belief is entertained of her being of the highest rank: some even say she is a queen. She distributes occasionally presents of rich arms to the chiefs; and, when an Arab courser is sent her, frequently rewards the bearer with a thousand piastres. She is generous, hospitable, and undoubtedly of that superior and commanding mind, which is sure to gain an ascendancy among the Orientals. Yet it is difficult to discover any attractions in her present way of life at Marilius. The romance and delight of exploring the East, and seeing its natives bow down to her, have long since given place to timid and secluded habits and feelings, and the dreams of superstition. She is, however, firmly resolved never to return to her native country; her avowed contempt for her own sex, and

their effeminate habits and feelings, is not likely to conciliate them.

Although she refuses, from the " real or supposed ill treatment of one or two English travellers, to see any of her countrymen, she has more than once been their benefactor. On one occasion she presented a traveller at Damascus with two thousand piastres, whose money had failed him in a journey from India. When an unfortunate

Frenchman, a man of science, was shot by some Arabs from behind the rocks, as he was sketching a scene in some of the mountains in the interior at a considerable distance, she was at a great expense in recovering his papers and books for his relations, and procuring for them every intelligence.

Her residence in this country was entirely the effect of accident the vessel in which she sailed being shipwrecked on the coast, she was so much struck with the beauty of the country and climate, as to resolve to make it her residence. Had she foreseen that a few years would rob her of her hardihood of body and daring of mind, and confine her, nervous and dispirited, the solitude of Marilius, she surely would never have made it her place of refuge. What resting-place can such a spot be for her powerful mind, that once took part in the highest councils of the state, during her residence with her uncle, and exercised, it is said, no small influence on the destinies of Europe? It was perhaps the total change in her situation caused by the death of that great ministeri the passing from his society and confidence to that of other spirits, who assimilated but little with her own masculine and capricious mind

and also her not being on cordial

terms with many of the members of her family, joined to her passion for enterprise and travel, that led her altogether to withdraw from a world whose smiles were now in part changed into coldness and indifference. On much of the society in which she then mingled, comprising the most talented and elevated characters of the day, she sometimes takes pleasure in dwelling in terms either of keen satire or of unqualified eulogy. Her eloquence in conversation is considerable, when she is animated with the subject, though her voice is neither very melodious nor feminine; and when roused, which is but rare, to anger, it may be said (in the eastern expression) that "her wrath is terrible."

ruin,

On one of the days of her residence at Palmyra, she gave a kind of fête to the Bedouins. The great sheik, with his tribe of Palmyrene Arabs, constantly resides at the Their habitations are fixed the great temple; they are very well disposed, and civil in their manners, and their young women are remarkable, above all the other tribes, for their beauty. It was a lovely day, and the youth of both sexes, dressed in their gayest habiliments, were seated in rows on the fragments of the pillars, friezes, and other ruins with which the ground was covered. Her ladyship, in her eastern dress, valked among them, addressed

them with

proceeded to confer more decided marks of sovereignty, but they were declined. They speak of her now with the utmost veneration and respect. They also retain another mark of her bounty, one which, out of regard for her countrymen, . she might well have spared. The great sheik received from her a paper, in her hand-writing, in which she directs him to demand a thousand piastres of every traveller who visits the ruin. The sheik never fails to enforce this counsel, and displays the paper, with the addition, that the great lady, the queen, said that the English travellers were rich, and that they ought to pay well for the privilege of seeing Palmyra. This enormous tax, which it is impossible to escape, causes several tra- ! vellers to leave Syria without seeing the finest ruin in the world. One, indeed, of no small eminence, absolutely refused to pay it, tell ing the sheik, who drew the mandate from his bosom, that the great lady had no right whatever over his purse, and that she showed little wisdom in leaving such a mandate in his hands. He passed four days at Palmyra, and would have left it as wise as he came, if he had not made a compromise with the chief, and consented to pay half the sum. The Arabs, though they would not personally injure him, did not suffer him to leave the hut, and at last placed!: some wood and fagots round the walls, and, setting them on fire, filled the habitation of the travel-1ler with such clouds of smoke, that he could neither breathe nor see, and was obliged to give way. This injudicious and needless written mandate from the noble visitor to the chief, will, no doubt, be handed down from sheik, to sheik for many

1

of the choicest wines and delicacies for her visitors. With the Arab sheik she sips coffee and smokes a pipe, seated on the carpet, and converses with oriental animation. The rich arms that are at times sent as presents to the various chiefs, are most acceptable to them; they prefer those of England to their own manufacture, but they look cold on them except they are embossed in gold or silver. Large chests, full of English pistols and other arms, richly ornamented, are sometimes sent to Marilius. One was waiting shipment at Alexandria a few months before for the same place, and was to be accompanied by a collection of teacups and saucers from that port, as the old stock was nearly exhausted.

As may be imagined, lady Hester Stanhope is not very popular with the few European ladies settled in the East. One of them, a resident at Sidon, asserted that those peculiar manners and habits would lose half their charm to their possessor, if they ceased to excite notoriety. That she chanced to reside once for some weeks in the same house with her ladyship; and never manifesting the slightest curiosity or interest respecting her, the former became uneasy and displeased, and made many and pointed inquiries who the stranger was. This was a French-woman's tale, prompted a little, perhaps, by envy, though this is the last passion the life of the noble recluse need excite in the bosom of a pretty woman. Indeed, the softer sex are seldom welcome visitors at the residence. When a nobleman and his lady, during their eastern travels, went there in the expectation of being gratified with an interview with its illustrious tenant,

they found she had flown, a few hours before their arrival, on one of her Arab coursers, leaving orders with the housekeeper to receive the visitors with the most attentive hospitality.

Yet the door that is often closed to the rich and curious, is ever open to the poor and distressed. It would fill many pages to detail every generous and noble action of the recluse. The sick are furnished with medicine, and the poor and wretched of the neighbourhood are never sent empty away.

If it be asked if the Orientals have derived any benefit from the residence of her ladyship among them, in point of information, or manners, &c. it may be replied in the negative. It was said at one time she was engaged in instructing and civilizing a tribe of Bedouins, and that these children of the sun were making rapid improvements. In the science of flattery, and a rooted veneration for gold and the hand that bestows it bountifully, these Syrians are equal to any of their fellow-creatures; but in all other respects they are, and will be, as the prophecy was spoken of them, a wild and reckless people, and artful as the father of lies." The prince of the Druses received a Bible with thanks from a missionary who visited him, and a few days after sent a body of his troops to plunder one or two Greek monasteries. Perfectly tolerant in her religious sentiments, and surrounded by at least six or seven different creeds of Christianity, besides the Mussulman and the Druse, her ladyship shows no marked preference for one more than another; were it otherwise, Marilius would soon be inundated by Turkish santons, or imauns, Maronite, Greek, or Armenian priests. The mis

sionaries have tried of late to engage her powerful countenance in their cause, but in vain. Of the cause of the unhappy Greeks she is a warm and decided supporter; and, more than once, she has stepped in between lawless oppression and those who were about to become its victims. Long will the Eng lish name receive additional vene ration in the East on her account; and were the gates of Marilius but thrown open to the reception of her countrymen, it would be the most luxurious resting-place, and her influence the surest safeguard, in the land of the East. Yet the strict etiquette preserved there, though unfelt by the stronger, falls not so lightly on the gentler, sex. Two young ladies were invited, from a former friendship to the father, who was an English gentleman, to spend a few weeks at Marilius. They were delighted at the thoughts of so rare a privilege, and set out with anxious hearts. Their reception was most kind and friendly, and the first few days passed gaily away; but ungifted with t

the peculiar resources of their hostess, the hours soon began to move heavily. No amusements, no change of scene, often no sound but the wind moaning through the few trees on the summit of the hill. During the greater part of the day, the only faces they saw

were Arab ones; at night, and not till then, they were admitted to an interview with her ladyship, seated à la Turque, in her Mameluke dress, who conversed with perfect good-humour, and ridiculed them sometimes for their effeminacies and weaknesses. They were not able to ride the mettled Arab coursers through mountain roads and passes, over which, without a skilful hand, a lady unaccustomed to the country, might well break her neck. When any illustrious Turk or Arab showed his bearded face and turbaned head before the door, the two visitors, so far from having their curiosity indulged with an interview, were bidden to confine themselves closely to their chamber, and not to look through the window, lest the follower of the prophet might catch a glimpse of their features, and the strict etiquette of the place be thus violated; and they left it with feelings like those of a nun leaving the walls of her monastery.

The other residence of lady Stanhope is called Mar Abbas, and is situated farther in the interior, and during the winter is a preferable situation to the one near Sidon, and has more wood to shelter it. When any infectious disorder prevails on the coast, she always retires there.

Whitchurch, where he received more than the rudiments of his classical education, he was sent to Dr. Bristowe, a gentleman who took pupils near town; and in the