stan a koor, the other a bhowree. Both may be found | been the wonder of their day; and the men of Abranear all large cities of the East, whether in Egypt, Palestine, or India. The largest koors I have seen are in Bombay, and consist simply of the well itself with a circular wall of masonry round it about four feet in height, on the outside of which the people stand, and let their vessels by ropes into the well: for purposes of irrigation a trough is fitted to one side of the koor, and the water raised by a Persian wheel, worked by a camel or bullock.

It was probably from a well of this description that the daughter of Bethuel "came up," when met by the servant of Abraham, and the action described by which she "let down her pitcher upon her hand," deserves remark, as the invariable action of the Eastern women.

ham's servant may have told how "the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace." It is at such times as these, by the crackling fire of thorns blazing on the forms of kneeling camels and reclining men, each on his little carpet, with sword, and matchlock, and kaliun beside him, wearing away the cool starlight nights of the beautiful East, that traditions descend for ages, and become the histories of a people. The great changes of dynasty, the heroic acts of men, the natural phenomena of nature, become invested with all the charms of poetic imaginations, and are thus sung and recited from age to age, fabulous, perhaps, in their ornament, but true in their facts, and always valuable, as characteristic of the mind of man in its progressive stages.

The bhowree is often one of the most beautiful portions of the architecture of an Eastern city, and one eminently so is at Junaghur in Western India. This magnificent well is built of granite, every portion of which is richly sculptured with each variety of architectural ornament known in India; with figures of heroes, and dancing girls, animals, flowers, bells, In the 59th verse we read: "And they sent chains, and tassels. It contains three stories of open away Rebekah their sister and her nurse.' A nurse arcades, supported on light pillars, and is descended by or confidential servant is to be found in all families of three flights of wide and handsome steps. The women the East. She is often a slave, whose ancestors may must, one would think, undergo much fatigue in re- have been in a family for centuries, and her own mounting from these wells, bearing often three water-child has probably been the foster-sister of her misvessels poised on the head; but it is a labour that tress. In the family of the Nuwaub of Junagarh, practice inures them to from childhood. each wife of the prince had her "nurse," a favourite slave, who wandered about to collect news for the amusement of her mistress, sat constantly in her presence, exercised very dreaded authority in the household, and, wherever her mistress went, would certainly have accompanied her, as she had before done from her father's to her husband's harem. I recollect also an instance of heart-touching fidelity in a woman of this class, the "nurse" of the Ranee, or Queen Mother of the Prince of Cutch. The lady was the daughter of a chief of a desert tribe on the island of Puchum, the oasis of a salt desert, whose women are celebrated for their beauty. The Prince of Cutch sent for her, as Abraham, on behalf of Isaac, sent for the daughter of Bethuel, by his cheila, or favourite servant. The lovely daughter of the chief became the wife of the Cutch prince, and the mother of the present lord paramount, Rao Daisuljee; and when she died, her body was burned, and the ashes placed in a splendid mausoleum; but as I rode past the spot where the funeral pyre had blazed, I saw a whitened water vessel, and the people told me the Ranee's nurse had there buried herself alive, in her grief and her devotion for her mistress.

The servant of Abraham, in progressing with his mission, as we see in the 22d verse, "took a golden ear-ring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold." Such are the presents commonly offered in cases of betrothment; and personal ornaments in the East are valued for their substance, not for their delicacy of workmanship. The women in the province of Cutch, in Western India, wear ear-jewels, or rather plates, of gold, that cover the ear and touch the shoulder, but they do not depend from the ear itself, but are supported by silken braids twisted into the knot of hair at the back of the head. Thus with a nose-jewel also the hook passes indeed through the nostril, but the jewel is prevented from dragging on it by a chain of gold or pearls, that crosses the cheek, and hooks into the hair behind the ear. In the 31st verse Laban bids the servant welcome, saying, "I have prepared the house, and room for the camels." All houses of respectable persons in the East have their guestchambers; for although each city, town, and village, has its dhurrumsaulah, or serai, an open sort of verandah to afford shelter from the noontide heat to the wayfarer, who may sleep therein, smoke his kaliun, and eat his frugal meal,-the better sort of people are bidden as guests to the house of an inhabitant, and the fakirs, priests, and wandering religious mendicants, seek the courts and porches of the mosques and temples. There was also "room for the camels." Such is found generally in the courtyards of the houses of the East: large spaces, never planted as with us, but intended for the accommodation of animals and we will suppose, as I have often seen such scenes, that at night a huge fire was lighted in this court, and the camels knelt round it "ungirded" of their heavy wooden saddle and many pads of cloth and leather, the "straw and provender" scattered round; and among them groups of men-the grooms, herdsmen, and armed followers of Laban and Bethuel, smoking their kaliuns, and telling strange tales, perhaps of Sodom and Gomorrah, which would have

At the 61st verse, we read that "Rebekah arose, and her damsels, and they rode upon the camels, and followed the man." In the East, women commonly ride on camels in preference to horses, occasionally on quilted saddles, but more commonly in what is called a kajavah, a pair of large boxes of wood or wicker-work, padded and lined, and swung in equal balance on each side of the camel-saddle. I have seen long processions of this kind on the plains of Sindh, when the dwellers of the towns above the passes have moved down to avoid the snows of the mountains and to seek pasture, bringing with them their wives and children, and men and women servants; and it is most probable that Rebekah, as a beautiful and delicate woman, so travelled, the camels of the cavalcade following the man, as I have before remarked is customary in Eastern journeyings. To this manner of advancing the camels are early trained; for not alone is it necessary that the animals should move thus in lines while passing through the crowded streets of a city, winding through mountain defiles, and crossing ferries; but, from the manner of loading them, nothing could equal the mischief and confusion that would ensue were the animals to move

abreast of each other, as is common with horses, mules, and elephants. And Isaac, we see, went out to meditate in the field at eventide." After the heat of

the day, when in the East the houses of cities, and the tents of the plains, until the evening breeze has cooled them, remain distressingly hot, their inhabitants stroll forth, either to meditate, to chat with their neighbours, or to bathe in the waters of any river that may be near. The people of the East are an essentially meditative people. The climate induces to this condition; and I have seen

THE MAIDEN AUNT.-No. V.

CHAP. I.

THE broad slopes of Beechwood Park were swept by many passages of green light, many a tree-shadow lay smooth and sharply cut upon the sward, and the foliage was burning with the myriad hues of sunset and autumn, which, like the graces developed in the soul by time and discipline, tell of springtide and morning departed-of night and decay drawing near. Edith sat with Mrs. Dalton at the foot of a huge oaktree, and from the shadow of that natural cloister looked forth upon the brightness of the world as a

men for hours seated perfectly still, their eyes fixed on the ground, and their every faculty absorbed in meditation. With the people of the East this abstrac-spectacle in which her soul took no part. She was out of tune with the harmonies of nature, and the tion is a duty; it is fulfilled at certain times. Chance discordant voice of her heart was not yet so put to incidents do not, as with us, give rise to reflection; silence that she could listen to the strain in which she but men go forth to meditate, and this usually at was unable to join. Her face and attitude seemed the eventide, perhaps in a field, as Isaac did, but very very embodiment of weariness without repose. One commonly at least as I have seen them-beneath a restless hand was busied in plucking the moss and spreading tree outside the city; and such is the re-harebells which grew beside her, the other lay idly in spect felt for this habit, as for prayer, in the East, that, her lap, and her eyes were fixed upon a group of let a man so sit in meditation by the wayside, no couching deer in the distance, with a steadfast vacantgazer turns to look on him; and so abstracted does he ness which betokened that the soul had interposed become, as to be unconscious of the presence of aught some image of its own between them and the object save the images of his own imagination. on which they seemed to gaze. Woe to those to whom nature is but a mirror wherein they see themselves reflected! How can the antidote avail if we persevere in mixing with it the very poison which it is intended to counteract? Yet we must not throw it from us in despair, but rather wait patiently, and purify it by degrees, if we desire to obtain our cure from it. are like persons who look out upon the night through the windows of a gaily-lighted drawing-room. At first we see nothing but the candles and the open workboxes on the table, but if we gaze steadily, by degrees the shapes of the solemn hills, and the dim whiteness of starlight, come into view; we discern the clustering of trees and the level space of lawns, and at last the moon soars up from the horizon and shakes silver light from her wings, till the earth shines with a pure and mellow glory, like the brow of a risen saint. After this, can we go back to the candles again?

woman.

When the daughter of Bethuel found that the man who walked in the field was Isaac, she not only "lighted off the camel," as we read in the 64th verse, as a motion of respect always observed in the East by an inferior to a superior, but "she took a veil and covered herself." In Upper Sindh I have had frequent occasion of remarking this particular etiquette of lighting down before entering the garden even of a superior. The Governor of the city of Shikarpoor was a man of very considerable importance, but inferior, of course, to the British Resident; and although he had occasion to present himself at the Residency daily, and sometimes in great haste, summoned on matters of pressing emergency, arrived at the gate, he ever dismounted with great state and etiquette, walking up the avenue, while two grooms led his horse by his side, and a retainer bore his sword. Thus Rebekah, in "lighting off her camel," did it in acknowledgment of her inferiority to Isaac; as in the East, great as her influences are, and ever have been, in social observance, man ever asserts his supremacy over The veil of the women of the East, whether seen in Syria or India, with the Jewish women or the Cashmerians-and I have seen it on the fair forms of these, as well as enveloping the Affghan and Persian ladies-is, in fact, a cotton or silken scarf (white or coloured), some three yards in width, and the shortest thirteen in length; this is wound round the form of the wearer, and one end thrown over the head: the figure, face, and dress are thus completely shrouded, and the graceful management of this drapery is an art in which the women of India excel. The wearing the veil is also a mark of respect; and thus, although the lady of Nahor travelled without its encumbrance, surrounded by her servants, we see that in the presence of Isaac, her betrothed lord, "she took a veil and covered herself." And we observe throughout the whole of this beautiful chapter, even until Rebekah becomes the wife of Isaac, that the incidents described are precisely similar to those which might occur in our day, were a prince of the East to send forth his favourite servant to seek for his son a wife among the daughters of his kindred in a distant province, with presents of gold, and silver, and raiment, according to the customs of the East in all such cases of marriage and betrothment.

We

“What an evening!” cried Amy; " the repose of moonlight without its coldness-the glow of day without its heat and bustle! I never seem to feel the life of Nature so acutely as at sunset-one hears the very pulses of her great heart beating on the silence like

a curfew bell."

"But one must stop the very pulses of one's own heart in order to hear them," returned Edith, a little abruptly; "I don't know what is meant by the life of Nature. I could much sooner fancy in her a deadness so oppressive as to make her chiefest beauties of a melancholy rather than a joyful character."

"Nay," said Amy, "but the whole of Nature is a mystery; and where there is mystery there can be no deadness."

"Yet death is the greatest mystery of all," suggested Edith.

"Only because of the life shut up in it. Gradual decay, and final dissolution, were a sight easily comprehended, though strange and sad, if we could separate them from the idea of a life which, once begun, must needs continue. The most complicated and accurate machine that ever was constructed is but a

puzzle easily explained, because the source of its action is not a living principle within it. The meagre corpse-the machine which does not and cannot act at all-is a profound mystery, because there has been

(1) Continued from p. 28.