magnificent tyrannies of yore. Indeed, nothing is duller, more stupid,
more prosaic than a modern absolutism as compared with an ancient one.
But why concern ourselves with like comparisons? The world is better
to-day in spite of its public monuments. These little flights or
frights in marble are as snug in their little squares, in front of
their little halls, as are the majestic ruins in their poplar groves.
In both instances, Nature and Circumstance have harmonised between
the subject and the background. Come along. And let the rhymsters
chisel on the monument whatever they like about sculptures and the
wali. To condemn in this case is to praise.

We issue from the Square into the drive leading to the spring at the
foot of the mountain. On the meadows near the stream, is always to be
found a group of Baalbekians bibbing _arak_ and swaying languidly to
the mellow strains of the lute and the monotonous melancholy of Arabic
song. Among such, one occasionally meets with a native who, failing as
peddler or merchant in America, returns to his native town, and,
utilising the chips of English he picked up in the streets of the
New-World cities, becomes a dragoman and guide to English and American
tourists.

Now, under this sky, between Anti-Libanus rising near the spring,
Rasulain, and the Acropolis towering above the poplars, around
these majestic ruins, amidst these fascinating scenes of Nature,
Khalid spent the halcyon days of his boyhood. Here he trolled his
favourite ditties beating the hoof behind his donkey. For he
preferred to be a donkey-boy than to be called a donkey at school.
The pedagogue with his drivel and discipline, he could not learn to
love. The company of muleteers was much more to his liking. The open
air was his school; and everything that riots and rejoices in the
open air, he loved. Bulbuls and beetles and butterflies, oxen and
donkeys and mules,--these were his playmates and friends. And when he
becomes a muleteer, he reaches in his first venture, we are told,
the top round of the ladder. This progressive scale in his
trading, we observe. Husbanding his resources, he was soon after, by
selling his donkey, able to buy a sumpter-mule; a year later he
sells his mule and buys a camel; and finally he sells the camel and
buys a fine Arab mare, which he gives to a tourist for a hundred
pieces of English gold. This is what is called success. And with the
tangible symbol of it, the price of his mare, he emi