were glistening with drops of rain, the birds sang sweetly in the shrubs around. Henrietta's burning eyes felt refreshed, and though she sighed heavily, she could not help admiring, but Beatrice was surprised that the first thing she began to say was an earnest inquiry after Aunt Geoffrey, and a warm expression of gratitude towards her.

Then the conversation died away again, and they completed their two turns in silence; but Henrietta's heart began to fail her when she thought of going in without having her to greet. She lingered and could hardly resolve to go, but at length she entered, walked up the stairs, gave her shawl and bonnet to Beatrice, and tapped at Fred's door.

"Is that you?" was his eager answer, and as she entered, he came forward to meet her. "Poor Henrietta !" was all he said, as she put her arm round his neck and kissed him, and then leaning on her he returned to his sofa, made her sit by him, and showed all sorts of kind solicitude for her comfort. She had cried so much that she felt as if she could cry no longer, but she reproached herself excessively for having left him to himself so long, when all he wanted was to comfort her; and she tried to make some apology. "I am sorry I did not come sooner, Fred."

"Oh, it is of no use to talk about it," said Fred, playing with her long curls as she sat on a footstool close to him, just as he used in times long gone by. "You are come now, and that is all I want. Have you been out? I thought I heard the garden door just before you came in."

"Yes, I took two turns with Queen Bee. How bright and sunny it is. And how are you this morning, Freddy ?"

"O, pretty well, I think," said he, sighing, as if he cared little about the matter. "I wanted to show you this, Henrietta." And he took up a book where he had marked a passage for her. She saw several paper marks in some other books, and perceived with shame that he had been reading yesterday, and choosing out what might comfort her, his selfish sister, as she could not help feeling herself.

And here was the first great point gained, though there was still much for Henrietta to learn. It was the first time she had ever been conscious of her own selfishness, or perhaps more justly, of her proneness to make all give way to her own feeling of the

moment.

We cannot please God but in ways of His own appointment; so that no man can tell what he shall do, what he shall be, when once he ventures to leave or to neglect the means of grace afforded him in the Church of GOD.-BP. WILSON.

THE SABBATH.-He that remembers not to keep the Christian Sabbath at the beginning of the week, will be in danger to forget before the end of the week that he is a Christian.-SIR E. TURNER.

JERUSALEM TO NAZARETH.

Where sculptured stone and mouldering colonnade
Lurk in the shelter of the waving grass,

The hall of Herod not unheeded pass;-
'Twas here of ancient days the feast was made;
Here revelled mirth, and here the minstrel played;
'Twas here the Damsel with voluptuous skill
Charmed the besotted tyrant to her will,
And won her wish-a Prophet's reverend head.
Then change the scene, and view in cell forlorn,
By the grim shore of Sodom's cursed sea,
That corpse cast forth to insult and to scorn.
Change yet once more-Ah! no-'tis not for thee
To view that land where none of woman born
Is greater, or hath higher place than he.

The Ruins of Sebaste.

PREVIOUSLY to quitting Jerusalem, I applied at the Latin convent for the usual certificate, to show that I had fulfilled the accustomed duties of a pilgrim. Several of the English travellers submitted to having the Hadji's mark tattooed, for a perpetual memento, upon the arm; but hearing of their wry faces during the operation, and seeing them rubbing their arms for some days afterwards, I contented myself with the certificate. When, however, one of my fellow travellers, on the voyage home in the " Oriental," bared his arm, and showed me a most genuine and orthodoxlooking stamp upon it, the indelible seal of Jerusalem, I certainly envied him his mark.

Achmet had also a certificate of his visit sent him from the Mosque of Omar, seven pilgrimages to Jerusalem being considered by the Mahommedans as equivalent to one to Mecca. He scarcely deserved it, however; for, to say nothing of having come to Jerusalem purely in the way of business, he had never gone near the Mosque of Omar. He, however, had not only one sent him, but two, the reason for which I could not comprehend; for though the duplicate, being of the same date, might not be of any service to himself, yet by giving it to a friend who had already performed, say six pilgrimages, he might thereby enable him to claim unduly the honour of being a Hadji. In this there would be no difficulty, as it was merely a printed form, which would suit one person as well as another. Achmet's argument in reply, that a Mussulman who had evinced his piety by six pilgrimages, would not be a likely man to commit such a fraud, did not appear to me so perfectly satisfactory as it was to himself. However, to prevent the possibility of any pious Moslem being led into temptation, he consented, at my request, to let me have the duplicate. And a

most mysterious-looking document it was-rudely executed in lithograph, and covered with strange emblems and devices, of which a sword, fit type of the genius of Mohammedanism, was one of the most conspicuous.

I was at first a little puzzled with my own, which certified "Dominum, Dominum Robert Ferguson Jerusalem feliciter pervenisse," &c. I did not understand the double title that was given me, till I remembered the French "Monsieur, monsieur."

I now started from Jerusalem with two followers, Achmet and Halil, the latter being driver and proprieter of the mules which I had engaged to take me to Damascus. In all countries, men of this class are frequently characters, and Halil was not an exception. Time, that had turned his beard to white, had not impaired the vigour of his frame, or the energy of his spirit. He seemed to have but one idea, and that was comprehended in the word "yellah" (forwards), which was seldom out of his mouth. Sometimes on awakening in the stillness of the night, I could hear him muttering it to himself, as if in a dream, till Achmet, whom he was in the habit of knocking up at almost all hours, swore he was mad. However, there was certainly method in his madness, and it might have taken a more inconvenient form. On the first day's journey, having performed some trifling service for me, I made use of one out of my small stock of Arabic words, "ketther khayrak," (thank you,) which proved ever afterwards a source of infinite perplexity to him. He went to Achmet and asked him, "Does the Howaga understand Arabic?" To which Achmet replied, "No, he only knows a few words." But this did not appear at all to satisfy his understanding; for he seemed to look upon it in this light, that a man who knows one word of Arabic must know more, inasmuch as one word is as easy as another. Frequently, after staring at me for some time in a deep reverie, he would suddenly cry out, "Ketther khayrak," and then burst out into a fit of laughter that made me sometimes incline to Achmet's opinion as to his sanity. However, we got on (in a literal sense) uncommonly well together, for his mules were as sturdy as himself. Nothing seems to tire these animals; the greater their load, the more obstinately they push forward. They turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, and if you stand in their way they will walk over you. But when once arrived at the place of bivouac, they will not stand any delay in unloading them, for they immediately lie down and roll about, more to their own satisfaction than to the benefit of the baggage upon their backs.

A few miles out of Jerusalem we overtook a solitary traveller on foot, who presently introduced himself as a barber of Nablous, who was returning home after a three weeks' imprisonment in Jerusalem gaol, on account of some affair about a portmanteau, in which he of course represented himself as innocent as a lamb. Though de

pendent upon charity and chance for a mouthful of bread on the road, yet tobacco was too much of a necessary to be left to uncertainty; and he had bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen an old pipe, and a small quantity of the needful. By virtue of having picked up my cloak, which had fallen from behind my horse, he was installed a member of our cavalcade; nor did I find any cause to regret having done so, though on one occasion, having caught a sight of my razors, he frankly warned me that he felt a strong temptation to steal them; which I was uncertain whether to interpret as a sign of honesty, or of the reverse.

The first station out of Jerusalem is Berooth, which is supposed to be the place where the caravan halted when Joseph and Mary missed JESUS. And not without reason, for it is still the regular stopping-place for the first day's journey; and we know how little change there is in the customs of the East. However, I determined to push on to the next station, the pretty village of Anabroot, and found myself a person of much greater consequence than if I had halted at the village where the sight of strangers is a more common occurrence. We put up in a building which serves the double purpose of a caravanserai and of a mosque, and which, being open on one side, and likewise being considerably lower than the street, afforded the inhabitants an opportunity of overlooking our proceedings, of which they were by no means slow to avail themselves.

Next morning we breakfasted by the fountain of Alihoon, which supplies several of the neighbouring villages, the women of which were continually coming and going. Fountains in Palestine are frequently regular places of rendezvous, where all the gossip of the neighbourhood is retailed; thither the women repair for domestic purposes, and the men to water their flocks and herds; there everybody meets everybody; so that, in fact, these "watering places" answer some of the important purposes of our own. I observed how graceful and picturesque was the pitcher on the head, which improves the carriage on exactly the same principle as that practised in modern boarding schools; how much the reverse the pigskin on the back, beneath which, as the bearer staggers along, the finest form appears awkward and ungraceful.

Here

Close to the place where I was encamped, another party had just been break fasting, whom I knew to be natives, by the red eggshells strewed around; and the same circumstance frequently afterwards gave me a clue to the nature of the party on whose track I was following. I was not able to trace this custom of dyeing their eggs to any other origin than that of caprice, or, as Achmet expressed it, to a wish "to make them pretty."

In the evening we arrived at Nablous, and passing through the town, which is "one of the old cathedral towns of Palestine," encamped under the olive trees on the other side.

I have (figuratively) described Nablous as one of the "old cathedral" towns of Palestine; Sebaste, however, the next place to which I came, might perhaps claim the title in a more literal sense, inasmuch as it really possesses an ancient church, built by the indefatigable Helena over the assumed place where John was beheaded by order of Herod. This is, however, contrary to the authority of Josephus, who informs us that John was put to death in the castle of Machærus, near the Dead Sea; consequently this is one of the shrines which has not stood its ground, and the church is in ruins.

The next village was Jebba, where I encamped for the night in an olive grove close by, and watched the flocks gather slowly in from their pasture, and the husbandmen straggling by, returning from the labour of the field. Most of these greeted me as they passed with the salutation "howayeh," common in this part of Syria, and which sounds very like "how are ye?" pronounced, as it frequently is, rather quickly. Two hours more, and it was night; all was hushed and still, save the distant cry of the jackal, "A mixed and mournful sound

Of crying babe and beaten hound."

Near Jinnin, on the following morning, I caught the first peep of the snow-crowned Hermon, and soon afterwards emerged into the magnificent plain of Esdraelon. Coming upon it suddenly, and rather sooner than I expected, I was not just at first aware that it was it; but I could not help remarking, though not in the habit of looking at places with a military eye, what a field it would be for a mighty battle. I made the observation to Achmet, who told me in return a story of a certain Egyptian Princess who once encamped here with thirty thousand men, and made great complaints (which I could not but consider extremely unreasonable) of not having sufficient room. When I found that this was the plain of Esdraelon, the scene of many a bloody struggle in time past, and where the mighty battle of nations is one day to be fought, the circumstances under which I approached it caused it to make a strong impression upon my mind; and as I rode through the waving corn, I thought of the many striking scenes which it has witnessed.

Here we may fancy the hosts of Canaan encamped-Sisera and his nine hundred chariots of iron. When suddenly bursting like a torrent from their fastnesses on yonder mount of Tabor, Barak and his ten thousand rush upon their invaders;—at their head, with streaming hair and flashing eyes, the inspired Prophetess of Israel, she who dwelt under the palm-tree of Deborah, points to the opposing host, and promises victory in the name of JEHOVAH. Again the sound of strife-again Israel struggles with his invaders.