to ask my assistance, they were unable to suggest any mode in which I could aid them, except, indeed, by mentioning their grievances to the consulgeneral at Damascus. This I promised to do, and this I did.

My visitors were very thankful to me for my readiness to intermeddle in their affairs, and the grateful wives of the principal Jews sent to me many compliments, with choice wines and elaborate sweetmeats.

The course of my travels soon drew me so far from Safet that I never heard how the dreadful day passed off which had been fixed for the accomplishment of the second prophecy. If the predicted spoliation was prevented, poor Mohammed Damoor must have been forced, I suppose, to say that he had prophesied in a metaphorical sense. This would be a sad falling off from the brilliant and substantial success of the first experiment.

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CHAPTER XXVII.

DAMASCUS.

FOR a part of two days I wound under the base of the snow-crowned Djibel el Sheik, and then entered upon a vast and desolate plain rarely pierced at intervals by some sort of withered stem. The earth in its length and its breadth, and all the deep universe of the sky, was steeped in light and heat. On I rode through the fire, but long before evening came there were straining eyes that saw, and joyful voices that announced, the sight-of Shaum Shereef the "Holy," the "Blessed " Damascus.

But that which at last I reached with my longing eyes was not a speck in the horizon, gradually expanding to a group of roofs and walls, but a long low line of blackest green, that ran right across in the distance from east to west. And this, as I approached, grew deeper—grew wavy in its outline; soon forest-trees shot up before my eyes, and robed their broad shoulders so freshly, that all

the throngs of olives, as they rose into view, looked sad in their proper dimness. There were even now no houses to see, but minarets peered out from the midst of shade into the glowing sky, and kindling touched the sun. There seemed to be here no mere city, but rather a province, wide and rich, that bounded the torrid waste.

Until about a year or two years before the time of my going there, Damascus had kept up so much of the old bigot zeal against Christians, or rather against Europeans, that no one dressed as a Frank could have dared to show himself in the streets; but the firmness and temper of Mr Farren, who hoisted his flag in the city as consulgeneral for the district, had soon put an end to all intolerance of Englishmen. Damascus was safer than Oxford.* When I entered the city, in my usual dress, there was but one poor fellow that wagged his tongue, and him, in the open streets, Dthemetri horsewhipped. During my

* An enterprising American traveller, Mr Everett, lately conceived the bold project of penetrating to the University of Oxford, and this, notwithstanding that he had been in his infancy (they being very young those Americans) a Unitarian preacher. Having a notion, it seems, that the ambassadorial character would protect him from insult, he adopted the stratagem of procuring credentials from his Government as Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Her Britannic Majesty; he also wore the exact costume of a Trinitarian. But all his contrivances were vain ; his infantine sermons were strictly remembered against him; the enterprise failed.

stay I went wherever I chose, and attended the public baths without molestation. Indeed my relations with the pleasanter portion of the Mahometan population were upon a much better footing here than at most other places.

In the principal streets of Damascus there is a path for foot - passengers raised a foot or two above the bridle-road. Until the arrival of the British consul - general, none but a Mussulman had been allowed to walk upon the upper way; Mr Farren would not, of course, suffer that the humiliation of any such exclusion should be submitted to by an Englishman, and I always walked upon the raised path as free and unmolested as if I had been in Pall Mall. The old usage was, however, maintained with as much strictness as ever against the Christian rayahs and Jews: not one of these could have set his foot upon the privileged path without endangering his life.

I was walking one day, I remember, along the raised path, "the path of the faithful," when a Christian rayah from the bridle - road below saluted me with such earnestness, and craved so anxiously to speak and be spoken to, that he soon brought me to a halt. He had nothing to

tell, except only the glory and exultation with which he saw a fellow-Christian stand level with the imperious Mussulmans. Perhaps he had been absent from the place for some time, for otherwise

I hardly know how it could have happened that my exaltation was the first instance he had seen. His joy was great; so strong and strenuous was England (Lord Palmerston reigned in those days), that it was a pride and delight for a Syrian Christian to look up and say that the Englishman's faith was his too.

that I could not give the

If I was vexed at all man a lift and shake ground, there was no

hands with him on level alloy in his pleasure; he followed me on, not looking to his own path, but keeping his eyes on me; he saw, as he thought and said (for he came with me on to my quarters), the period of the Mahometan's absolute ascendancy the beginning of the Christian's. He had so closely associated the insulting privilege of the path with actual dominion, that seeing it now in one instance abandoned he looked for the quick coming of European troops. His lips only whispered, and that tremulously, but his flashing eyes spoke out their triumph more fiercely. "I, too, am a Christian. My foes are the foes of the English.

one people, and Christ is our King."

We are all

If I poorly deserved, yet I liked this claim of brotherhood. Not all the warnings I heard against their rascality could hinder me from feeling kindly towards my fellow-Christians in the East. English travellers (from a habit perhaps of depreciating sectarians in their own country) are apt to look