Page images
PDF
EPUB

The mountains of the Judæan side are lower than those of the Arabian, and also of a lighter colour. Bitumen abounds most on the opposite shore. There is no outlet to the lake, though the Jordan flows into it, as did formerly the Kedron, and the Arnon to the south. It is not known that there has ever been any visible increase or decrease of its waters. Some have supposed that it finds a subterraneous passage to the Mediterranean, or that there is a considerable suction in the plain which forms its western boundary. But this plain, confined by the opposite mountains, is partially cultivated, and produces trees, and a rude pasture used by the camels of the Bedouins, although in some parts sandy. It has never been navigated since the cities were engulfed; and it is strange that no traveller should have thought of launching a boat to explore it; the only way that promises any success. Some stunted shrubs and patches of grass, a mere mockery of verdure, were scattered on the withered soil near the rocks. The golden and treacherous apples,

[ocr errors]

That turn to ashes on the lips, will be sought for in vain, as well as the fish in the lake, which have been also asserted to exist. The length of the Dead Sea is probably about sixty miles, and the general breadth eight. The sun had now risen above the eastern barrier of mountains, and shone full in the bosom of the lake, which had the appearance of a plain of burnished gold. But the sadness of the grave was on it, and around it, and the silence also. However vivid the feelings are on arriving on its shores, they subside after a time into languor and uneasiness, and you long, if it were possible, to see a tempest wake on its bosom, to give sound and life to the scene. The passage over the wilderness of Ziph had given us a more complete and intimate view of the lake than the usual route to Jericho, which conducts only to its com mencement, at the embouchure of the Jordan. We had now to walk to its extremity along the shores, and over the plain to Jericho, in a sultry day; and we took a last look of this famous spot, to which earth can furnish no parallel. The precipices around Sinai are savage and shelterless, but not like these, which look as if the finger of an avenging

God had passed over their blasted fronts and recesses, and the deep at their foot, and caused them to remain for ever as when they first covered the guilty cities.-Carne's Letters from the East.

PUNISHMENT OF A SPY WHOSE EMPLOYERS HAD

BETRAYED ROB ROY MACGREGOR.

I shall never forget the delightful sensation with which I exchanged the dark, smoky, smothering atmosphere of the Highland hut, in which we had passed the night so uncomfortably, for the refreshing fragrance of the morning air, and the glorious beams of the rising sun, which, from a tabernacle of purple and golden clouds, were darted full on such a scene of natural romance and beauty as had never before greeted my eyes. To the left lay the valley, down which the Forth wandered on its easterly course, surrounding the beautiful detached hill with all its garland of woods. On the right, amid a profusion of thickets, knolls, and crags, lay the bed of a broad mountain-lake, lightly curled into tiny waves by the breath of the morning breeze, each glittering in its course under the influence of the sunbeams. High hills, rocks, and banks, waving with natural forests of birch and oak, formed the borders of this enchanting sheet of water; and, as their leaves rustled to the wind and twinkled in the sun, gave to the depth of solitude a sort of life and vivacity. Man alone seemed to be placed in a state of inferiority, in a scene where all the ordinary features of nature were raised and exalted.

It was under the burning influence of revenge that the wife of Macgregor commanded that the hostage exchanged for her husband's safety should be brought into her presence. I believe her sons had kept this unfortunate wretch out of her sight, for fear of the consequences; but, if it was so, their humane precaution only postponed his fate. They dragged forward at her summons a wretch already half dead with terror, in whose agonised features I recognised, to my horror and astonishment, my old acquaintance Morris.

He fell prostrate before the female chief with an effort to clasp her knees, from which she drew back, as if his touch had been pollution; so that all he could do, in token of the

extremity of his humiliation, was to kiss the hem of her plaid. I never heard entreaties for life poured forth with such agony of spirit. The ecstacy of fear was such, that, instead of paralysing his tongue, as on ordinary occasions, it even rendered him eloquent, and, with cheeks as pale as ashes, hands compressed in agony, eyes that seemed to be taking their last look of all mortal objects, he protested, with the deepest oaths, his total ignorance of any design on the life of Rob Roy, whom he swore he loved and honoured as his own soul. In the inconsistency of his terror, he said he was but the agent of others, and he muttered the name of Rashleigh. He prayed but for life-for life he would give all he had in the world ;-it was but life he asked-life, if it were to be prolonged under tortures and privations ;he asked only breath, though it should be drawn in the damps of the lowest caverns of their hills. It is impossible to describe the scorn, the loathing, and contempt, with which the wife of Macgregor regarded this wretched petitioner for the poor boon of existence.

"I could have bid you live," she said, "had life been to you the same weary and wasting burden that it is to methat it is to every noble and generous mind. But youwretch ! you could creep through the world unaffected by its various disgraces, its ineffable miseries, its constantly accumulating masses of crime and sorrow-you could live and enjoy yourself, while the noble-minded are betrayedwhile nameless and birthless villains tread on the neck of the brave and long-descended-you could enjoy yourself, like a butcher's dog in the shambles, battening on garbage, while the slaughter of the brave went on around you! This enjoyment you shall not live to partake of; you shall die, base dog, and that before yon cloud has passed over the sun." She gave a brief command in Gaelic to her attendants, two of whom seized upon the prostrate suppliant, and hurried him to the brink of a cliff which overhung the flood. He set up the most piercing and dreadful cries that fear ever uttered-I may well term them dreadful, for they haunted my sleep for years afterwards. As the murderers, or executioners, call them as you will, dragged him along, he recognised me even in that moment of horror, and exclaimed,

in the last articulate words I ever heard him utter, "O, Mr Osbaldiston, save me!-save me!"

I was so much moved by this horrid spectacle, that, although in momentary expectation of sharing his fate, I did attempt to speak in his behalf; but, as might have been expected, my interference was sternly disregarded. The victim was held fast by some, while others, binding a large heavy stone in a plaid, tied it round his neck, and others again eagerly stripped him of some part of his dress. Half naked, and thus manacled, they hurried him into the lake, there about twelve feet deep, drowning his last deathshriek with a loud halloo of vindictive triumph; over which, however, the yell of mortal agony was distinctly heard. The heavy burden splashed in the dark-blue waters of the lake, and the Highlanders, with their pole-axes and swords, watched an instant, to guard, lest, extricating himself from the load to which he was attached, he might have struggled to regain the shore. But the knot had been securely bound; the victim sunk without effort; the waters, which his fall had disturbed, settled calmly over him, and the unit of that life, for which he had pleaded so strongly, was for ever withdrawn from the sum of human existence.-Novel of Rob Roy.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

It is truly a most Christian exercise to extract a sentiment of piety from the works and the appearances of nature. It has the authority of the Sacred Writers upon its side, and even our Saviour himself gives it the weight and the solemnity of his example. "Behold the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin; yet your heavenly Father careth for them." He expatiates on the beauty of a single flower, and draws from it the delightful argument of confi dence in God. He gives us to see that taste may be combined with piety, and that the same heart may be occupied with all that is serious in the contemplations of religion, and

be at the same time alive to the charms and the loveliness of nature.

The Psalmist takes a still loftier flight. He leaves the world, and lifts his imagination to that mighty expanse which spreads above it and around it. He wings his way through space, and wanders in thought over its immeasurable regions. Instead of a dark and unpeopled solitude, he sees it crowded with splendour, and filled with the energy of the Divine presence. Creation rises in its immensity before him, and the world, with all which it inherits, shrinks into littleness at a contemplation so vast and so overpowering. He wonders that he is not overlooked amid the grandeur and the variety which are on every side of him; and passing upward from the majesty of nature to the majesty of nature's Architect, he exclaims, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him; or the son of man that thou shouldest deign to visit him?"

It is not for us to say, whether inspiration revealed to the Psalmist the wonders of the modern astronomy. But even though the mind be a perfect stranger to the science of these enlightened times, the heavens present a great and an elevating spectacle, an immense concave reposing upon the circular boundary of the world, and the innumerable lights which are suspended from on high, moving with solemn regularity along its surface. It seems to have been at night that the piety of the Psalmist was awakened by this contemplation, when the moon and the stars were visible, and not when the sun had risen in his strength, and thrown a splendour around him, which bore down and eclipsed all the lesser glories of the firmament. And there is much in the scenery of a nocturnal sky, to lift the soul to pious contemplation. That moon, and these stars, what are they? They are detached from the world, and they lift you above it.

You feel withdrawn from the earth, and rise in lofty abstraction above this little theatre of human passions and human anxieties. The mind abandons itself to reverie, and is transferred, in the ecstacy of its thoughts, to distant and unexplored regions. It sees nature in the simplicity of her great elements, and it sees the God of nature invested with the high attributes of wisdom and majesty.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »