n which does not feel the stirring of better feelings within it
at such a spectacle. Truly the temple of the Lord is every where;
and throughout all nature there is a mysterious something that tells
even the infidel of the omnipresence of the Great Spirit. How many
beautiful evenings did I not enjoy at Beyrout! they were, in fact,
the only compensation for the grievous hardships I was obliged to
endure during my stay in this town.

In the inn I could again not find a single room, and was this time
much more at a loss to find a place of shelter than I had been
before; for our host's wife had gone out of town with her children,
and had let her private house; so I sat, in the fullest sense of the
word, "in the street." A clergyman, whose acquaintance I had made
in Constantinople, and who happened just then to be at Beyrout, took
compassion upon me, and procured me a lodging in the house of a
worthy Arab family just outside the town. Now I certainly had a
roof above my head, but I could not make myself understood; for not
a soul spoke Italian, and my whole knowledge of Arabic was comprised
in the four words: taib, moi, sut, mafish--beautiful, water, milk,
and nothing.

With so limited a stock of expressions at my command, I naturally
could not make much way, and the next day I was placed in a very
disagreeable dilemma. I had hired a boy to show me the way to a
church, and explained to him by signs that he was to wait to conduct
me home again. On emerging from the church I could see nothing of
my guide. After waiting for some time in vain, I was at length
compelled to try and find my way alone.

The house in which I lived stood in a garden of mulberry-trees, but
all the houses in the neighbourhood were built in the same style,
each having a tower attached, in which there is a habitable room;
all these dwellings stand in gardens planted with mulberry-trees,
some of them not separated from each other at all, and the rest
merely by little sand-hills. Flowers and vegetables are nowhere to
be seen, nor is the suburb divided into regular streets; so that I
wandered in an endless labyrinth of trees and houses. I met none
but Arabs, whose language I did not understand, and who could,
therefore, give me no information. So I rushed to and fro, until at
length, after a long and fatiguing pilgrimage, I was lucky enough to
stumble on the house I wanted. Unwilling to expose myself to such a
disagreeable adventure a second