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a key; but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest ranks of man she finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious England there are some that, to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly have received her mark upon their foreheads. But the third sister, who is also the youngest! Hush! whisper whilst we talk of her! Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should live ; but within that ; kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that of Cybèle, rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She droops not; and her eyes rising so high might be hidden by distance. But, being what they are, they cannot be hidden; through the treble veil of crape which she wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day or noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read from the very ground. She is the defier of God. She also is the mother of lunacies, and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within. Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with incalculable motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps. She carries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is per

mitted to enter at all. And her name is Mater Tene

brarum, — Our Lady of Darkness.

These were the Semnai Theai, or Sublime Goddesses,* these were the Eumenides, or Gracious Ladies (so called by antiquity in shuddering propitiation) of my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke by her mysterious hand. Touching my head, she beckoned to Our Lady of Sighs; and what she spoke, translated out of the signs which (except in dreams) no man reads, was this:

"Lo! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was, by lan guishing desires, that he worshipped the worm, and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolator, I have seasoned for thee dear gentle Sister of Sighs! Do thou take him now to thy heart, and season him for our dreadful sister. And thou," - turning to the Mater Tenebrarum, she said, "wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do thou take him from her. See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope, wither the relenting of love, scorch the fountains of

"Sublime Goddesses."— The word ouros is usually rendered venerable in dictionaries; not a very flattering epithet for females. But by weighing a number of passages in which the word is used pointedly, I am disposed to think that it comes nearest to our idea of the sublime, as near as a Greek word could come.

tears, curse him as only thou canst curse.

So shall he be accomplished in the furnace, so shall he see the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies. And so shall our commission be accomplished which from God we had, to plague his heart until we had unfolded the capacities of his spirit.”

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THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON.

DAMASCUS, first-born of cities. Om el Denia, mother of generations, that wast before Abraham, that wast before the Pyramids! what sounds are those that, from a postern gate, looking eastwards over secret paths that wind away to the far distant desert, break the solemn silence of an oriental night? Whose voice is that which calls upon the spearmen, keeping watch forever in the turret surmounting the gate, to receive him back into his Syrian home? Thou knowest him, Damascus, and hast known him in seasons of trouble as one learned in the afflictions of man; wise alike to take counsel for the suffering spirit or for the suffering body.

The voice that breaks upon the night is the voice of a great evangelist- one of the four; and he is also a great physician. This do the watchmen at the gate thankfully acknowledge, and joyfully they give him entrance. His sandals are white with dust for he has been roaming for weeks beyond the desert, under the guidance of the Arabs, on missions of hopeful benignity to Palmyra; and in spirit he is weary of all things, except faithfulness to God, and burning love to man.

Eastern cities are asleep betimes; and sounds few or none fretted the quiet of all around him, as the evangelist paced onward to the market-place; but there another scene awaited him. On the right hand, in an upper chamber, with lattices widely expanded,

sat a festal company of youths, revelling under a nonday blaze of light, from cressets and from brigh. tripods that burned fragrant woods — all joining i̟ choral songs, all crowned with odorous wreaths from Daphne and the banks of the Orontes.

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Them the evangelist heeded not, but far away upon the left, close upon a sheltered nook, lighted up by a solitary vase of iron fret-work filled with cedar boughs, and hoisted high upon a spear, behold there sat a woman of loveliness so transcendent, that, when suddenly revealed, as now, out of deepest darkness, she appalled men as a mockery, or a birth of the air. Was she born of woman? Was it perhaps the angel-so the evangelist argued with himself- that met him in the desert after sunset, and strengthened him with secret talk? The evangelist went up and touched her forehead: and when he found that she was indeed human, and guessed from the station which she had chosen, that she waited for some one amongst this dissolute crew as her companion, he groaned heavily in spirit, and said, half to himself, but half to her, "Wert thou, poor, ruined flower, adorned so divinely at thy birth — glorified in such excess, that not Solomon in all his pomp, no, nor even the lilies of the field, can approach thy gifts only that thou shouldst grieve the Holy Spirit of God?

The woman trembled exceedingly and said, " Rabbi, what should I do? For behold! all men forsake me!" The evangelist mused a little, and then secretly to himself he said, "Now will I search this woman's heart, whether in very truth it inclineth itself to God, and hath strayed only before fiery compulsion." Turning

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