Egyptian fashion seated on their shoulders, the women of Bethlehem slowly pass, with their long veils and long sleeves. Bethlehem! This name now resounds joyously everywhere, in ourselves and in our melancholy surroundings, in the chirping of the crickets, in the tinkling of the flocks, in the chiming of the church bells. The age seems younger by eighteen centuries. And now, one would think that the Virgin Mary in person. were coming towards us with the infant Jesus in her arms. A few steps away she stops, leaning on the trunk of an olive-tree, her eyes bent to the ground, in the calm and pretty attitude of the madonnas. She was quite a young woman with pure features and dressed in blue and pink under a veil with long white folds. Other holy women follow her, tranquil and noble in their flowing robes and also attired with the hennin and veil. They form an ideal group, which the setting lights touch with a last glow. They speak and smile to our humble muleteers offering them water for us in amphoras and oranges in baskets. It Under the magic of the evening, in measure as a charmed serenity returns to us, we find ourselves full of indulgence, admitting and excusing all that had revolted us a short time before. Mon Dieu! the profanations, the innocent little barbarisms of the crypt-all that we might have expected. was folly to regard it so loftily with our refined disdain. The thousand little chapels, the gildings and the coarse pictures, the rosaries, the tapers, the crosses,- all that consoles and enchants the innumerable crowd of simple folk for whom Jesus brought immortal hope. We who have learned only to look at Christ through the Gospel, perhaps conceive of Him an image less obscured than these pilgrims who in the grotto kneel before the little lamps of the altars, but the great enigma of his teaching and of his mission remains as inexplicable as ever. The Gospels, written almost a century after him, radiant as they may be, no doubt misinterpret him strangely. The slightest dogma is as inadmissible to our human reason as the pettish power of medals and scapularies. So by what right should we despise so much these poor little things. Behind all that—very far — at a boundless distance if you will there is always the Christ, unexplained and ineffable, he who let approach the simple and the little children and who, if he saw come to him these half idolatrous believers, these peasants come to Bethlehem from dis VOL. XIII.37 tant Russia with their tapers in their hand and their eyes full of tears, would open his arms to welcome them. And now we consider with the most impartial indulgence this spot unique in the world, which is the church here; this spot filled eternally with the perfume of incense and the sound of chanting prayers. THE MARBLE MOUNTAIN OF ANAM. (From "From Lands of Exile.") THE caverns are peopled with idols; the entrails of the rock are haunted; spells are sleeping in these deep recesses. Every incarnation of Buddha is here and other, older images, of which the Bonzes no longer know the meaning. The gods are of the size of life; some standing up resplendent with gold, their eyes staring and fierce; others crouched and asleep, with half-closed eyes and a sempiternal smile. Some dwell alone, unexpected and startling apparitions in dark corners; others- numerous company sit in a circle under a marble canopy in the green, dim light of a cavern; their attitudes and faces make one's flesh creep; they seem to be holding council. And each one has a red silk cowl over his head - in some pulled low over the eyes to hide their faces, all but the smile: one has to lift it to see them. The gilding and Chinese gaudiness of their costumes have preserved a sort of vividness that is still gorgeous; nevertheless they are very old; their silken hoods are all worm-eaten; they are a sort of wonderfully preserved mummies. The walls of the temple are of the primeval marble rock, hung with stalactites, and worn and grooved in every direction by the trickling water oozing from the hill above. And lower down, quite at the bottom, in the nethermost caverns, dwell other gods who have lost every trace of color, whose names are forgotten, who have stalactites in their beards and masks of saltpeter. These are as old as old as the world; they were living gods when our western lands were still frozen, virgin forests, the home of the cave-bear and the giant elk. The inscriptions that surrounded them are not Chinese, they were traced by primeval man before any known era; these basreliefs seem earlier than the dark ages of Angcor. They are antediluvian gods, surrounded by inscrutable things. The Bonzes still venerate them, and their cavern smells of incense. 7291 RICHARD LOVELACE. RICHARD LOVELACE, an English dramatist and poet, born in Kent, 1618; died in London, 1658. He shone at the court of Charles I., and sacrificed liberty and fortune for that unhappy prince. His "Lucasta" is a collection of charming verse, "The Scholar" is a comedy of merit, and "The Soldier" is a tragedy. TO LUCASTA, ON GOING TO THE WARS. FROM THE GRASSHOPPER. O THOU that swing'st upon the waving ear Dropt thee from heaven, where now thou art reared, The joys of earth and air are thine entire, That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly; And when thy poppy works thou dost retire Up with the day, the Sun thou welcom'st then, VOL. XIV. —1 |