pressed to the doctor, Desgenettes, the wish that they should be so put to death, and therefore as far as the general himself is concerned, there only remains to be discussed the different degrees of criminality between the wish and the execution of the deed.

Our travellers proceeded across the plain of Saron, the land of promise of Isaiah, to Ramleh, the renowned tower of which M. Marmier says travellers must hasten to see, or it will soon be crumbled to the ground. "The Turks repair nothing, not being able to raise themselves from their moral ruin, how should they be expected to concern themselves with material ruins ?" M. Marmier, notwithstanding Dr. Robinson's lengthened and learned objections, believes in the identity of Ramleh and Arimathea, and in this point we agree with him.

The convent of Ramleh, strange to say, did not manifest any greater degree of hospitality towards our chivalrous Roman Catholics than to other less favoured travellers who have preceded them. The party actually could not obtain a bit of bread at this monastery so notorious for its churlish rudeness. Nor was their reception by the terrible Abou Gosh much more satisfactory. The Highland chieftain had a carpet spread for the party at the threshhold of his house, and treated them to coffee, grapes, and water. But still the impression left by this veteran tributecollector-the terror of a travelling Titmarsh-was, on the whole, pleasing and agreeable to the Frenchmen. "Abou Gosh," says M. Marmier, "is a very amiable brigand, one of those brigands who make the ornament of an opera and the fortune of a romancer." Poor fellow, he is now in the less amiable clutches of the Turks. M. Marmier identifies Abou Gosh's residence at Kuriyat al Enab with Anathoth, the birth-place and home of Jeremiah. Robinson places the site at Anata, near Jerusalem, and apparently with more justice, for the place in question was, according to Josephus, only twenty stadia from the Holy City.

Ascending the hills that domineer over the Valley, so called, of the Turpentine Trees, gray walls, towers, and then a dome were seen to rise out of fields of sand. As when Eustace approached the ancient capital of catholicism, his postilion first cried out "Roma!" so M. Marmier's guide exclaimed "Jerusalem!" and the party followed him in profound silence. "Not one of us," says the Frenchman, "could have added a word to such a name.'

Once within the holy city, M. Marmier alludes, in tones of natural regret, to the disputes of the several religious communities, Roman, Armenian, and Greek, which so frequently disturb the peace that ought to exist undisturbed under the shadow of the sacred porch.

“As to the Protestants," he says, "their efforts to obtain a footing in the Holy Land have as yet been totally unsuccessful. Their episcopate, richly paid by Prussia and England, has not obtained the slightest importance, and their missionaries, with the large allowances made to them by the Biblical Societies, have made no converts. If Protestantism is still destined to extend its conquest in any direction, I do not think that it is in the East, where every thing that there is innate in the popular tendencies, is radically opposed to the aridity of this scholastic dogma. It is also a thing far too audacious, to go and repudiate miracles upon the soil of miracles, and to abolish the worship of the Virgin, between the grotto of Nazareth and the manger of Bethlehem." When the members of the Scotch deputation went in search of Golgotha, not finding it, they comforted their religious prejudices by expressing the pleasure that was derived from reflecting that the turf that was stained

with the blood of Immanuel, and the rocky tomb where he lay, are left unprofaned by the followers of a blind and wicked superstition.

M. Marmier, on the other hand, comforts himself with at least a more amiable and pleasurable feeling, that he embraced the actual stone on which the cross lay when our Saviour was for our sakes nailed to it, and he carries his enthusiasm so far as to relate that a Protestant geologist having visited the spot, and having for a long time' contemplated the cleft in the rock, became a convert to the Romish church. The visit of a Roman catholic to Jerusalem presents us with a form of ceremony observed by pilgrims which is worth extracting. At each station it is to be observed they chaunt a hymn or recite a prayer, thus

"At the Chapel of the Flagellation, the hymn, Trophæa Cruci Mystica;' at that of the prison, Jam Crucem propter Hominem;' at that of the distribution of garments, Ecce nunc Joseph Mysticus;' at that of Saint Helena, 'Fortem virili pectore laudemus omnes Helenam;' at that of the Holy Cross, Crux fidelis inter omnes;' at that of Calvary, Vexilla regis prodeunt; at the Stone of Unction, the Pange, lingua;' at the gate of the Monument of the Holy Sepulchre, Aurora lucis rutilat.'

But at the Holy Sepulchre itself, "they remain motionless and dumb, the hands joined, the head lowered, heart and mind confounded before the majesty of the Saint of Saints."

The olive trees on the Mount, M. Marmier is prepared to believe to be the identical trees under the shade of which our Saviour reposed; and he visited the site of the tree that revolved with the sun to shade the vir

gin and the child. M. Marmier's pilgrimage almost revives in us indeed all the interest of those of the middle ages, when the pious wanderers used to visit the tree upon which Zaccheus ascended to see Jesus go by, the fig-tree on which Judas hung himself, the altar upon which Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, and the very stones by which St. Stephen suffered martyrdom.

We

M. Marmier never loses, as we have before gently intimated, an opportunity of ridiculing or calumniating the English. Strange thing that they are the only visitors to the Holy Land, to raise their voice against whom, Frenchmen and Americans forget all the various nations by whom they are surrounded, and all the associations and reminiscences sanctified by age or by holiness! No English writer is turned aside at every step in the Holy Land to consider what the French or Americans have done there, except it is to quote in terms of admiration a passage from Chateaubriand or Lamartine, or to give the authority of the learned Robinson, but M. Marmier ridicules in a mass all English Oriental tourists. can truly say, as far as we are ourselves concerned, however, that we never heard of four Englishmen hiring for four pounds English, fifteen Arabs to guide them to the Jordan, who had no right to act as guides; allowing them to steal sheep from the poor peasants on the wayside for their accommodation, and then standing by and allowing their guides to be sabred in their presence by the sheikh of the district, without a hand lifted in their defence or a word spoken in their favour. Three officers of the chivalrous Belle Poule, we are to suppose, were also present upon this gallant occasion.

Returning to the coast at Jaffa, our travellers proceeded southwards to Ascalon, where a version of Lady Stanhope's explorations is given, which is actually more creditable to that lady than the explanations given by her

physician. At Ascalon they obtained Arab guides to conduct them along the coast to Egypt, in six days, at the expense of a hundred and thirty piastres (or about 11. 6s.) for each camel, and one hundred piastres (17.) tribute for the Bedouins. This, he says, was accomplished by letting the Arabs know that they were not Englishmen. We suspect the Arabs did not require to be informed of that fact. The latter appear, indeed, to have made veritable ninnies of the august travellers. Some Bedouins are described as coming to them to claim their tribute, agitating their lances and guns in the most terrific manner. Others came in more humble attitudes, on foot, naked, and unarmed. To these latter desperate claimants of tribute, who stated that they had received ten francs (paras?) from an English traveller, the Arabian guide addressed himself in the following language:

"The English,' he answered, gravely, as he caressed his beard with the satisfaction of an orator who feels himself in the vein (with the complacency of a wily sheikh who is laughing in his beard,' M. Marmier ought to have said), 'the English might, if they liked, give two dollars a head to the Bedouins. They had nothing better to do. But we were French, and the French do not travel so. They are the friends of Syria, and of Egypt. The Pashawhen they go to see him-presents them with his best pipe, and Mehemet Ali invites them to be seated on his divan. They have their pockets full of letters of Cadis and of firmans of the Grand Signor. If the slightest injustice is committed towards them, they have it in their power to send to the village where they have been offended a whole army of Kawasses. Their Sultan commands more soldiers than there are branches of palm-trees in Egypt, and they have in every town consuls, whose feet the Beys are too happy to kiss. When Frenchmen are met with on the road, you can only humbly ask them for a present; if they grant it, Allah be praised; if they refuse it, take it with resignation. When they have an idea in their heads, nothing in the world can turn them from it; and when they give an order, the devil himself is obliged to obey them.'

M. Marmier tells us that this discourse is written en premier Paris. It is, indeed, richly adapted for the Badauds des Boulevards. We can positively see the old sheikh before us, making his oration to the naked, miserable beggars in the desert, while four august Frenchmen are waiting to listen complacently to the praises of their nation, thus pompously delivered before so respectable an audience.

Arrived at Cairo, M. Marmier says ;

"The streets do not give to the stranger the same deception as those of Constantinople; so splendid from without, so narrow and miserable within. The streets of Cairo are, it is true, for the most part, tortuous, dark, imbedded sometimes the one into the other, like the alleys of a labyrinth, and traversed in certain places by subterranean passages, where one cannot do better than give one-self up to the sagacity of the donkey; but they are clean, regularly watered and swept; and in the place of the frightful paving of Constantinople, and of the stone ladders of Galata and Pera, we find a level and firm soil, on which we can walk without fatigue. The houses which border the streets are also generally higher and better built than those of the capital of Turkey. Every moment the eye rests with pleasure upon a façade covered with arabesques, upon a window surrounded by a wooden trellice-work, which by the lightness of its details and the elegance of its structure, makes one forget the jealousy which has placed this barrier between the interior of the house and the curiosity of the passenger. A little beyond is a fountain of marble sculptured on its whole surface by a skilful hand,-there a mosque, whose majestic porch and deep arcades fill one with admiration. Above its vast precincts rises a minaret, ornamented with charming carvings and lace-like balco

nies, less imposing in its aërial elevation than the spire of our Gothic cathedrals, but often not less graceful."

M. Marmier ridicules the English for travelling at their leisure across the desert, and, arrived at Cairo, he comments in equally ill-natured sarcasm upon the haste and hurry of the overland journey. After a peep at Mehemet Ali, of whose vivacious and intelligent countenance, the fire of his discriminating eye, and clever and animated conversation, M. Marmier speaks in terms of just appreciation-after showing that Egypt owes its modern civilisation to France and Frenchmen, and after being dragged, nolens volens, up the Pyramids, by rude Arabs, our travellers floated down the Nile to Alexandria in a sailing boat, which they hired in preference to the steamer, crowded with disagreeable Englishmen.

Of Alexandria and its environs M. Marmier says ;

"The environs of Alexandria, so arid and infertile a century ago, are now refreshed by the waters of the Mahmudiyah, and diversified by gardens which excel by their smiling aspect the verses which an Arabian poet formerly consecrated to them. Important works have also been carried on in the interior of the town. The Turkish quarter has been enlarged and the streets widened. The Frank quarter, which in 1824 only contained a few habitations of humble aspect, is in the present day one of the greatest ornaments of Alexandria. A long street full of store houses, and a spacious square bordered by handsome houses, are now to be seen. The best of these houses are inhabited by the consuls of the great powers, who appear to be assembled in these precincts like the members of a permanent congress, to preserve the government of Mehemet Ali under the net-work of European diplomacy. But the net-work is not so strong but that the skilful viceroy occasionally breaks through the bondage imposed upon him. In addition to this, every thing connected with European life is met with at Alexandria; printing-offices, reading-rooms, fashions and tailors of Paris, Austrian hardware, and the habits of luxury of rich merchants, and the different idioms of the states of the north and south. The European physiognomy radiates even into the Arabian and Turkish quarters of the city. Europe has taken possession of Alexandria by its political relations, by its commerce and its science. It is from these that it will spread over Egypt and arrive in India."

The manner in which the elements of European civilisation are classified, Parisian fashions and tailors before the rich merchants, is curious; and that commerce and science have to reach India from Alexandria is still more so. "This city has a long history!" exclaims M. Marmier, "and in that history we read three names that shook the world—Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon."

"They assure us," Clot Bey relates an Arab to have said, "that at the hour of his death (Napoleon's), away upon a rock in the vast ocean, where twelve kings of the Christian countries had succeeded in chaining him down, after having sent him to sleep by a potent drink, the warrior who surrounded him saw his soul repose upon the edge of his sword." The French, M. Marmier finishes by telling us, are much loved and highly esteemed in a country "in which the English have left the same impression which they leave everywhere." We do not know what impression that is, but we know by experience that neither Turks nor Arabians esteem any Frank the more for what he may say against another European nation, although they are always ready to avail themselves of these unfortunate jealousies, which neither serve the purposes of general civilisation, nor do they attach honour or respect to the individual who keeps them alive.

THE BEGGAR'S GIFT; OR, LOVE AND CHARITY.

BY CHARLES HOOTON, ESQ.

I.

Isabel bestows her daily Charity on the Beggar at the Church Door.

Beside a grey church wall a beggar lay-
Old Misery pining at Religion's knee-
Beseeching all who inward went to pray,
God's love to win by acts of charity.

The shadow of old tears was on his cheek,
The channels of a stormy grief gone by:
Rough cradles they, where pitiful and meek
Poor new-born sorrow in its youth did lie.
And lingering yet, there shone in either eye
A secret dew heart-sweated in its mould,
That, when sweet pity bent consolingly,
Grew to a thunder-drop, and downwards roll'd.

More blest is gratitude than human gold!

And pearls less pure than tears of thankfulness:
Drops that a sudden sunshine doth unfold,
Bright living rain that only falls to bless.

Yet some in silken pomp pass'd on, nor deign'd—
Sweeping the holy pavement's dust behind-
To hear what voice of sorrow thus complain'd,
As though no more it meant than means the wind;

The empty wind that speaks unmeaning speech
To midnight trees a-tremble in their sleep.
Unknowing tongues of grief have pow'r to reach
Remoter heav'ns than earth from heav'n is deep.
And some look'd down in scorn, and pass'd within,
Flattering the selfish soul with soothing thought
That Want the daughter only is of Sin,

And better than encourage sin, give nought.

These on themselves ask'd blessings manifold:
No heav'nly answer in their bosoms burn'd.
The fireless altars of their hearts were cold,

And wrapp'd in clouds th' insulted god return'd.

But there was one who daily gave, and made
Her gift the soul and life of every day:

A gentle child in gentle white array'd

Flow'r of her mother's spring, while life was May.

She look'd, indeed, a bud upon a rose,

She and her mother-gentle both and mild:
Who newly sees them, smiles, and newly knows
The mother once was but her own sweet child.

And what she gives is given with such calm grace,
Her looks are richer and more soul-divine
Than e'en her gifts. The beggar, in her face,
Daily beholds some bright immortal shine.

And hope and faith glow in his aged eyes:
Such messengers, he thinks, come not unsent.
They are but wanderers from the nightless skies,-
Spirits that suffer earthly banishment.