negro wants a licence for a shop: Wilberforce must procure it. Sailors are in dire distress: he must get relief for them from the Premier Addington. In vain do his friends murmur, and argue, and entreat. The stout old Dean writes scolding letters from Cambridge; Lord Muncaster remonstrates from Cumberland; Stephen comes. to reprimand and warn him; Hannah More is sure he will kill himself; Gisborne and Babington shake their heads and protest. A frame of iron, with nerves of brass, cannot stand this incessant wear and tear. In vain. He hears, but he goes on. Duties press; sympathies rise; he must work till he drops. So the daily round continues, and the levee never ends. As some go, others come, till it stops by exhaustion; not that the visitors cease, but that the host has fled. But he is gone only to fresh engagements; to the Board Room of the African Institution; to his place in the Parliamentary Committee Room; to a conference with some philanthropists; to a crowded meeting of Members of Parliament; to introduce a bevy of Yorkshire manufacturers at the Board of Trade; to head a deputation of Abolitionists to the First Lord of the Treasury; to argue and remonstrate at the Home Office; to see the Premier, and press for a squadron on the coast of Africa; to get an Order of Council, long promised, for the West Indies; to snatch a moment, while he waits in the Minister's anteroom, in order to write a kind note to an absent friend, or to send a word of loving caution to his boy at school; to take his seat in a Committee on the state of the poor; to join in examining the witnesses; at intervals to glance at one of the huge bundle of unread letters which swell his pocket, and to dash off a reply. Then away to Freemasons' Hall, to say a few words of cheering encouragement to assembled Christians; or else to the Mansion House, to stir up royal dukes and wealthy peers to head a needful subscription for distressed foreigners. In these labours the day is spent and drops into evening, and night finds him in his usual place, by old Bankes, in the House, ready to speak and vote on the questions of the night. So the round goes on; and through it the fragile being toils, and plods, and wades, till the Sabbath comes and sets him free, and blithe as a lark he rises into the heavens, and carols loud his song of joyous praise. At length autumn appears, and sends the worn labourer to his holiday; and there, as he has seen him at work, Bowdler visits him at play. "Mr. Wilberforce enjoys his parsonage as much as possible; certainly he is as happy as I ever beheld a human being.' One day at Wotton, another at Stowe. "Mr. Wilberforce made the shades resound to his voice, singing like a blackbird, wherever he went. He always has the spirits of a boy." The orthodox Bankes looked in on this sphere of labour, and these groups of odd acquaintances, and pronounced it a strange menagerie: "What odd people Wilberforce collects about him." Bowdler looked in, and understood the scene. "Kept by Mr. Wilberforce much longer than I intended; but he is like the old man in Sinbad's voyage, woe be to the traveller that falls into his grasp; it required a considerable effort to disengage myself." In one thing they agreed, the young man and the old : both had learned the same lesson, which a German poet has sung in verses worthy of remembrance: "Hallelujah! I believe; Now, O Love, I know thy power; CITIES "DESOLATE, WITHOUT AN INHABITANT.” MY DEAR SIR,-A detailed account of the principal buildings of Gerasa would hardly interest your readers; I think that it is perhaps better to leave them with that general impression of the place which I endeavoured to convey in my last letter. Yet I must add one last word about the temples-the great glory of Gerasa. Their position upon the hill-side is so picturesque, that at a distance they look as if they would rival the classical shrines of antiquity; but, on a nearer approach, they are seen to lack that beauty of proportion, and exquisite finish, which have made the temples of Greece and Italy famous for all time. Even when the decoration is abundant, it is of a kind which shows ingenuity and labour, rather than the genius which immortalizes, and which cannot be imitated. The most striking feature is the forest of columns which encloses the sacred cell; though many are fallen, enough remain intact to enable the imagination to restore the rest. While puzzling ourselves over some broken inscriptions, B came up to us, and with a smile, as if he could hardly believe his own story, declared that a column in front of the Temple of the Sun was waving in the wind. As it was not the first of the month, I went to look, and, climbing to the top of the cell-wall, lay down at full length, and, motionless myself, watched for the quaker. Nine of the stone giants were standing near together. Mighty and well-proportioned giants they were, about forty-five feet high, and five in diameter. A dull, slow, clinking noise, that sounded at first somewhat startling, told me where to look, and there, true enough, when a puff of wind more than commonly strong swept by, I could see that one of these beautiful monuments swayed to and fro, as if it bore on its lofty head the foliage which the chiselled capital represents. In a "Review of Dr. Stanley's Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church," there is a passage which, if it means anything, must, as it seems to me, mean that the writer of the Review is not aware of any mention of earthquakes in the Old Testament. As most people possess a Concordance, I am surprised that such a slip (if it was a slip) should have been made, and I wish that the author of the pamphlet could have stood with us on the hill-side by Gerasa, where he would have had ample evidence that "the Jordan valley, from Gennesareth down to the Dead Sea," has, since the close of the Scripture canon at all events, been visited by the terrible leveller. One of the temples has a cell-in other words, the enclosed body of the building-which is seventy feet long by fifty broad, and this was once encircled by guardian columns in single file, the sentinels being doubled before the portico. But, of all this band, the decus et tutamen of the holy place, one alone stands erect in the peristyle, as if still on duty: the rest, in ranks shattered and grey, measure their length "adown the steep incline"; overthrown by the same shock, they lie as they fell, side by side, their huge, disjointed fragments pressing heavily into a patch-work bed of scarlet poppies and other wild flowers. When the shadows began to lengthen, Land I mounted our horses and made the circuit of the city without the walls. Empty sarcophagi were scattered about in abundance, proving how thoroughly the principle of extramural interment had been adopted by the people of Gerasa. Mother earth would have been a more faithful keeper than these imposing cases, which were covered with sculptured wreaths and flowers, as if joy and gladness, rather than sorrow and gloom, had been associated with them. We have had a truly oriental interview with the Sheik who is to escort us to Tiberias. He is an ill-looking Bluebeard. I have been interested in reading of the impression made by him upon the French party who visited his territory a few days afterwards. "Faisons connaissance avec le cheikh de Suf. Il se nomme Yousef, ses vêtements sont sales et usés; . . . ses yeux sont assez intelligens; mais il a le malheur de posséder un nez si énorme et une face si burlesque qu'il suffit de le regarder pour entrer en belle humeur." Now I am quite ready to confess that Sheik Yousef had a ludicrous side to his character and appearance, but I think that the ferocious pre dominated. Retreating forehead, protruding eyes looking like two white balls, a nose such as I had never seen on human face before; so long, so hooked, so marvellously beyond all proportion, that when he turned towards you, it was difficult to see anything but nose, or to think of Sheik Yousef except as one enormous nose. His lower jaw, however, was almost equally striking and prominent; whilst the two canine teeth, which could not be hid, recalled the "wild boar of Ardennes." The tout ensemble of such a physiognomy fascinated while it repelled, and prepared us for all that followed. He invited our confidence, by placing in our hands a collection of very dirty documents, which he declared to be testimonials in his favour written by travellers who from time to time had crossed his district. I can see his restless eyes glaring fearfully upon us as we handed the treasured evidences from one to the other, and it was hard to keep grave looks when we found them to be indignant comments upon the Sheik's faithlessness and rapacity. They had been apparently handed over to his keeping as the sole punishment which his victims could inflict. We gave them back unmoved, and most complacently were they replaced in a fold of his raiment. It was indeed a ludicrous notion, that the unscrupulous old vagabond should go stalking about seeking whom he might devour, guarding, in blissful ignorance of their contents, these vouchers for his worthlessness, and displaying them with all simplicity, as traps to catch the unwary. "Surely," we might have said to him, "the net is spread in vain in the sight of any bird!" However, we had no choice but to go forward boldly into the net, prepared to cut the meshes when it fell upon us. The Sheik of course began by assuring us that he would escort us safely to Tiberias; and as to the price, would he not take us for nothing! for the pure love and honour of the thing! But if such a paltry thing as money must be mentioned, why-"My lord, hearken unto me; the protection is worth fifteen hundred piastres; what is that betwixt me and thee? go thy way!" But this sum was twice as much as the duty deserved; and remembering what we had read, we did not imitate the acquiescence of Abraham, though nearly as helpless, but beat our Ephron down to eight hundred piastres, half of which was not to be given till we reached Tiberias. He protested vehemently; foreseeing, no doubt, already that "great cry and little wool" awaited his intended plucking of us; he left the tent, returned, quite forgot the suave and passionless courtesy of Arab etiquette, retired again to take counsel with his cousins of different degrees, and finally gave in. Contact with these natives, au naturel, throws light on many a Bible scene. Esau with his "I have enough, my brother;" Zebah and Zalmunna complimentary in the face of death,-" As thou art, so were they, each one resembled the children of a king ;"-and Mephibosheth mulcted of half his property, yet saying, "Yea, let him take all," are lively illustrations of the tone of oriental dialogues in the present day. A delightful man is the Arab when he is on his good behaviour; but if his excellence is only skin-deep, and you happen to scratch him, you catch a Tartar. In such a case, I think one would be painfully tempted to apply to him certain epithets by which a well-known lady described some unenlightened rustics, her husband's parishioners, in the West of England. Her sweeping condemnation was thus worded;-they were "a greedy, guzzling, grinding, grumbling, grasping, graceless, godless set!" The sons of Sheik Yousef seemed to be no better than their father. A general uproar called us from our tents in the evening, and the account we received was, that one of these young gentlemen had been recognized by the kinsmen of some man whom he had killed, and that he had fled for protection to our encampment, followed by stones, sticks, and curses. We have taken a very friendly farewell of Abd-er-Rhazy and his people; we cannot but feel grateful to them for the faithfulness with which they have kept their contract, and they appeared to be very well content with the manner in which our gratitude found expression. But now that Sheik Yousef is our guardian, we take precautions which we had not thought of before. Our dragoman has given loud notice that any one approaching the tents after dark, and not answering to a thrice-repeated summons, will be shot; the grey horse which I have ridden all the way from Beyrout, is tethered to his owner's waist; our valuables are piled up in the centre of the tent; and the last movement before going to sleep is to feel that our revolvers are ready to our hand. Tuesday, April 24.-Leaving Gerasa in good time, it was still early morning when we passed by the first village which we have seen this side Jordan. As it belonged to Sheik Yousef, we were not surprised at seeing nothing more than a collection of low, squalid hovels, which did not invite close inspection. But the pleasant and novel scenery upon which we soon entered, put us into good humour with everything and everybody. The country became mountainous, and was covered with thick forests of oak; our path followed for the most part the windings of the glens, and the soft and shady glades were all that a horseman could desire,-save that at times the gnarled and tortuous branches interlaced across the ride, and threatened the heedless traveller with Absalom's fate. For, after all, is there any evidence for the popular view, that Absalom was caught and suspended by his hair? He was escaping by a forest-path, when he came suddenly upon a party of David's soldiers; in blind haste he turned aside to force his |