annoyed at a check I had received from an old friend of my aunt's, an aged and retired captain in the merchant service, who, hearing that I had walked home once or twice from church with his orphan granddaughter, had sent her away to some of his relations, a hundred miles off, and notified to me, in a blustering style, which savoured more of the quarter-deck than the drawing-room-" That he did not approve of 'calf-love."" I was so provoked at this tyrannical and insulting mode of procedure, that I determined to let Captain Stiff know that my attentions were not considered calf-love; for my landlady's sister, a young widow, who certainly did not look anything like ten years older than myself, and who had only three children-this lady honoured me by taking my arm on many occasions, until my Aunt Debby, coming somewhat suddenly to London, took lodgings opposite to mine, and made herself rather conspicuously cool, both to my obliging landlady and her really very superior sister.

I know it is a weakness of the female sex always to be suspecting entanglements that are to end in a church and ring; and Aunt Debby, being a maiden lady, was not without that suspicion. She was reputed to be a very sensible woman-as women go; and I certainly liked to hear her talk, for she had read and seen a great deal, and really had generally something at her tongue's end worth the saying. And I must say I had reason to love her; for she had been as a mother to me from the time of her sister's-my own mother's-death. Yes, I have a feeling, that some fellows of my acquaintance would, no doubt, call “a weakness,” for Aunt Debby; though I recollect Laura, that's Captain Stiff's granddaughter, always said, in her sweet way, "John, I respect you for your affection to your good aunt."

But to return to the conversation over the tea-table in my room, about experience making fools wise; I was inclined, as I said, to be perverse, and to banter my aunt. I was a man now, and surely past her schooling. But when I talked about “chance,” and the "lottery of marriage," I saw that she took it far more seriously than I meant it.

"Such sentiments have been the life-long ruin of multitudes," she said, putting down her cup, and looking me earnestly in the face.

"The fools, I suppose, that you spoke of?" "No, John, not always fools; for it is very strange what follies in this matter the wise commit."

"Well, you, aunt, have never committed that folly."

I had scarcely said the words, when I was angry with myself; for it came like a flash to my recollection, that Aunt Debby had been engaged in her youth to a young man of great talent and worth, who had lost his life in attempting to save a child from a burning house. I looked down and coughed, to hide my confusion, but my aunt made no comment. After a little pause, I think to steady her voice, she said,

"I was reading the life of a very great man lately, one as good as he was great; a man whose writings are valued as classics in the English language, and who was both loved and honoured by distinguished men in a learned age; and yet he contrived to bring down ruin on his personal happiness by a foolish marriage."

I saw my aunt was now in the full current of her narrative; and I listened, I own, with interest; for a wise man's folly has ever something of tragic in it.

"Yes," she continued; "I will for the present call him only by his Christian name, Richard. He was born of humble, honest parentage in Exeter; but, being a lad of wonderful talent and application, he was the chief scholar in the grammar-school of his native place; and his diligence and attainments won him patronage, so that he entered Corpus Christi College, Oxford; and, when he was but twenty years of age, he became the tutor of two youths nearly as old as himself; one of them the grand-nephew of Archbishop Cranmer. I mention this to show you the admiration in which he was held for learning; and yet the esteem for his piety was even greater. When Richard was twenty-eight he entered into holy orders. He was at that time fellow of his college, and professor of Hebrew. You have read of the sermons that in ancient times used to be preached at St. Paul's Cross, London. A pulpit outside the cathedral was so placed that a great concourse of people in the open air could gather round and listen, the weathershelter over the pulpit acting as a sounding. board to concentrate and convey the voice. Some of the greatest preachers, and some of the most memorable sermons, in old and troubled times, are associated with the records of St. Paul's Cross. It seems that, near to St. Paul's, there was a certain house, at which the appointed preachers were received. It was called very appropriately, 'The Shunamite's House.' In passing now through the crowded

streets of the heart of the city, it is strange to think of the quaint edifices of old London, and to recall the tradition of the 'Shunamite's House.' A certain Master John Churchman, a trader who had come to poverty, being a worthy man, was appointed to keep the 'Shunamite's House;' and his wife was to attend on holy men entertained there. She was certainly no Shunamite; for, instead of thinking to promote the welfare of the men of God, she thought only of her own interests. One rainy Saturday Master Richard came to this abode, having made the journey from Oxford, on a wretched horse, through dreadful roads; and so cold, wet, and weary, that never was poor traveller in a worse plight for fulfilling a preaching engagement next day. Mrs. Churchman manifested all attention, but seasoned her nursing with remarks on the great care which so infirm a constitution as Master Richard's needed. Indeed, that it was best for him to have a wife, that might prove a nurse to him.' From this-the scholar's abstraction, or his gentleness, not reproving her impertinence— she proceeded to say, 'such a wife she could and would provide for him.' The noble nature that was so above all deceit, that it never understood or feared it in others, was won to gratitude by the apparent motherly kindness of this false woman, and he began to listen." "Well, but, aunt," I interposed, "to choose a wife as a nurse; that was unworthy!"

"It was indeed a great error. A man should select a companion; one, who if she were not his wife, he would like to have as his friend. However, the guileless scholar was an easy prey. He had hitherto lived in a world of his own, and so became the dupe of a sordid woman and her shrewish daughter; for it was Joan Churchman whom her crafty mother had planned should be the wife of the learned writer."

"Yes, Aunt Debby, but as she had been commended as a nurse, and so accepted, was she one?"

“No. Had she fulfilled the promise of Mrs. Churchman, and had a reasonable care for her husband's comforts, it might have been some compensation; and yet I hold that a wife can never be merely the upper servant of her husband, without, in a certain sense, degrading him. She must, I repeat and abide by it, be his companion, if she is to uphold the dignity and honour of wifehood. Master Richard had to give up his fellowship, on marrying a woman described by one of his friends as

clownish, silly, and, withal, a shrew.' Soon after, a Rectory in Buckinghamshire was given him, and thither he retired with his wife. He had so many ways of filling up his time, and his temper was so perfectly gentle, that all the misery of his condition was not, for a time, felt. What that condition really was ought to be a caution to all generations. His two former pupils, who remained his dear friends, Sandys and Cranmer, paid him a visit at his parish. They found him with a book in his hand, tending sheep in the field. His joy was great at seeing them, and with all hospitality he begged them to stay the night with him; and, as he entered the house, they promised themselves the refreshment of his company; but this was not to be, for the clownish wife soon broke in on the conversation with the call, Richard, come and rock the cradle." So obvious were his discomforts, that his friends could not but observe them; and, at parting, were constrained to express their sorrow, to which Master Richard replied, 'If saints have usually a double share of the miseries of this life, I, that am none, ought not to repine.' Preferment soon after came. He was made Master of the Temple, a post he accepted with reluctance; for in London his wife would have her unpolished relatives—and though it is true that a man does not marry his wife's family, he can be both so annoyed and degraded by them, that it becomes a prudent man to weigh well the consequences of having new kindred. Soon after, he retired again into the country, preaching and living the Gospel in all earnestness and simplicity, but hindered, necessarily, in his usefulness; for those who could not estimate his merits, could see his mistake plainly enough; and the faults or blunders of superior people are not allowed to pass into oblivion. Great mental and spiritual consolations were granted him. His ecclesiastical writings were the admiration of the age, and a monument of diligence. Even those who differ from him have ever esteemed his talents and worth. But his domestic sorrows embittered his life. He died at the age of forty-seven; and, injudicious as he was, in one particular, he had the epithet bestowed on him of Judicious.""

"Oh, you have been telling me of the 'judicious Hooker,' the author of 'Ecclesiastical Polity," said I.

"Yes, I have been trying to make the single but irreparable mistake of a very wise man, of some use to a simple one."

I was going to say, "Serve her right; I am glad of it;" but my aunt added, "It will be very sad, for the best of us, if we get our just recompense." And in that I am sure she was right. I thought so then, and I know it now, as I recall, after an interval of years, the conversation of that night; and look, at the other side of my cosy fire-place, at the face of my sweet bride, Laura-an undeserved blessinga joy and a crown! All the more dear and precious, that I had to work and wait seven years before I won her.

C. L. B.

HE diet of the Bedouins consists of various kinds of paste, made sometimes of flour and water unleavened, or of flour and sour camels' milk, or of rice and flour boiled with sweet camels' milk, or of bread, butter, and dates. Their bread is of two sorts, both unleavened; it is baked in round cakes upon a plate of iron, or by spreading out in a circle a great number of small stones, over which a brisk fire is kindled. When the stones are sufficiently heated and swept clean, the paste is spread over them and covered with hot ashes until baked. Wheat boiled with leaven and dried, and then, after a year's keeping, boiled with butter and oil, is a common dish throughout Syria. This is called burgoul.

For a common guest, bread is baked, and served up; if the guest is of some consideration, coffee is prepared for him, and behatta, or ftíta, or bread with melted butter. For a man of rank, a kid or lamb is killed. When this occurs, they boil the lamb with burgoul and camels' milk, and serve it up in a large wooden dish, round the edge of which the meat is placed. A

wooden bowl, containing the melted grease of the animal, is put and pressed down in the midst of the burgoul, and every morsel is dipped into the grease before it is swallowed. If a camel should be killed (which rarely hap pens), it is cut into large pieces; some part is boiled, and its grease mixed with burgoul; part is roasted, and, like the boiled, put upon the dish of burgoul. The whole tribe then partakes of the delicious feast. Camels' flesh is more esteemed in winter than in summer, and the she-camel more than the male. The grease of the camel is kept in goat-skins, and used like butter.

The Arabs are rather slovenly in their manner of eating; they thrust the whole hand into the dish before them, shape the burgoul into balls as large as a hen's egg, and thus swallow it. They wash their hands just before dinner, but seldom after, being content to lick the grease off their fingers, and rub their hands upon the leather scabbards of their swords, or clean them with the roffe of the tent. The common hour of breakfast is about ten o'clock; dinner

or supper is served at sunset. If there is plenty of pasture, camels' milk is handed round after dinner. The Arabs eat heartily, and with much eagerness. The boiled dish set before them being always very hot, it requires some practice to avoid burning one's fingers, and yet to keep pace with the voracious

company.

The women eat in the meharrem what is left of the men's dinner; they seldom are permitted to taste any meat, except the head, feet, and liver of the lambs.

Of the arts but little is known: two or three blacksmiths to shoe the horses, and some saddlers to mend the leather-work, are the only artists found even in the most numerous tribes.

"An Arab's property," says Burckhardt, "consists almost wholly in his horses and camels. The profits arising from his butter enable him to procure the necessary provisions of wheat and barley, and occasionally a new suit of clothes for his wife and daughters. No Arab family can exist without one camel at least; a man who has but ten is reckoned poor; thirty or forty place a man in easy circumstances; and he who possesses sixty is rich. I once inquired of an Arab in easy circumstances what was the amount of his yearly expenditure, and he said that in ordinary years he consumed

Four camel-loads of wheat, piastres 200 Barley for his mare . . 100 Clothing for his women and children 200 Luxuries, as coffee, kammerdin, debs, tobacco, and half a dozen lambs

piastres, or £35 or £40 sterling."

200

700

Wealth, however, among the Arabs is extremely precarious, and the most rapid changes of fortune are daily experienced. The bold incursions of robbers, and sudden attacks of hostile parties, reduce, in a few days, the richest man to a state of beggary; and we may venture to say that there are not many fathers of families who have escaped such disasters.

The hospitality of the Bedouin is proverbial. To be a Bedouin is to be hospitable; his condition is so intimately connected with hospitality, that no circumstances, however urgent and embarrassing, can ever palliate his neglect of that social virtue.

The influx of foreign manners, however, by which no nation has ever benefited, seems to be pernicious in its effects upon the Bedouins,

for they have lost much of their excellent qualities in those parts where they are exposed to the continual passage of strangers. Thus, on the pilgrim road, both of the Syrian and Egyptian caravan, little mercy is ever shown to hadjys in distress. The hospitality or assistance of the Bedouins in those places can only be purchased by foreigners with money; and the stories related by pilgrims, even if not exaggerated, would be sufficient to make the most impartial judge form a very bad opinion of Bedouins in general. This is also the case in Hedjaz, and principally between Mecca and Medina, where the caravan travellers have as little chance of obtaining anything from the hospitality of the Bedouins on the road, as if they were among the treacherous inhabitants of the Nubian desert.

Yet even in those places a helpless solitary traveller is sure of finding relief; and the immense distance of space between Mecca and Damascus is often traversed by a poor single Syrian, who trusts altogether to Bedouin hospitality for the means of subsistence during his journey. Among such poor people as Bedouins generally are, no stronger proof of hospitality can be given than to state that, with very few exceptions, a hungry Bedouin will always divide his scanty meal with a still more hungry stranger, although he may not himself have the means of procuring a supply; nor will he ever let the stranger know how much he has sacrificed to his necessities.

Somewhat inconsistent with this spirit of hospitality is the inordinate love of gain and money which forms a principal feature in the Levantine character. This pervades all classes, from the Pasha to the wandering Arab, and there are few individuals who, to acquire wealth, would not practise the meanest or most illegal act. Thus with the Bedouin, the constant object of his mind is gain; interest appears the motive of all his actions. Lying, cheating, intriguing, and other vices arising from this source, are as prevalent in the desert as in the market-towns of Syria; and on the common occasions of buying and selling (where his dakheil is not required), the word of an Arab is not entitled to more credit than the oath of a broker in the bazaar of Aleppo.

The Arab displays his manly character when he defends his guest at the peril of his own life, and submits to the reverses of fortune, to disappointment and distress, with the most patient resignation. He is, besides, distin.

guished from a Turk by the virtues of pity and of gratitude, which the Turk seldom possesses. The Turk is cruel, the Arab of a more kind temper; he pities and supports the wretched, and never forgets the generosity shown to him, even by an enemy.

In his tent, the Arab is most indolent and lazy; his only occupation is feeding the horse, or milking the camels in the evening, and he now and then goes to hunt with his hawk. A man, hired for the purpose, takes care of the herds and flocks, while the wife and daughters perform all the domestic business. They grind wheat in the handmill, or pound it in the mortar; they prepare the breakfast and dinner; knead and bake the bread; make butter, fetch water, work at the loom, mend the tent-covering, and are, it must be owned, indefatigable; while the husband or brother sits before the tent smoking his pipe, or, perceiving that a stranger has arrived in the camp, by the extraordinary volume of smoke issuing from the meharrem (or women's apartment) of the tent, where the stranger has been received as a guest, to that tent he goes, salutes the stranger, and expects an invitation to dine and drink coffee with him.

The Arabs salute a stranger with the “salam aleyk!" (Peace be with you!) This they address even to Christians; if the stranger is an old acquaintance, they embrace him; if a great man, they kiss his beard. When the stranger has seated himself upon a carpet (which the host always spreads out for him on his arrival), it is reckoned a tribute of politeness due to the whole company that he should ask each individual how he does. The conversation then becomes animated; they ask the stranger

for news of his tribe and his neighbours, and the politics of the desert are discussed.

In matters of religion the Bedouins are lax Mohammedans. That peculiar form of Islamism which was originated in the latter end of the twelfth century by Abd el Wahab, sought to extend its influence over them. This may be described as a Mohammedan puritanism, incorporated with a Bedouin government, in which the great chiefs stand forth as political and religious leaders. This system reckoned among its followers some of the Bedouin tribes, who attached themselves to it with a view to the promotion of their own temporal interests. But when its power was broken by Mohammed Ali Pasha, they forsook it, and lapsed into greater irregularities than before. They are described by Burckhardt as "the most tolerant of Eastern nations;" yet it would be erroneous to suppose that an avowed Christian going among them would be well treated, without some powerful means of commanding their services. They class Christians with the foreign race of Turks, whom they despise most heartily. Both Christians and Turks are treated in a manner equally unkind, because their skins are fair, and their beards long, and because their customs seem extraordinary; they are also reckoned effeminate, and much less hardy than the tawny Bedouin.

Those Bedouin sheikhs who are connected with the government towns in the vicinity of their tribes, keep up the practice of prayer whenever they repair to a town, in order to make themselves respected there. But the inferior Arabs will not even take that trouble, and very seldom pray either in or out of town. C. A. H. B.

NE hot day in the month of June a splendid Lincolnshire hogget was observed to be greatly oppressed with heat, and being "as silly as a sheep," was, of course, continually moving from place to place-now under the stately oak, now under the tall chesnut; then to the shady hedge, and again to the spreading trees; but the more he moved the hotter he grew, till he was wellnigh overcome; and well he might be, for he bore upon his back one of the most

valuable fleeces on record. At length the shepherd entered the field, and gently drove the noble fellow to the fold to be shorn, and presently he took off his fleece, which proved to be a large bundle of fine wool weighing full twenty pounds. It is the history of this identical fleece that I am about to give: or rather I intend to permit the fleece, in as concise a form as possible, to give its own history.

"I was grown" (said the fleece) "upon the