rise above the tree-tops._

_Rome, Jerusalem, Cairo, Damascus,--
Venice, Constantinople, Moscow, Pekin,--
London, New York, Berlin, Paris, Vienna,--_

_These are the names of mighty enchantments:
They have called to the ends of the earth,
They have secretly summoned an host of servants._

_They shine from far sitting beside great waters:
They are proudly enthroned upon high hills,
They spread out their splendour along the rivers._

_Yet are they all the work of small patient fingers:
Their strength is in the hand of man,
He hath woven his flesh and blood into their glory._

_The cities are scattered over the world like ant-hills:
Every one of them is full of trouble and toil,
And their makers run to and fro within them._

_Abundance of riches is laid up in their store-houses:
Yet they are tormented with the fear of want,
The cry of the poor in their streets is exceeding bitter._

_Their inhabitants are driven by blind perturbations:
They whirl sadly in the fever of haste,
Seeking they know not what, they pursue it fiercely._

_The air is heavy-laden with their breathing:
The sound of their coming and going is never still,
Even in the night I hear them whispering and crying._

_Beside every ant-hill I behold a monster crouching:
This is the ant-lion Death,
He thrusteth forth his tongue and the people perish._

_O God of wisdom thou hast made the country:
Why hast thou suffered man to make the town?_

_Then God answered, Surely I am the maker of man:
And in the heart of man I have set the city._

IV

MIZPAH AND THE MOUNT OF OLIVES

I

THE JUDGMENT-SEAT OF SAMUEL

Mizpah of Benjamin stands to the northwest: the sharpest peak in the
Judean range, crowned with a ragged, dusty village and a small mosque.
We rode to it one morning over the steepest, stoniest bridle-paths that
we had ever seen. The country was bleak and rocky, a skeleton of
landscape; but between the stones and down the precipitous hillsides and
along the hot gorges, the incredible multitude of spring flowers were
abloom.

It was a stiff scramble up the conical hill to the little hamlet at the
top, built out of and among ruins. The mosque, evidently an old
Christian church remodelled, was bare, but fairly clean, cool, and
tranquil. We peered through a grated window, tied with many-coloured
scraps of rags by the Mohammedan pilgrims, into a whitewashed room
containing a hug