an earthquake shattered its lintel and allowed the ponderous keystone to slip down several feet, as shown in our cut. There it hung for more than a hundred years, a huge block eleven feet high, 12 feet thick, and 6 feet broad, weighing about sixty tons. The British Consul at Damascus, however, built the pier of masonry by which it is now supported. The exquisite and elaborate carving of the mouldings, and volutes are beyond all praise. There are ears of corn, grapes and vine leaves, while genii lurk behind the intertwining vines.

"A more exquisitely beautiful view," says Dr. Jessop, "than that through this portal, looking into this lavish treasure-house of sculpture, cannot be

found in the East or West." At the fur

ther end is the sanctum or holy place for the altar, with doors leading down to vaults where the priests uttered their mysterious oracles. On either side of the portal is a spiral stair, by whose broken steps we climbed to the top, which still bears a dilapidated Turkish fort, and beneath us, like a map, lay the wide area bestrewn with crumbling ruins. Twenty-two of the columns are

still in position. One has been hurled by earthquake against the wall, but so firmly were its joints clamped with iron, that it still remains unbroken. The arched roof of the arcade around this temple was carved into hexagonal panels, each containing busts or scaly-winged dragons, with horrid hair like the Medusa's head. But the marvels of these colossal structures are not yet exhausted. The cyclopean wall which surrounds the acropolis is still more astounding. In this massy wall are seven huge stones, measuring thirty feet in length, thirteen in height and ten in breadth, and upon them, twenty feet above the ground, rest the

largest stones ever handled by man, thirteen feet in height and thickness, and respectively sixty-four feet, sixty-three feet eight inches, and sixty-three feet in length. They contain 32,000 cubic feet and weigh about 91,000 tons each. With such exactness were they cut and polished that the blade of a penknife can scarcely be inserted in the joint, and even now they look like one huge stone, nearly 200 feet long.

In the adjacent wall are nine cyclopean stones, each about 31 feet long, 13 feet high and ten in breadth. It is believed that the vast masses were raised to their position, as were also the mighty columns and architraves, by

making a great mound of earth, and by the main force of thousands of men, dragging them to their place. Only when one

measures his pigmy proportions against these huge masses does he realize the greatness as well as the littleness of man, by whose strength and skill they have been heaved high in the air.

Before leaving these mighty ruins, speaking of the past unto the present, I climbed a huge stone like a fallen crag, and mused and moralized upon the scene. All was silent save the distant voices or light laugh of the tourist group beside the temple of Jupiter. The gay-gowned figure of an Arab glided noiselessly beneath the shadow. Lithe lizards, flashing like living jewels, darted here and there. Shattered columns, architraves and lintels lay half-buried in the sand. The carved niches were empty now of their idols and statues of the emperors. The gods were defaced and mutilated. The prostrate columns lay like fallen giants upon their faces, like Dagon before the Ark of the Lord. The little Christian church, erected in the great court with the fragments of these temples, was itself a wreck. The all-beholding sun, to whose worship this vast structure was erected, looked down,

as he had for ages past, upon their crumbling ruins. I tried to restore in my mind the stately temple of the vanished past. I beheld the gorgeous pageants and processions, and the priests and devotees of the bygone worship of the sun and of Jupiter. I heard again the choric chant and saw the incense smoke arise. Then I woke from my reverie, and cold reality became again a presence. Those six lonely columns-all that was left of this great and goodly temple-seemed more deeply to emphasize the sense of desolation. "O ye vain, false gods of Helas, ye are silent evermore!" In the soft afternoon light, an old-gold colour suffused the mellow surface of the columns, clearly defined against the background of the blue sky and the distant snowy Lebanon, and tender shadows slowly crept across the mighty ruin. The whole weird scene made a picture which is stamped upon the memory forever.

A short distance without the walls is a another lovely octagonal structure, the so-called temple of Venus, forty feet in diameter, surrounded by a peristyle of six Corinthian columns and a rich Corinthian frieze, shown in the upper part of cut on page 427, with niche-like recesses on every side for statues of the gods.

In a little marshy meadow, not far off, is a roofless, ruined mosque, its columns of syenite and porphyry taken from the courts of the temples, and capitals and carvings stolen from some older ruin.

Near the wall is the quarry from which these huge stones were brought, and here still lies the hugest of them all, not quite detached from the native rock. I climbed to its top, on which two carriages could easily drive abreast. It is sixty-eight feet four inches long, seventeen feet wide, and fourteen feet seven inches high. Its estimated weight is about 15,000 tons, or nearly

3,000,000 pounds. It is about four times as large as the obelisks of London and New York. "Some sudden war, pestilence or revolution," says Dr. Jessop, "must have interrupted the plans of those ancient builders, or they would not have expended the labour of months, and possibly years, upon this mighty block, and then abandon it, still undetached from the quarry."

But little is known of the history of these great temples. It is supposed that the allusion in Amos i. 5, "I will cut off the inhabitant from the plain of Aven," refers to this seat of ancient idolatry. Baalbec has been identified also as the Baalath of 1 Kings ix. 17-18, built by Solomon in the wilderness. Universal

Arab tradition affirms that these cyclopean walls were erected by the wise king of Israel, assisted by the genii who were under his control. In ancient times, on every high hill, on Hermon and Lebanon, were groves and temples erected to the sun god, and here was, doubtless, one of the most sacred.

In the second and third Christian centuries Baalbec was a Roman colony, and in the coinage of the period are seen effigies of these temples. The lesser one was probably built by Antoninus Pius. Under Constantine Christianity was here established, but heathen customs were again revived by the Apostate Julian. It fell under the rule of the Moslems, and was by them converted

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into a fortress. For centuries the ruthless destruction of the columns and carved stones has gone on unchecked. Happy the traveller," says Dr. Jessop, "whose lot it shall be to see Baalbec even in its present declining glory before the relentless forces of nature and the not less relentless hand of man shall have completed the destruction."

NOTE. The only ruins in Syria that will at all compare with those at Baalbec are the remains of the city of Palmyra, the "Tadmor in the wilderness," built by Solomon. (1 Kings ix. 18; 2 Chron. viii. 4.) The clustered columns are far more numerous than at Baalbec, but none of them are of such stupendous size. One colonnade was originally more than a mile in length. The great central square was over 700 feet on each side. One hundred of the more than fifteen hundred columns, with two crumbling triumphal arches, still remain ; but the thousand statues of the heroes and gods, with the carved plinths and capitals, lie in tumbled confusion on the ground.

An evidence of the great population of Palmyra is the vast cemetery, containing a number of towers of silence in every stage of dilapidation. One of these is shown in the cut on page 430. It had places for four hundred and eighty bodies.

Here was the school of the sublime Longinus and the throne of the noble Zenobia, after whom are still named many of the maidens of the East. For a thousand years after Solomon, it is not mentioned in history, but it rose to fame in the early Christian centuries. The Roman Emperor Adrian adorned the city with many of its greatest temples and colonnades and gave it his own name, Adrianopolis. The brief but brilliant career of Zenobia, her defeat and capture by Aurelian, and the gorgeous pageant, in which, with a long train of captives of many lands, loaded with golden fetters, she was led in triumph to Rome, make one of the most striking episodes in history.

NATURE has ripened her fruit and grain;

But what, O soul! are the sheaves you bring?
While the rich earth offers her golden gifts,
What is the gain of your harvesting?

Have you garnered patience from day to day?
Have you gathered the precious fruit of love?

Has charity grown by the dew of tears

And the sunshine streaming from above?

In the sheathing husk of the outward life
Have you found the kernel God yearns to give
Have you gained with the body's nourishment
The "word" by which a man doth “live”?

- Mrs. M. F. Butts.