air, and pure water. The view of the plains and the sea is boundless and lovely; above, Libanus soars in all his grandeur,-the air is so delightful that it is itself almost a cure for intermitting fever, the scourge of the East. Patients at the point of death in the plains revive as soon as they are sent up the hills, and the most desperate cases constantly yield to the genial power of the breezes of Eden. The Rector. The contrast of Mahometanism and Christianity is forcibly displayed in these regions. The Turks, masters of the plain, live in brutality and barbarism. With the most luxuriant soil in the world, only waiting for their labour, they are indolent, savage, and poor. On the other hand, the Maronites, imperfect Christians as they are, fill the rugged sides of their mountains with an active and animated population, and cover their wild landscape with plenty and beauty. Equally grateful," says Mr. Robinson, " to my Christian ears was the tolling of the chapel bells calling the inhabitants to vespers." He now found himself in the village of Bohirrai, containing about a hundred houses, built on the edge of a rocky descent, and inhabited by Maronite families, occupied in the silk and dyeing trades, or in agriculture, for both tobacco and cotton were seen growing in the neighbourhood. It was an interesting sight to see this little colony of Christians thus industriously employed in this elevated region, the highest inhabited part of Libanus. The Colonel. But Damascus is the glory of the East. From the summit to the lowest range of the Anti-Libanus, the vast plain of Damascus, with the city in the foreground, bursts suddenly upon the eye. Seen under the light of evening, with the sun in the west, and the glare of day past by, nothing can be more lovely. The extreme purity of the atmosphere brings the most distant objects to the traveller's feet. The plain is covered with gardens, and from the midst of this immense circle of verdure, touched with all the hues of sunset, start up mosques and minarets without number, light, elegant, and symmetrical. For the breadth and brilliancy of the eastern landscape, there is no architecture equal to the Oriental. The solemnity and grandeur of the Gothic are suited to our climate of cloud and tempest. The severe or even the florid beauty of Greek architecture belongs to a country where the spectator sees it under the lights and shadows of a sky as picturesque as the hills and valleys which it covers. But the magnitude, strong colourings, and yet fantastic finish of Eastern architecture are made to be seen across its vast plains under the unclouded sky, and glowing with the powerful splendours with which the rising and the setting sun less illumine than inflame the horizon. At a distance it has the dream-like beauty which we habitually attach to the edifices of the "Arabian Nights." Well may the Arab call Damascus El-Sham Shereff, the noble and beautiful, or, in his more ardent moments of fancy, Ede, the terrestrial paradise. But, like all the oriental cities, its beauty is wholly external. Within, it is wild, narrow, and dark. Violence and baseness form the character of its polity, and miscreancy and poverty are the badges of its population. Mahometanism reigns supreme; the rabble insult the Christian, vice of every kind is rapidly extinguishing that rabble, and unless the vigour of Mahomet Ali shall renovate a worn-out people, the capital of Syria must, like Babylon, sink into a horde of robbers, or a ruin. Bath, a Turkish, description of, 469 Ben Jonson, by the Author of "Glances Bench and the Bar, the, critical notice of, Bet, a Sporting, by Benson Hill, Esq., 108 Book of Gems, the, noticed, 432 Brighton Fair, by Alfred Crowquill, 238 Brownrigg, Henry, Esq., Some Account of the last Parachute, by, 250-Midnight at Byron's Memoirs, noticed, 131 Chancery, a Manager in, 267 Clive, Mrs., recollections of, 320 Coke, Sir Edward, the Life of, reviewed, Colman, George, the Younger, his "Speak- Confessions and Opinions of Ralph Restless, Cook, Eliza, Song of the Wine-filled Gob- Cork, description of, 451 Cottage, the Swiss, 391 Dec.-VOL. LI. NO. CCIV. Davids, C. J., Esq., Ode to October, by, Diamond cut Diamond, by Benson Hill, Diving-Bell, the, Captain Falconer, 347 Domino, the Sky-Blue, by Capt. Marryat, 455 Druses, the, account of, 465 Dupe, the, by Alfred Crowquill, 383 Elliston and Sir Walter Scott, 327 Epigrams:-On a Drunken Town Crier, 421 Landon, Miss, Past Hours, by, 345-The Landscape Annual, the, noticed, 429 of Charles Lamb, noticed, 416 Tableaux, 552-Gems of Beauty, ib.- Lives of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, by Manager's Note-Book, the, 320, 485 Mary Raymond, by Mrs. Gore, noticed, 559 Mathews, Memoir and Anecdotes of, 494 Midnight at Madame T.'s, by Henry Monkeys, American, description of, 364 Montanvert, the "livre des amis" of, 335 Natural History, Recreations in; Monkeys, 364 Naval Keepsake, the, reviewed, 554 Oakleigh Shooting Code, the, noticed, 133 Ode for October, by C. J. Davids, Esq., Old Times, the, by Miss Landon, 346 Painter's Daughter, the, 66 Parachute, some Account of the last, by Pascal Bruno, a Sicilian story, reviewed, Passing-Bell, the, an episode of 1648, 472 Peiresc, the Lord of, by Douglas Jerrold, Philosophy in the Influenza, an ode, 122 Planché, J. R., Esq., the Three Rings, by, 509 450 Poole, John, Esq., Little Pedlington:-The Poor Soldier, the, a new version of, 266 Quin, M. J., Esq., Life in the East, by, Records of a Stage Veteran, 264 Richardson, the Showman, 264 Ride in the Great Western Jungle, a, by an Rings, the Three, a Castilian romance, by 566 Ruling Passion, the, 267 END OF THE THIRD PART. Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES and SONS, Stamford-street. |