the quay is chiefly built up with them. About four hundred years ago Faccardine, the Prince of the Druses, possessed a handsome palace and gardens without the town. This man's history has been written; for he was a remarkable character, and had spent some time in Italy, where he cultivated the sciences and built his palace after the edifices he had admired there. He was assassinated, and his beautiful domain laid waste; some of the ruins, however, still remain. The rainy season had now set in: scarcely a day passed without showers; and the roads were rendered so bad that travelling was impracticable. Rain in an Oriental country throws a traveller sadly out of his resources: books, of course, he has few, but must pass the evenings sitting on the divan with a vessel of lighted charcoal before him on the carpet, and his pipe and a cup of coffee. At last, however, the weather cleared up; the caravans, which had been stopped, resumed their passage, and we set out to visit the Emir Busheer, Prince of the Druses. The way was for the most part over the mountain; and in about nine hours we came to the town of Dalil Camar, and were fain to pass the night in a coffeehouse. Early the next morning we went to the chief's residence, which is admirably situated for defence: it stands on a rugged cliff, and is approached by a winding path over low stone steps. Industry, however, has created a sort of garden on one side of it. Some apartments of the palace are rather elegantly fitted up, and furnished with glass windows. It is surrounded by extensive courts, around which are the rooms for the officers and domestics. The power of this prince is very considerable; extending all over Mount Lebanon and many of the adjacent parts. In a short space of time he can raise thirty thousand armed men: and these mountaineers are bolder troops than those of the lowlands; a large proportion of them are horsemen. He had brought several thousands into the field to aid the Pacha of Acre in his war with the Pacha of Damascus. On being introduced to the Emir, he was seated on the divan of a large apartment-a man about sixty, of a venerable appearance, with a long beard, almost white, in which he took great pride. Sherbet and pipes were brought, and we were invited to remain for the night at the palace. He dissuaded me from advancing to Balbec, in consequence of the war and the armies being out, which rendered the road insecure. The snow also had fallen in such quantities as to make any progress in that direction impossible. This man has a religion to suit the place he may be in: when he comes down to Beirout, he goes to the mosque; but in the mountain he is always a Christian. During my stay in the latter town I accompanied the Consul in his first visit of ceremony to the Turkish governor: after refreshments, the latter was presented with an English watch, which he at first made a show of refusing, but at last grasped at with no small avidity. The watch was of mixed metal, as the Turks will not accept any of gold or silver; the Prophet having forbid the use of those precious metals on some occasions. It was made, with five or six others, for the express purpose of presents to these chiefs. This governor took great pleasure in the idea of our being all, by and by, of one faith, and repeated several times with delight, "We shall all be Moslemen together in Damascus," as they have a tradition of long standing, that the Christians will advance with a mighty army to attack the sacred city, when the Prophet, in his mercy, will convert them all.

About mid-day, being invited to dine with the chief officers of the Prince, we formed a circle round a low table, on which were placed a number of dishes, with an immense pilau of rice in the middle, coloured with saffron; we were furnished with neat spoons for eating our food-a refinement not always to be found at Eastern meals. While at Beirout I dined one day with a rich merchant, a Moor, and a very handsome man he possessed a young Circassian mistress, about sixteen years of age, for whom he had given six hundred pounds at Smyrna; this was rather a dear bargain, as she was not beautiful. We sat on the carpet, four in number, and drank tea in the first place, which was made by the Moor, and served without milk; inmediately afterwards dinner was brought in:-first, a dish of soup was placed in the middle of the table; and, being each provided with a spoon, we helped ourselves out of the vessel in common; this being removed, an excellent hash supplied its place; and the spoons being taken away, we plunged our fingers in the dish, and carried whatever came first, meat, vegetables, &c. to our mouths, as there were no plates. Several other dishes succeeded, all very good; and the repast was closed by some delicious cakes, made, no doubt, by the hands of the young Circassian a most diligent washing of the hands and mouth then took place; and indeed it was necessary.

Having quitted the palace or fortress of the Emir, we returned to the town of Dalil Camar to wait till the roads should become passable by the melting of the snow. Our lodging was a small room in the khan, in the upper story; several merchants occupied the adjoining rooms, and they set out their goods for sale during the daytime in the court below. This part of Mount Lebanon was very barren and craggy, and the houses rose in ridges on its sides.

There are a great number of Druses in and around this place. The belief and some of the rites of this singular race are but imperfectly known. They are a fine and healthy-looking people; particularly many of the young women, who have a complexion as ruddy as those of the Highlands of Scotland. The Druses never allow intermarriages with strangers, and not unfrequently marry their sisters and daughters. Several of their small houses of worship are scattered over the mountain, but no stranger is allowed to enter. It is computed there are eighty convents on various parts of the mountain, Armenian, Catholic, Greek, and Maronite; and they are often placed in situations of extraordinary beauty. It has been observed by some that the Syrian coast is very subject to fevers; but it is difficult, perhaps, to find a line of country more healthy and attractive than that from Tripoli to Acre. Lady S. has declared the climate to be the most salubrious that she has ever resided in. Having waited in vain for ten days, and the weather being worse instead of better, we resolved to bend our course towards Palestine; and, having procured horses, arrived on the evening of the following day at Sidon again. We passed the evening very pleasantly in the apartments of Mons. T. an Italian merchant, who has resided there several years with his lady-a dreary situation for an intelligent man; for what climate or scenery can atone for the want of society. In three days more the weather became fine; and we left the town with no small pleasure, being impatient to proceed, after so many delays. Soon after sunset we came once more to the

gate

of

Tyre, and found a warm welcome from the Tyrian family whom we had become acquainted with on our first visit. They were all seated on the floor round the supper-table, parents, sons, and daughters, and we felt no objection to join the party. How delightful was an animated scene like this-the soft cushion and the pipe after a long and fatiguing journey! No traveller in the East, accustomed to the indulgent and natural posture of sitting and reclining there, will ever wish to see a chair or table again. Continuing our journey, we were late on the following day a few miles from Acre, and were obliged to stop at an Arab village on a hill; and, entering the rude and dirty khan, found it filled with the inhabitants who were ranged, as thick as they could well be crammed, on the floor, with their backs to the wall, and every mouth filled with a pipe. A fire was blazing beside a pillar in the middle; but the place looked so suspicious and uninviting that we were at a loss whether to remain or not. In a short time the Sheick stepped up, and civilly invited us to lodge in his house, which we very gladly acceded to. His residence was close to the sea; and that we might not approach too near the persons of his women, he conducted us to a neat and lofty apartment a few yards from the house; the walls and pillars were whitewashed, and some mats spread on the floor. He asked if his women should prepare a repast for us, or if we chose to dress it ourselves. On our preferring the former, in about an hour a very decent meal made its appearance, round which we all assembled. The Sheick, to do me honour, took up the choicest pieces of meat with his fingers and placed them before me: to have declined eating them would have given offence. After supper, to entertain us, he placed his hands on his knees, and broke out into a most stunning and discordant song, and then got up and went through all his prayers and genuflexions with much appearance of devotion. We soon, however, lay down to rest, free from any intrusion or sound, save the dashing of the sea on the rocks beneath our dwelling.

THIS IS LOVE.

To sigh for hours at Beauty's feet,

To start when rival steps draw near,
With ardent warmth her glance to meet,
And pour soft flatteries in her ear;
To kneel, till won by fairer forms

And brighter eyes, and then forsake,
And while new hope, new fancy warms,
To leave her trusting heart to break :
This passion haunts our earthly span,-
This is the wavering love of Man!
To seek one form in early youth,
To court no gaze, no vow beside,
To hold through life an holy truth,

Which firmest proves when deepest tried,
And like the diamond's sparkling light
Can halls and palaces illume,

y shines more cheering and more bright
In scenes of darkness and of gloom:
This faith descends from realms above,-
This, this is Woman's changeless love!

M. A.

ON CUNNING.

Optima nomina non appellando fiunt mala.

WHENEVER I hear, (and who does not every day hear?) the world's outcry against cunning, I am irresistibly reminded of those selfish gormandizing little urchins, who bedaub their cake or their apple in order to have it all to themselves. Yet the simile is by no means accurate. For so far are mankind from wishing for a monopoly of this article, that they can rarely be brought to perceive that they employ it at all; but blindly persist in believing that they are themselves under the exclusive guidance of wisdom, while their neighbours alone act upon the principle in question. No, there is not in the reprobation, in which this very useful attribute is held, by every-day moralists, any such arrière pensée. It is but a part of that innate vanity and ingratitude, which distinguish the human species from "the beasts of the field;" and it is quite of a piece with that other glorious absurdity, of decrying the instincts and passions, to give supremacy to the traitor Reason. In these matters the French are more accurate observers than we A celebrated author of that nation, Champfort, has declared his conviction that nature gave us passions expressly as a compensation for reason, the most miserable of all her gifts; and that she removes us from this sublunary scene in pure pity, as soon as the passions begin to lose their power of amusing. So likewise with respect to cunning, the French have always placed the sçavoir faire before the faire; and they have been wise in so doing: for cunning

are.

Which in fools supplies,

And amply too, the place of being wise,

has infinitely the most to do with success in life. If it were only in-
asmuch as that cunning is the wisdom of fools, it would deserve to be
paramount; for the fools are the majority, and have the greatest in-
fluence in the conduct of affairs. Thus the author above quoted, ob-
serves on another occasion, "Il y a à parier que toute idée publique, toute ·
convention reçue est une sottise, car elle a convenue au plus grand nombre ;"
a sentiment which, though perhaps a little exaggerated in its expression,
is still by far too true, "to be put in a ballad." The fact, however, is,
that this "left-handed wisdom," as it has most superciliously been
called, is not confined to the fools, but is on occasions exercised by men
of the greatest gravity and station (and who would ever suspect a grave
or an official man of folly?). All great men, indeed, from Ulysses
(not the modern Greek chieftain of that name, but the avηp woλvT POTOS,
the shuffling ovdus of Homer) down to little Davy Garrick,

Though secure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick,
If they were not his own by finessing and trick,

have had a touch of this quality. Nay even Prometheus himself, the Pagan antetype of providence, put more of cunning than of wisdom into the splendid theft, to which mortals are indebted, if not for existence, at least for broiling beefsteaks. Did not Jacob owe his birthright, or rather the enjoyment of his brother Esau's birthright, to cunning? Was not Carthage indebted for the very ground it stood upon to cunning? Are not the Cardinals and Monsignori of Rome to this day indebted to cunning for their Sabine maternal ancestors? Was it not the cunning of

our famous Protestant reformers, and their management of the gynoephalocoptic propensities of Henry the Eighth, that procured for England the manifold blessings of its religion, "as by law established?" It was the cunning of a British minister in shifting taxation from the shoulders of the mother-country upon those of the Yankee tea-drinkers, that gave the world the example of American freedom; and the cunning of the French king in taking advantage of the circumstance, was the happy means of inoculating all Europe with a love of liberty. I say nothing of Darius and his cunning horsedealer's trick to get at the throne; because the story has something of an apocryphal air; and because we have known princes, nearer our own times, who would have beat the Persian" out and out," in this branch of horsemanship. But why do I talk of princes? What are the mysteries of kingcraft to the mysteries of Capel-court, the true headquarters of cunning? or to the scarcely less profound policy of the Corn Exchange, that key which opens or shuts the ports of Great Britain to foreign grain, in spite of the dunderheaded agriculturists, in their own estimation "the cunningest little Isaacks" in all Christendom.

When I mention the word diplomacy, I speak of the very abstraction of cunning, an art from which cunning has banished even the pretence of wisdom. Yet how vast are the benefits which diplomacy confers upon mankind! How stupendous the intellectual powers put forth by those patriotic citizens, who, educated and accomplished for the task by instinct, go forth into foreign courts to lie, for the good of their country, for the poor consideration of an income not much more than twice as great as that of the President of the United States! Really when I reflect on these things, when I compare the tortuous intrigue of the means, with the dignity and importance of the ends, in all public affairs, I cannot but wonder that the Liturgy has not long ago been changed; and that instead of praying to endow the Privy Council"with grace, wisdom, and understanding," we do not in one comprehensive term ask for them the more necessary blessing of cunning.

Whichever way I turn my thoughts, the influence of this quality upon humanity is equally striking. What, for instance, can be more imposing and majestic than that happy union of church and state which triumphs in the Protestant ascendancy of Ireland, and lays six millions of Catholics prostrate at the feet of a handful of imbecile fainéans, who disdain all honest employment? Yet is this superb union of incompatibles, this happy amalgamation of all that is holy with all that is selfish and cruel, upheld entirely by cunning, and in the very teeth, as it were, of every dictate of political wisdom. Again, what can be more incomprehensible than that other anomaly in government, that imperium in imperio, the dominion of the Leadenhall (1 was going to say Leaden-headed) merchants over fifty millions of Hindoos? or that other stupendous monopoly, the Bank of England, which hangs at least one man for forgery every six weeks, and breaks a private bank once a quarter? Who can contemplate these curious modifications of social order without ecstasies at the omnipotence of cunning?

But the favourite arena of cunning is Westminster-hall, and law, in all its departments, its chosen study. What in fact could be imagined in this genre, superior to the system of legal fictions with all the subor