THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON

Damascus, first-born of cities, _Om el Denia_,[48] mother of
generations, that wast before Abraham, that wast before the Pyramids!
what sounds are those that, from a postern gate, looking eastwards
over secret paths that wind away to the far distant desert, break the
solemn silence of an oriental night? Whose voice is that which calls
upon the spearmen, keeping watch for ever in the turret surmounting
the gate, to receive him back into his Syrian home? Thou knowest him,
Damascus, and hast known him in seasons of trouble as one learned in
the afflictions of man; wise alike to take counsel for the suffering
spirit or for the suffering body. The voice that breaks upon the night
is the voice of a great evangelist--one of the four; and he is also a
great physician. This do the watchmen at the gate thankfully
acknowledge, and joyfully they give him entrance. His sandals are
white with dust; for he has been roaming for weeks beyond the desert,
under the guidance of Arabs, on missions of hopeful benignity to
Palmyra;[49] and in spirit he is weary of all things, except
faithlessness to God, and burning love to man.

[Footnote 48: '_Om el Denia_':--Mother of the World is the Arabic
title of Damascus. That it was before Abraham--_i.e._, already an old
establishment much more than a thousand years before the siege of
Troy, and than two thousand years before our Christian era--may be
inferred from Gen. xv. 2; and by the general consent of all eastern
races, Damascus is accredited as taking precedency in age of all
cities to the west of the Indus.]

[Footnote 49: Palmyra had not yet reached its meridian splendour of
Grecian development, as afterwards near the age of Aurelian, but it
was already a noble city.]

Eastern cities are asleep betimes; and sounds few or none fretted the
quiet of all around him, as the evangelist paced onward to the
market-place; but there another scene awaited him. On the right hand,
in an upper chamber, with lattices widely expanded, sat a festal
company of youths, revelling under a noonday blaze of light, from
cressets and from bright tripods that burned fragrant woods--all
joining in choral songs, all crowned with odorous wreaths from Daphne
and the banks of the Orontes. Them the evangelist heeded not; but far
away upon the left, close upon a sheltered nook, lighted up by a
solitary vase of iron fretwork filled with cedar boughs, and hoisted
high upon a spear, behold