licity; in its
epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, the
mildly understanding heart. So _true_ everyway; true eyesight and vision
for all things; material things no less than spiritual: the Horse--"hast
thou clothed his neck with _thunder_?"--he "_laughs_ at the shaking of
the spear!" Such living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime
sorrow, sublime reconciliation; oldest choral melody as of the heart of
mankind;--so soft, and great; as the summer midnight, as the world with
its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or
out of it, of equal literary merit.--

To the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient universal objects of
worship was that Black Stone, still kept in the building called Caabah
at Mecca. Diodorus Siculus mentions this Caabah in a way not to be
mistaken, as the oldest, most honored temple in his time; that is, some
half-century before our Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some
likelihood that the Black Stone is an aerolite. In that case, some man
might _see_ it fall out of Heaven! It stands now beside the Well Zemzem;
the Caabah is built over both. A Well is in all places a beautiful
affecting object, gushing out like life from the hard earth;--still more
so in those hot dry countries, where it is the first condition of being.
The Well Zemzem has its name from the bubbling sound of the waters,
_zem-zem_; they think it is the Well which Hagar found with her little
Ishmael in the wilderness: the aerolite and it have been sacred now, and
had a Caabah over them, for thousands of years. A curious object, that
Caabah! There it stands at this hour, in the black cloth-covering the
Sultan sends it yearly; "twenty-seven cubits high;" with circuit, with
double circuit of pillars, with festoon rows of lamps and quaint
ornaments: the lamps will be lighted again _this_ night--to glitter
again under the stars. An authentic fragment of the oldest Past. It is
the _Keblah_ of all Moslem: from Delhi all onwards to Morocco, the eyes
of innumerable praying men are turned towards _it_, five times, this day
and all days: one of the notablest centres in the Habitation of Men.

It had been from the sacredness attached to this Caabah Stone and
Hagar's Well, from the pilgrimings of all tribes of Arabs thither, that
Mecca took its rise as a Town. A great town once, though much decayed
now. It has no natural advantage for a town; stands in a sandy hollow
amid bare barre