have fewer active pleasures, they have less pain; and the pain they do undergo is, for the most part, sorrow for the errors, and failings, and misfortunes, of those upon whom, as a man beholds vessels tossed by a tempest at sea, they look abroad. Their pleasures too are subdued, yet more constant; unexciting, yet thence more conducive to happiness. Indeed, for such natures happiness is not to be found in the giddy whirl of amusement that the world affords. To others it may be, nay, it is necessary, to woo perpetual change, and cling to the rolling wheel of fortune, wherever it may go; but to those I speak of, the lap of tranquillity is the abode of happiness; and, whether their lot be or be not favourable, they learn to meet prosperity with a smile, adversity with resignation, and attacks with the shield of fortitude. Their joy is calm and sedate; their sorrow, pensiveness; hope, the balm of every wound; and death, either a deliverance from misfortune, or a passage from an imperfect state of bliss to one everlasting. The solitude of nature, which is, to the mere worldling, an aching void, is peopled with beings and existences that are to them not mute companions, but full of a language and an eloquence that bathes the unsophisticated heart with a holy joy and divine glow of enthusiasm. The soaring mountains, the sinking valleys, the broad plains unrolled beneath a sunny sky, the breathing forests, and the waters that wander round the earth, the silent re. volving, the gentle influences of the sun, and the jewelled coronet that binds the brow of night, all join to ensure calmness and gladness into the soul of one abstracted from the world, and holding communion with the beauties that fill the face of the earth with remembrances of their beneficent Creator. If the solitary were to choose one lonely place more than another for his abode, he would assuredly fix on a certain glen, nestled in one of the sloping folds of Mount Lebanon, where nature riots in her uncurbed luxuriance, and has, in the long lapse of time, clothed its every recess with a green underwood, even up to the brows of the impending precipices. Here and there too groups of tall trees fling their branches abroad. The cedar waves over the myrtle bowers, and the fir-tree on the rocks above; the palm, the olive, and the box-tree, all take root, and grow, and bud, and put forth leaves, and blossom, and bear fruit in their turns, and many flowers shake their censers in the breeze, perfuming the air; nor does the place lack a stream to stray along its depths. Hills, fresh with the morning dew, deeply green beneath the noontide sun, burnished by its setting beams, grey and solemn in the twi light, or silvered in the light of the horned moon, left their columns on every side to support the blue dome overhead. Nature, in fact, has been there in her own presence, and man has done little to alter her work. And that little has been done by men such as I have described, awake to all that was lovely there, and careful to mar nothing that tends to adorn the scene around. They were indeed men for whom such a scene was made. Quiet, unoffending souls, who had not learned the affectation of endeavouring to send nature to school, and who saw in all around gifts given from the immediate hand of God. Their food for the most part was plucked from trees within sight of their own cell, for they were hermits; the streams afforded them drink, and the produce of a small but well-stocked garden wherewith to make up any deficiencies in their very circumscribed wardrobe. In brief, wearied with the world and all its cares, its sorrows, its many ills, seven holy men had retired to this sequestered spot to spend the remainder of their days in the quiet enjoyment of innocence, in contemplation, and in prayer. No misanthropic feeling drove them thither; charity and good-will to all men lodged in their hearts, not unaccompanied perchance by the little failings and prejudices to which even such men are liable; but they felt, though for the most part men in the prime of life when they first bent their steps to this retirement, that the world was not made for them, and accordingly, with hearts overflowing with tenderness, they retired to a hermitage, a place where only such meek natures could hope to benefit their neighbours, by supplications to heaven, and the example of a pure and irreproachable life. Meeting for the first time perhaps on this their retreat from this world, their happily-constituted minds easily blended, and in spite of the necessary diversity in age, temper, and previous habits, a certain harmony pervaded the little society, that seemed to animate all its members as with one principle of action. Now their names were these: Mustapha, who was the eldest, and Sawab, and Abdallah, and Hussein Ibu Suleiman, and Abd-el-Atif, and Yousouf, and Hussein Ibn Achmed. To recite the daily round of their devotional occupations, though probably of much profit, would be but monotonous. Some account, however, of their domestic economy may be acceptable. Prayer then, and converse, engaged their more serious hours, from which they turned to the agreeable task of weeding and watering their garden, and tending the flowers and trailing plants that adorned a narrow ter race in front of their hermitage. They were indeed, though rigid Moslems, yet not ascetics, who strove to enjoy life in their quiet way, and who had no other butt for the small store of malice they possessed in common with all mankind, but the Father of Lies, who monopolised all their ill-will. Their charity was universal, all passers-by being welcome to a crust of bread, a handful of dried fruits, and a shelter from the weather. One old fellow, Mustapha, already far down the slopes of the vale of years, presided at their table, the patriarch of their society, whilst the rest in turns performed the due offices of the household, and thus their existence ran on, and would probably have continued to run, had not a circumstance, which I am about to relate, occurred to break the even tenor of their lives. CHAPTER II. The country around the glen I have described was lovely in the extreme. The opening turned towards the south, and it was consequently protected from the bleak north winds. On one hand, towards the north, and in front, stretched a country which, though not boasting much bold scenery, yet did not belie the epithet I have bestowed upon it. Here rose a woody hill, with its foliage waving, at the time of which I speak, in all the beautiful luxuriance of southern climes, to the summer breeze; there opened a lovely vale, with perhaps some watercourse flowing down, fertilising its green meadows as it went; and ever and anon the burst of melody that swelled away from the bloomy brakes, or sank from above, like the voice of angels singing in the stars, threw a kind of harmony over the spirits of the dwellers in the hermitage, and, as it floated along, unbroken by the voice of man, except when the evening and the morning recitations of prayers mingled therewith, it told that, however deserted by human beings the rest of the land might be, it was populous in those blythe warblers that haunt the lovely spots yet undisturbed by the noisy throng of cities. On the other hand, the crags shot up with a bolder front, and aspired nearer heaven; the valleys narrowed, and gave up the sound, the roar of dashing torrents and cataracts below, the ilex gave way to the pine that tufted the summits of the cliffs, in whose sides dusky recesses, where robbers might lurk, appeared and hung over the paths that led travellers across the mountains. Narrow clefts in the rock opened, as though to let forth whole troops of assassins; yet, in spite of the seeming desolateness of the scene, now that the sun was fast sinking to the west, a sweet though monotonous cadence rose on the freshening breeze. The hermits having repeated the last prayers of the day, were pouring forth fervently their souls, as was their wont at eventide, in song. At that moment a form was seen approaching the summit of one of the eastern cliffs, wending its way slowly, cautiously, as if in search of a lodging for the night. The traveller was mounted; but, at the distance at which he moved when the hermits arose from their knees, nothing further rewarded their eager examination. Besides, as he rode along a bold ridge of rocks, his form, relieved against the red setting of the sun, was magnified to a preternatural size, and appeared like a black shadow moving athwart the sky. The place, the hour, the circumstances under which he appeared, his solemn and deliberate movement, all tended to impress the minds of the simple lookers-on in the glen with the belief that they beheld an apparition from the world below; whether foreboding good, or portending evil, they were not capable to decide. A silent and awestricken air pervaded the countenances of the seven holy men, as they watched his progress, and superstition was fast peopling their imaginations with legends, traditions, and tales of the olden time, when a bold point of rock hid the stranger from their view. Mustapha, now affecting to smile at the fear which all were conscious had been felt, proposed that one of their party should go and conduct the traveller, whoever he might be, to their cell. This proposition was met with very general disapprobation-the more so, perhaps, as Mustapha was, by the station he occupied, exempted from such services. A mild dispute, or rather debate, ensued, which each purposely protracted to such a length, that just as it was about to be decided, almost unanimously, that the youngest should expose himself in behalf of the rest, the object of all this solicitude and speculation came trotting down the glen. He was not, on a nearer examination, an individual likely to attract, in all quarters, the kind of attention that he had with these simple hermits, though, to speak the truth, he was of no ordinary appearance. He sat across the lower part of the backbone of a very lady-like mare, and, believe me, so spare and gaunt was his figure, that, like the phantom camel of the Arab tradition, it might almost have been said to cast no shadow. His long lank legs hung, like pinions at rest, down his mare's ribs nearly to the ground, as he sat perfectly erect, so as to afford a full view of his whole exterior. He had a certain comical expres sion in his countenance, for which it was indebted nearly as much to the old turban that crowned his head, and the long scanty beard that concluded it at the other end, as to the sly leer that sat on the corner of his eye. His costume, half European and half Oriental, was such as would be likely to attract attention in whatever extremity of the world. It consisted of a long blue coat, kept tight round his loins by a very ancient shawl, and surmounted by a gaudy jacket of Greek manufacture. Yellow leather boots, with huge ungainly spurs, half concealed by his loose trowsers. decked his nether man, aud he bore in his hand a whip of hippopotamus' hide. All this was observed in seven times less time than I have taken to record it; for as there is but one to record, so were there seven to observe. The traveller, however.seemed scarcely to have perceived that he was the object of so much curiosity, or even that there were any human beings near. On he jogged, with his eyes half closed, and his hands resting on his thighs, allowing the bridle to rest on the mare's neck, looking neither to the right hand nor the left, and seemingly trusting to the sagacity of the animal he bestrode for the safety of his bones. Our hermits advanced one and all to meet him; but he still pushed forward al most into the midst of them, evidently wrapped in his own meditations. "Peace be on you, Effendi," at length quoth the chief hermit; "this cell At these words, life seemed to be restored to the stranger, who started, threw back his head, and fixing his nose in an inclined position, looked at the speaker along it, and exclaimed: "Eh, old figure, what are you talking about? Stay, Jahma, stay," continued he, patting his mare's neck, stay your paces, dearest; thou wilt scarcely get to Jericho to-night, though you try never so hard." 66 The mare, although she probably was not aware that had she lived a thousand years before, it would have required a month's journey over the mountains to take her to the place be mentioned, instantly obeyed his voice, and came to a stand. The demure expression of the worthy hermits on hearing the words and contemplating the actions of the stranger, instantly changed to one of astonishment, and looks passed between them which he did not fail to observe, as was testified by the quick roll of his eye from one to another. Magnanimously abstaining from any remark, however, he very quietly swung his right leg over the buttock of his mare, and came to the ground with an agility that did not seem to comport with his years. Maintaining his hold of the bridle, and looking fixedly at the rotund figure of the patriarch of this secluded glen, the traveller appeared to be studying and looking him through and through. This behaviour entirely disconcerted the hermits; they could neither advance nor recede, and accordingly they very logically stood still, awaiting the result of the examination they were undergoing. That result increased their confusion, for after about a minute he clapped his hands to his sides, very dexterously allowing the bridle to slip up his arm, and gave vent to an uproarious peal of laughter. "Ha, ha, ha! ho, ho, ho! What aha, ha, ha!-extraordinary, fat, funny, and frantic little residentary giant. Ha, ha! Mashallah!" he continued, laying his hand on his paunch. The Hakim Bashi of the Padisha will swear my next fit of indignation is caused by this over excitement of the animal spirits, but I cannot help it. Ho, ho, ho!" And he shook his lean sides with another burst of merriment. It was now pretty evident to our hermits that the stranger had been making too free with the wine skins, and had probably lost his way across the mountains. This conjecture he penetrated, and exclaimed: "What! you little eccentricities, you think I'm one of Noah's countrymen, who, on a certain occasion, drank so much more than was good for them? But I'm scarcely as old as that-I'm not above a thousand years old. What do you stand staring there for? Don't you hear me trembling with cold? This den is not too good for my old limbs. Take this mare to your best stables. Rub her down, crack her joints, smoothher coat, give her some corn, dip your reverend hands in this stream, and rub her down with them." Want of breath here put an end to a speech which seemed to please the utterer, for finding that he must stop, he smoothed his wrathful brow, and put on an air of marvellous satisfaction. One of the hermits, pitying his case, took the bridle out of his hand, and was leading the mare away to a narrow fissure in the rock which showed signs of a rural stable, when the owner shook his long finger at him, and said in a solemn tone: "Remember, you horrible jackanapes, that my mare is virtuous, that's all. Wallah!" muttered he audibly, as he entered beneath the low door of the hermitage; "how much happier I should have been, had I a gallon less of Greek wine in my inside! CHAPTER III. By this time one or two of the more shrewd of his hosts had began to suspect that the traveller had put on drunkenness as a mask, for neither in his step nor his manner, was there anything to indicate what would have appeared from his conversation. At least, there was evidently method in his madnes 3, for he was wonderfully solicitous about a small portmanteau, that he held in his hand, and which ap peared to be of considerable weight, for the sound it made as he set it down reverberated through the rock in which the hermitage was cut, and awoke two or three bats that were clinging in the corners. "Tis money!" whispered Hussein Ibu Suleiman," I heard it chink, as it used to do in my tilt before the beggars made their round." "Beads from Mecca, and holy relics more likely," replied Yousouf, with a glance of respect mingled with curiosity at the trunk. This suggestion elicited a smile of pity, perhaps of scorn, from an old fellow whose usual benignant, devotional air nearly shrouded, though not entirely, his former martial occupation. 66 They are spear heads," exclaimed he. And, though by no means as fine a warrior as Akbar, Abd-el-Atif was a mighty man of war in the eyes of his simple companions. “May heaven shield us from such murderous tools!" piously ejaculated Yousouf, which Abd el-Âtif regarding as a disparagement to his former profession, was about to remark upon, when Mustapha, who had seated his sepulchre at the head of a rude table that occupied the middle of the hermitage, interrupted their bye-play by calling all to their posts, excepting Sawab, who went to bring forth their repast. This was soon spread upon the table. Black bread, cheese, dates, cresses, and a few other rural products formed the repast, which after a short grace, with hunger for a sauce, the whole eight began to transfer from the table to their bowels. For the stranger was by no means backward, though frequent growls of dissatisfaction showed that he had been by no means accustomed to such hard fare. The unthankfulness of this old piece of iniquity, who never deigned to make the least acknowledgment for what he received, soon perfectly disgusted his hosts, who began heartily to wish for the morning, especially as in about an hour the stranger had quizzed them all round most unmercifully. Not a feature, not a pimple escaped him, not a thread of their thread bare garments. Indeed, such was his volubility, that his meaning, as some men's meaning very often does, seemed to vanish in the multiplicity of his words. At length, however, when all around him began to look exceedingly chapfallen, he changed his note, and suddenly grew mysterious, talked solemnly of treasures of hidden gold, enlarged upon sumptuous palaces and fine feeding, and told long stories of his adventures in the courts of princes. 66 My name," quoth he, in an extraordinarily communicative humour, “is Habukkuk Sallenbacha. I am a merchant. I come from the great city of Jericho. I am also a treasure seeker, and supply half the princes of the earth with their most costly jewels. The land I come from teems with riches. Gold, ivory, pearls, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, topazes, carbuncles, are turned up by the plough, and are gathered as pebbles are in this dismal desert country." The eyes of the hermits were all directed to the open door of their cell. They saw that the night was a dark one, that scarce a star twinkled in the heavens, that dark vapours hung around the earth, and they shuddered at what now appeared to them dreary and uncomfortable. How strange, they thought, that we never noticed this before! The fact was, that the ridicule the traveller had poured upon them, their habitation, and their mode of life, had taken such effect upon them that what before had appeared charming and simple, seemed now low and vile. They looked upon themselves as beggars, their hermitage as a hovel, the beautiful country around as a wilderness scarcely fit for the habitation of man, forgetting the arguments that had reconciled them to it, namely, that where God dwelt, there ought man never to disdain fixing his abode. So much more powerful, however, is ridicule than reason, that the old traveller, with his coarse and pointed irony, had disturbed the peace of mind of these poor hermits, perhaps for ever. Perceiving that he was attended to, the merchant of Jericho, as he styled himself, suddenly seized his portmanteau, and, lifting it upon the table, began to open it. They all looked attentively at his operations. Each expected to see his own prediction verified; when, low and behold! the lid was raised, and disclosed to their astonished eyes-not gold-not holy beads from Mecca-not sanctified relics, nor glittering spear heads-but a profusion of precious stones, arranged in costly jewel cases with glass covers, sparkling and beaming in the light of the rude lamp that hung suspended from the roof. For a moment a death-like stillness prevailed in the rocky chamber; the seven hermits gazed intently at the treasure before them; whilst the owner of that treasure sat waiting patiently until their examination should have been concluded. Presently, wondering glances passed round the board, but not a word was spoken until Habakkuk closed his trunk, and taking it from the table, sat down upon it, in order to watch at his lei sure the effect produced upon his entertainers. That effect was most extraordinary. The quiet, simple expression of content had vanished from their countenances, and, in its place, the strange, longing expression of avarice sat there. Suddenly their tongues were loosened, and, as though with one accord, they all exclaimed"Where did you find them?" "I found them," replied the traveller, in measured accents, allowing each word to distil from his lips like water dropping from a rock; "I found them, I think, in the treasures of the Twelfth Imam, in-" "Where? where?" eagerly vociferated the whole troop. "In the moon, or somewhere thereabouts," coolly rejoined Habakkuk, raising his body deliberately from his seat, and continuing, "Where am I to sleep? It waxes late. To bed, sirs, to bed!" But the avarice-stricken hermits were not satisfied, but poured prayers and intreaties upon him to tell them where the treasures lay. "Go to Jericho!" said he. waving his thin hand. “Where shall I sleep? Go to Jericho!" They showed him a nook in the wall, where he instantly stretched his long limbs, and was soon, to all appearance, fast asleep. Not so our hermits. Not a wink did they sleep for hours. The treasure of the Twelfth Imam engrossed all their thoughts, though not so entirely and undividedly but that Abd-el- Atif once fancied that he spied one of the stranger's eyes looking intently at them. A second glance, however, seemed to convince him that he was mistaken, for that long, lank, inanimate visage was evidently the property of a sleeper. At length the gold-smitten hermits crept one by one, each to his separate nook, and leaving their speculations proceeded to dream but still of that infernal portmanteau. The sacred love of gold had taken possession of their hearts, and there sat dominant. Gold! gold! gold! nothing but gold, gleamed before the eye of their imagination, as their bodies lay entranced in slumber. Their fancy, like Midas's fingers, turned all into the Peruvian metal. Avarice had completely mastered them. Their hermitage, their coarse food, and still coarser apparel, excited nought but loathing in their minds; and it was with heart-felt gladness that they turned from the world of reality to the dreamy regions of sleep, where, for a time, they revelled in all the extravagances of easily acquired wealth; doomed, however, on waking, to experience an almost equal pang of sorrow at the quitting of their imaginary treasures, as a rich man feels when he is really leaving this world and all its vanities behind him. Such were their feelings when the golden visions faded away. Reluctantly, and with a sickly feeling of discontent it was, that they rose and turned their eyes as if drawn by some all-powerful attraction, to the place where the stranger had lain the night before. He was gone. Not a trace remained of him. They called-they searched-they shouted again and again; but in vain. They proceeded to the little cave where they kept their own aged horse, for bearing their provisions from market once a month. The mare was gone, and not a hoof-mark was left on the path around the hermitage to tell whither it or its owner had departed. CHAPTER IV. I will not attempt-neither would it be possible to describe minutely how the resolution which our hermits adopted gradually unfolded itself, and came to maturity. Suffice it to say, that every incentive that avarice could use was exerted to determine them to quit their peaceful cell, and enter upon the wide world in search of a treasure, the existence of which even they were not, and could not be, certain. But the words and whole manner of the merchant of Jericho had so impressed the minds of the simple inhabitants of the glen with the idea that the treasure must exist, that it never once entered their hearts to doubt his veracity. Besides, they had seen the jewels he bore with him; which, by the bye, would have tempted any other set of men to a breach of at least one of the ten commandments. Another circumstance also had materially tended to dissipate any doubts they might have entertained. The very next morning after the unlucky visit of the merchant, Yousouf, who was sweeping the floor with rather less care than ordinary. perceived something sparkling in a corner. Having convinced himself by a second glance of the value of what he had found, he dropped down upon his knees with marvellous devotion, fell to kissing a little ruby as though it had been a nail from Mahomet's coffin. His companions soon crowded around him, and each handled and examined the gem with great care, until it was deposited in Mustapha's capacious pouch, aud was never heard of more. This must have been obtained somewhere (the obvious inference being, that it had been dropped by old Habakkuk in his hurry), and from whence was it so probable that it, along with the gorgeous array of still more valuable stones they had seen, had been procured, as from a hidden treasure? This was perhaps the secret, though not very cogent train of reasoning, that passed through the minds of the new gold-lovers |