g down, a band of
beauteous children were frolicking with the kids.

The name of this village, the fairest spot in the region of Lebanon, is
_Eden_, which, rendered from the Arabic into the English tongue, means a
'Dwelling of Delight.'

I ascended the peak that overhung this village. I beheld ridges of
mountains succeeding each other in proportionate pre-eminence, until the
range of the eternal glaciers, with their lustrous cones, flashed in the
Syrian sun. I descended into the deep and solemn valleys, skirted the
edges of rocky precipices, and toiled over the savage monotony of the
dreary table-land. At length, on the brow of a mountain, I observed the
fragments of a gloomy forest--cedar, and pine, and cypress. The wind
moaning through its ancient avenues and the hoarse roar of a cataract
were the only sounds that greeted me.

In the front was a scanty group of gigantic trees, that seemed the
relics of some pre-Adamite grove. Their grey and massive trunks, each of
which must have been more than twelve yards in girth, were as if quite
dead; while, about twenty feet from the ground, they divided into five
or six huge limbs, each equal to a single tree, but all, as it were,
lifeless amid their apparent power.

Bare of all foliage, save on their ancient crests--black, blasted,
riven, and surrounded by deep snows--behold the trees that built the
palaces of Solomon!

When I recall the scene from which I had recently parted, and contrasted
it with the spectacle before me, it seemed that I had quitted the
innocence and infancy of Nature to gaze on its old age--of exhausted
passions and desolate neglect.

A SYRIAN SKETCH

THE sun was quivering above the horizon, when I strolled forth from
Jaffa to enjoy the coming breeze amid the beautiful gardens that environ
that agreeable town. Riding along the previous day, my attention had
been attracted by a marble gate, the fragment of some old temple, that
now served as the entrance to one of these enclosures, their secure
boundary otherwise formed by a picturesque and impenetrable hedge of
Indian fig.

It is not a hundred yards from the town; behind it stretches the plain
of Ramie--the ancient Arimathea-broad and fertile, and, at this moment,
green; for it was just after the latter rains, when Syria is most
charming. The caravan track winding through it led to Jerusalem.

The air was exquisitely soft and warm, and sweet with the perfume of
the orange bowers. I passed