soul, and
their pure, strong susceptibility of life's poetry, and the wonderfully
mysterious charms of nature, She described the romantic beauties of the
fertile regions of Arabia, which lay like happy islands in the midst of
impassable, sandy wastes, refuge places for the oppressed and weary,
like colonies of Paradise,--full of fresh wells, whose streams trilled
over dense meadows and glittering stones, through venerable groves,
filled with every variety of singing birds; regions attractive also in
numerous monuments of memorable past time.

"You would look with wonder," she said, "upon the many-colored,
distinct, and curious traces and images upon the old stone slabs. They
seem to have been always well known; nor have they been preserved
without a reason. You muse and muse, you conjecture single meanings,
and become more and more curious to arrive at the deep coherence of
these old writings. Their unknown meaning excites unwonted meditation;
and even though you depart without having solved the enigmas, you have
yet made a thousand remarkable discoveries in yourself, which give to
life a new refulgence, and to the mind an ever profitable occupation.
Life, on a soil inhabited in olden time, and once glorious in its
industry, activity, and attachment to noble pursuits, has a peculiar
charm. Nature seems to have become there more human, more rational; a
dim remembrance throws back through the transparent present the images
of the world in marked outline; and thus you enjoy a twofold world,
purged by this very process from the rude and disagreeable, and made
the magic poetry and fable of the mind. Who knows whether also an
indefinable influence of the former inhabitants, now departed, does not
conspire to this end? And perhaps it is this hidden bias, that drives
men from new countries, at a certain period of their awakening, with
such a restless longing for the old home of their race, and that
emboldens them to risk their property and life, for the sake of
possessing these lands."

After a pause she continued.

"Believe not what you are told of the cruelties of my countrymen.
Nowhere are captives treated more magnanimously; and even your pilgrims
to Jerusalem were received with hospitality; only they seldom deserved
it. Most of them were worthless men, who distinguished their
pilgrimages by their evil deeds, and who, for that reason, often fell
into the hands of just revenge. How peacefully might the Christian have
vis