But the primitive church of Christ, over which an angel of God kept watch, whose undefiled members, if there is truth in holy writ, are now "walking in white" before the face of the Almighty-a spot on which the Saviour and his apostles prayed, and for whose weal, with the other churches of Asia, the sublime revelation was made to John-this, the while, is an almost unvisited shrine, and the "classic" of pagan idolatry is dearer to the memories of men than the holy antiquities of a religion they profess.

III.

The Ionic capitals of the two fair columns of the fallen temple were still tinged with rosy light on the side toward the sunset, when the full moon rising in the east burnished the other like a shaft of silver. The two lights mingled in the sky in a twilight of opal.

"Job," said I, stooping to reach a handful of sand, as we strolled up the western bank of the river, "can you resolve me why the poets have chosen to call this pretty stream the golden-sanded Pactolus.' Did you ever see sand of a duller gray ?"

"As easy as give you a reason," answered Job, "why we found the 'terbidus Hermus' yesterday the clearest stream we have forded; why I am no more beautiful than before, though I have bathed like Venus in the Scamander: why the pumice of Naxos no longer reduces the female bust to its virgin proportions; and why Smyrna and Malta are not the best places for figs and oranges.

"And why the old king of Lydia, who possessed the invisible ring, and kept a devil in his dog's collar, lies quietly under the earth in the plain below us, and his ring and his devil were not bequeathed to his successors. What a pleasant auxiliary to sin, must have been that invisible ring. Spirit of Gyges, thrust thy finger out of the earth, and commit it once more to a mortal! Sit down, my dear monster, and let us speculate in this bright moonshine, on the enormities we would commit."

As Job was proceeding, in a cautious periphrasis, to rebuke my irreverent familiarity with the prince of darkness and bis works, the twilight had deepened, and my eye was caught by a steady light, twinkling far above us in the ascending bed of the river. The green valley wound down from the rear of the Acropolis, and the single frowning tower stood in broken and strong relief against the sky, and from the mass of shadow

below, peered out, like a star from a cloud-rack, the steady blaze of a lamp.

"Allons! Job !" said I, making sure of an adventure, "let us see for whose pleasure a lamp is lit in the solitude of this ruined city.

"I could not answer to your honoured mother," said my scrupulous friend, "if I did not remind you that this is a spot much frequented by robbers, and that probably no honest man harbours at that inconvenient altitude."

"I made a leap, over a half-buried frieze, that had served me as a pillow, and commenced the ascent.

"I could as ill answer to your anxious parent," said Job, following with the uncommon alacrity, "if I did not partake your dangers, where they are inevitable."

We scrambled up with some difficulty in the darkness, now rolling into an unseen hollow, now stumbling over a block of marble, held fast one moment by the lacerating hooked thorn of Syria, and the next brought to a stand-still by impenetrable thickets of brush-wood. With a half-hour's toil, however, we stood on a clear platform of grass, panting and hot; and as I was suggesting to Job that we had possibly got too high, he laid his hand on my arm, and with a sign of silence, drew me down on the gass beside him.

In a small, fairy amphitheatre, half-encircled by a bend of the Pactolus, and lying a few feet below the small platform from which we looked, lay six low tents, disposed in a crescent opposite to that of the stream, and enclosing a circular area of bright and dewy grass, of scarce ten feet in diameter. The tents were round, and laced neatly with wicker-work, with their curtain-doors opening inward upon the circle. In the largest one, which faced nearly down the valley, hung a small iron lamp, of antique shape, with a wick burning in one of its two projecting extremities; and beneath it swung a basket-cradle, suspended between two stakes, and kept in motion by a woman, apparently of about forty, whose beauty, but for another more attractive object, would have rewarded us alone for our toil. The other tents were closed, and seemed unoccupied, but the curtains of the one into which our eyes were now straining with intense eagerness, were looped entirely back, to give admission to the cool night-air; and, in and out, between the light of the lamp and the full moon, stole on naked feet a girl of fifteen, whose exquisite symmetry, and unconscious, but divine grace of movement, filled my sense of beauty, as it had never been filled by the divinest

chisel of the Tribune. She was of the height and mould of the younger water-nymph in Gibson's Hylas,* with limbs and lips, that, had I created and warmed her to life like Pygmalion, I should have just hesitated whether or not they wanted another half-shade of fulness. The large shawl of the east, which was attached to her girdle, and in more guarded hours, concealed all but her eyes, hung in loose folds from her waist to her heels, leaving her bust and smoothly-rounded shoulders entirely bare; and in strong relief even upon her clear, brown skin; the flakes of her glossy and raven hair floated over her back, and swept around her with the grace of a cloud in her indolent motions. A short petticoat of striped Brusa silk, stretched to her knees; and below appeared the full trouser of the east, of the same material, narrowed at the ankle, and bound, with what looked in the moonlight, an anklet of silver. A profusion of rings on her fingers, and a gold sequin on her forehead, suspended from a coloured fillet, completed her dress, and left nothing to be added by the prude or the painter. She was at that vanishing and divinest moment of female life, when almost the next hour would complete her womanhoodlike the lotus ere it lays back to the prying moonlight the snowy leaf nearest its heart.

She was employed in filling a large jar, which stood at the back of the tent, with water from the Pactolus, and as she turned with her empty pitcher, and came under the full blaze of the lamp in her way outward, treading lightly, lest she should disturb the slumber of the child in the cradle, and pressing her two round hands closely to the sides of the vessel, the gradual compression of my arm by the bony hand which still held it for sympathy, satisfied me that my own leaping pulse of admiration found an answering beat in the bosom of my friend. A silent nod from the woman, whose Greek profile was turned to us under the lamplight, informed the lovely water-bearer that her labours were at an end; and with a gesture expressive of heat, she drew out the shawl from her girdle, untied the short petticoat, and threw them aside, and then tripping out into the moonlight, with only the full silken trousers from her waist to her ankles, she sat down on the brink of the small stream, and with her feet in the

A group that will be immortal in the love and wonder of the world, when the divine hand of this English Praxiteles has long passed from the earth. Two more exquisite shapes of woman than those lily-crowned nymphs, never lay chiselled from marble or born of human mother. Rome is brighter for them.

water, dropped her head on her knees, and sat motionless as marble.

"Gibson should see her now," I whispered to Job, "with the glance of the moonlight on that dimpled and polished back, and her almost glittering hair veiling her about in such masses, like folds of gossomer!"

"And those slender fingers clasped over her knees, and the air of melancholy repose which is breathed into her attitude, and which seems inseparable from these indolent Asiatics. She is probably a gipsy."

The noise of the water dashing over a small cascade, a little farther up the stream, had covered our approach, and rendered our whispers inaudible. Job's conjecture was probably right, and we had stumbled on a small encampment of gipsies, the men possibly asleep in those closed tents, or possibly absent at Smyrna. After a little consultation, I agreed with Job that it would be impolitic to alarm the camp at night, and resolving on a visit in the morning, we quietly and unobserved withdrew from our position, and descended to our own tents in the ruins of the palace.

IV.

The suridji had given us our spiced coffee in the small china cups and filagree holders, and we sat discussing, to the great annoyance of the storks over our heads, whether we should loiter another day at Sardis, or eat melons at noon at Casabar on our way to Constantinople, To the very great surprise of the Dutchman, who wished to stay to finish his drawings, Job and myself voted for remaining-a view of the subject which was in direct contradiction to our vote of the preceding evening. The American, who was always in a hurry, flew into a passion and went off with the phlegmatic suridji to look after his horse; and having disposed of our Smyrniote by seeing a caravan (which was not to be seen) coming southward from Mount Tmolus, I and my monster started for the encampment of the gipsies.

As we rounded the battered wall of the Christian church, a woman stepped out from the shadow. Through a tattered dress, and under a turban of soiled cotton, set far over her forehead, and throwing a deep shadow into her eyes, I recognised at once the gipsy woman whom we had seen sitting by the

cradle.

Buon giorno, Signori," she said, making a kind of salam, and relieving me at once, by the Italian salutation, of my fears of being unintelligible.

Job gave her the good morning, but she looked at him with a very unsatisfactory glance, and coming close to my ear, she wished me to speak to her out of the hearing of "il mio domestico!"

"Amico piu tosto !" I added immediately, with a consideration for Job's feelings, which I must do myself the justice to say I always manifested, except in very elegant society. I give myself the greater credit in this case, as in my impatience to know the nature of the gipsy's communication, I might be excused for caring little at the moment when my friend was taken for a gentleman, or a gentleman's gentleman.

The gipsy looked vexed at her mistake, and with a half-apologetic inclination to Job, she drew me into the shade of the ruin, and perused my face with great earnestness. The same

to yourself, thought I, as I gave back her glance, and searched for her meaning in two as liquid and loving eyes as ever looked out of the gates of the prophet's paradise for the coming of a young believer. It was a face that had been divine, and in the hands of a lady of fashion, would have still made a bello rifacimento."

"Bennissimo!" she answered, and her face brightened. you want a servant."

"Do

"Unless it is yourself, no !"

"It is my son."

It was on my lips to ask if he was like her daughter, but an air of uneasiness and mystery in her manner, put me on the reserve, and I kept my knowledge to myself. She persevered in her suit, and at last the truth came out that her boy was bound on an errand to Constantinople, and she wished safe conduct for him. The rest of the troop, she said, were at Smyrna, and she was left in care of the tents with a boy and an infant child. As she did not mention the girl, who from the resemblance was evidently her daughter, I thought it unwise to allude to our discovery, and promising that if the boy was mounted, every possible care should be taken of him; I told her the hour on the following morning when we should be in the saddle, and rid myself of her with the intention of stealing a march on the camp..