the site of St. John's Cathedral, whose chamber of relics, containing a pretended head of the Baptist, is inaccessible even to Mussulmen, the priesthood excepted. Six huge Corinthian columns, once a part of its proud portico, are built into houses and stores, so that you get but faint glimpses of their beauty and size until you mount the flat mud roof of the modern buildings, and look down into the vast area of the temple, six hundred and fifty feet by one hundred and fifty; and there find towering above you those massive, blackened remains of Christian architecture,-significant emblems of the triumph of the Crescent over the Cross, and yet, by their imperishableness, a promise of renewed glory in some brighter future. That Islamism is hastening to decay, is shown impressively enough in the grand dervish mosque and khan, once quite celebrated as the Syrian enthronement of the advanced guard of Mahommed; now nothing could seem more deserted! One minaret is threatening to fall, the spacious garden is all weedgrown, and few are left to mourn over the reverse. The banner-men of the prophet, no longer warriors, students, and apostles, do but beg their bread and drone their prayers, and exchange the reputation of fanatics for that of hypocrites; they are, in fact, monks of the mosque, like their brothers in Rome.

Paul is of course the great name at Damascus; and your guide is very certain always as to the place where he was lowered down the city wall; then he takes you to the tomb of the soldier who befriended him, close at hand, and to the little underground chapel where the

apostle's sight was restored. But, having passed in turn under the sceptre of Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Jew, Roman, Arabian, Turk, every stone of these buildings could tell a most interesting tale, and every timber of the wall could answer with an experience corresponding to the out-door revolution.

But the grand attractions in this 'Flower of the Levant and Florence of Turkey' are the coffee-houses and the palaces of the rich. The writer of Eothen, I think it is, says, 'there is one coffee-house at Damascus capable of containing a hundred persons.' A Damascus friend, a resident clergyman, carried me into one where he had himself seen three thousand people on a galaday, and several where hundreds of visitors would not make a crowd. This great necessity of Turkish life,— this deliverance from the loneliness of an oriental home, -this luxurious substitute for the daily newspaper, is carried to perfection here. First of all comes the lofty, dome-covered hall, surrounded by couches like beds, enlivened on all festivals by the Arabian minstrel with his song and his tale; back of this are a number of rude arbours, interlaced with noble shade-trees, and watered profusely by nimble brooks, the whole lighted every night by little pale lamps. These are the gossiping. places for the Damascene gentlemen; where the fragrant coffee, the indolent game at dominoes is relieved by such domestic anecdotes as, according to my friend, brand the domestic life of the city with beastly sensuality.

One would fain hope that these are the prejudices of an earnest missionary; but, until the residence of years

had given familiarity with the language, any opinions of a visitor would be erroneous, as well as presuming. Nothing, however, can bring back so powerfully the Arabian tales of enchantment as the interior of the wealthier Damascus houses. The outside is always mean and forbidding. You have sometimes to stoop under the rude low gate; and the first court, surrounded only by servants' rooms, has nothing of interest. But the second and third quadrangles become more and more spacious, and are always of variegated marble, containing a perpetually playing fountain, overhung by the orange, the citron, and the vine, whose fragrance floats dreamily on the moist air, lulling the senses to repose. The grand saloon I found to be always arranged pretty much the same. A lower part of the pavement near the door is the place of deposit for slippers, shoes, and the pattens which the Damascus women use so much in the winter-articles, all of them, never intended for ornament, and never fitted to the foot, but worn as loose as possible, and never within the sitting-room, but simply as a protection from out-door wet and soil. The lower portion of the room and its rug-strewn floor are of variegated marbles; then comes curiously carved woods, then painted stucco, decorated with mirrors rising to the distant, gay-coloured roof. The immense loftiness, the moist coolness, the gorgeous hues, the emblazoned texts from the Koran, the sweet murmur of the various fountains, the fragrance of the orange-groves, succeed to the out-door dreariness like a dream of Haroun Al Raschid to the wearied pilgrim on desert sands. The divan, or

wide sofa, on three sides of this hall, is far more agreeable in this enervating climate than any European furniture; only in winter, as the ground underneath is permeated by leaky clay tubes bearing the waters of the Barrady, and there is no other heating apparatus save a brazer of charcoal, one is sometimes very chilly, and is tempted to exchange this tomb-like dampness for a cozy corner near some friendly stove or familiar fire-place.

But the general impression which unintelligent strangers carry from Damascus is, that the people have what they want, and have gone wisely to work to realize their idea of earthly blessedness-an indolent, sensual, dreamy one to you, but in their eyes no faint type of the Mussulman's heaven. Such is Damascns now.

THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path."
LET those who would prolong their days,
Walk in wisdom's pleasant ways;
Prize most highly, in their youth,
The volume of unerring truth;
For its soul enlightening page
Will guide us down to hoary age;
And increasing radiance shed,
When upon a dying bed.

Oakham.

'Tis as a lamp in evening's gloom,
Brightening as we near the tomb;.
Revealing to our wondering eyes,
Our more brilliant destinies,
Where the shadows flee away,
Beneath the blaze of perfect day.

"PEACE IS BETTER THAN WAR."

So said the aged widow who dwelt in the old cottage just behind the station which Wellington occupied at the great fight of Waterloo. She remembered that dreadful day; for on the day before she and her little girl had fled into the forest of Soignes for shelter, driving their only cow before them, which the hungry soldiers took from her, and killed and roasted for food.

And now we have war again! and many a tale like that of the widow of Waterloo will have to be told, we fear, before it is over. But "shall the

sword devour for ever?" Surely not! Surely the days will come when men, ceasing to fight each other, will 66 Hang their armour on the wall,

And study war no more."

Happy days, when this shall be really done! and when, in the more emphatic language of the Hebrew prophet, "they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,