great doubts of his being able to sit on horseback, even should we manage to get away. I discovered that a small leather case, in which I had carried my note-books, letters, and the coins and medals I had collected, had been lost in the struggle." moment a man from behind threw his arms round | my body, and entreated me not to attempt to fire. I cast him off, after a hard struggle, but he still grasped the pistol, and prayed me not to use it, or we should all be murdered. Looking at him, I recognized the respectably-dressed man I had met a few minutes previously. What am I to do then?' I demanded. 'Give me the pistol, and I It was with great difficulty that the will save you.' He looked honest, and I thought party made their escape during the darkmy life would be sacrificed at any rate; so, withness of midnight from these bigoted and a quick motion of my finger, I struck off the caps ruffianly villagers. Nor was the treatment and gave up the pistol. This precaution I took lest it should be used against myself. Having they met with at some of the other villages got it, he told me to run. Where? I asked. of a much less hostile and inhospitable He pointed out the path, and away I ran, while character. And no wonder, for the Arabs he restrained the mob behind. I soon overtook of the Hauran acknowledge themselves to Mr. and Nikôla, who were likewise running, be thieves by profession, as may be deand the old shiekh trying to restrain their pur- duced from the following colloquy : suers. I inquired for Mr. Barnett, but at that moment he too came up without hat or shoes, and the blood flowing from his head. We now ran along, guided by some men, and soon reached our house. "Our appearance, wounded and bleeding, surprised Mahmûd and our servants, and they quickly gathered up the arms and prepared for defense. Mahmûd, rushing out, confronted the angry mob, who were coming, as they said, to murder us all. He succeeded in turning them back; but as they went away they were heard to say we could not leave the village without their knowledge, and that as soon as we attempted to leave they would finish their work. "We had now leisure to examine our wounds and consider our position. My bruises were comparatively slight I was much stunned, but not deeply cut. Mr. had received a severe cut in the arm; but Mr. Barnett's injuries were by far the most serious of all. He had got several blows on the head and face, and was so much exhausted as to be unable to stand; and we had "What brought you to the Deir when you saw us there?' I asked him.-'To strip you,' he coolly replied. And why did you not do it?''Because Mahmûd was with you.' 'But why would you plunder us? we are strangers, and not your enemies.' It is our custom.' And do you strip all strangers?' 'Yes, all we can get hold of.' And if they resist, or are too strong for you?' In the former case we shoot them from behind trees, and in the latter we run.' 'How do the people of your tribe live? Do they sow or feed flocks?' We are not fellahîn! We keep goats and sheep, hunt partridges and gazelles, and steal !' 'Are you all thieves?' 'Yes, all!' Notwithstanding all these difficulties, Mr. Porter was enabled to accumulate a mass of curious and important details and discovery, which will render his work one of permanent importance to the student of sacred and classical geography. STATE PATRONAGE OF LETTERS.—A mu- | knowledge! A reward of £25 a year, or nificent pension has recently been bestow- £2 1s. 7d. a month, or 9s. 7d. a week, or, ed by her Most Gracious Majesty upon as we have said, just 1s. 41d. a day, for Mr. Joseph Haydn, the laborious compiler of the well-known Dictionary of Dates. A munificent pension of-ahem! -how much? Can any one guess? Actually a pension of £25 a year! Otherwise a reward of £2 1s. 8d. a month! or, 9s. 7d. a week! or, just 1s. 44d. a day! A reward for-what? For the work of a shoeblack? For journeyman tailoring? For sweeping the staircases of Buckingham palace, or weeding the gardens of Osborne, or rolling the gravel walks of Balmoral? Nothing of the sort. Instead of this, for long years of intellectual labor-years consumed, first of all, in the accumulation and diffusion of valuable ingenious and laborious research among the treasures of chronology-for sedulous and earnest, and devoted application to the interest of literature-for very appreciable though not easily calculable service to the cause of popular instruction, the great and good cause of national education, abandoned for the most part to the spontaneous self-sacrifices of such men as Mr. Haydn by the negligence or incompetence, or procrastination of the Imperial Government! A pension of £25 a year for this! Why, a scullion in the Queen's kitchen might look for a reward equivalent in value, after growing old among the kettles and pans of Windsor.-Lond. Sun. IN the fishing village of Penlanrhyn- upon the ear, left by a deaf tourist, the doldovey, in North Wales, I spent the summer before last. There was too, a very longest day of all my life; the place single half-sheet of note-paper and a pen, had several more syllables than I have the feather of which had been used in written down, but I think I have given varnishing; but, after a few attempts at enough for practical purposes. The Tre- composition, which resulted, as they often madoc coach had dropped me there on do, in my masticating the latter instruSaturday evening because it had begun to ment, I folded up the paper, and moodily drizzle; but I made up my mind that the devoured that also. There was one more Tremadoc coach should pick me up again thing to be done; but I had done it these on Monday morning, though it should three or four hours consecutively already; rain cats and dogs and Welsh rabbits. I and that was to stare at the picture of made it up at breakfast-time, and kept on Penlanrhyndoldovey, suspended over the making it tighter all day long; for I had mantlepiece. Like most views found in nothing else to do-it was a wet day, and such places, it comprehended little of the it was a Sunday. The Leck was, I doubt beauty of the surrounding country; but not, situated in the most picturesque por- the public buildings of the town (if it tion of the principality; but at this par- might be called so), and the harbor, and ticular time it was located between two the little pier, were executed with appaliving walls of perpendicular rain. That rent fidelity and exactness. The church Penallyn frowned down on it from a gi- itself, though small, was a very pretty gantic altitude, I took on trust from the one, with the massive gray tower, which guide-book; that the falls of Leckwymn becomes so well a mountainous district. at Pontiniog could be easily reached by a The market-house for fish might rival that short mule-track, I credited with readi- of St. Peter's, at Guernsey; and there ness, and only trusted that the short were also two other well-built edifices, mule-track might not have been taken ad- whose use I could not at all discover. vantage of by the torrent to reach us. When Mrs. Aprhys returned, with her The village, they said, lay close behind us, rather less comfortable legs, I interro and the sound of a little bell came up gated her on this matter. The rows of from it through the pauses of the storm, cottages, with porches and gardens, were as the still small voice of conscience makes alms-houses, she said, for the widows and itself heard amidst human passions. That families of men who had been lost at sea image suggested itself to me after seeing (an accident which happened often on my landlady going to church for the sec- that dangerous coast); as pretty and ond time-taking the steeple upon her pleasant places to end one's days in as one head with her, I thought-upon a couple could wish to have; and thinking that to of as comfortable legs, as far as I could be more in my line, perhaps, she added: see (and I saw a good way) as any Jump-"There's a bittock of Latin over the outer in the district, leaving me alone in the house with Aprhys, and two Jenny Joneses, who could not speak one word of English. There was, at the Leck, in the way of literature, a Bradshaw, a work, (selling sixty thousand daily, it said) of one of those Americanesses who have struggled in at the gate of the heaven of popularity before it could be shut after Mrs. Beecher Stowe; and a medical book er gateway: In memoriam, R.O., ob. eighteen hundred and twenty-five. Miss Davies built it; and the little house at the pier-head, she built that also; and night and day there were fires kept in it, and brandy, and blankets, and what not, to recover, if it might be, any of those that were found drounded." "Dear me!" said I, coolly; for I was out of temper with Penlanrhyndoldovey, and did'nt think the people much worth | and loveliness of its own. saving, "She must be a worthy person." "You may say that, sir, indeed; and we should never have had church or market if it had not been for her." "Bless me, my dear Mrs. Aprhys," for I was a raw bachelor at that period, and quite prepared to run the risk of matrimony for an adequate consideration: Why this Miss Davies must be very rich ?" 66 "No, sir, not very; for when folks spend no money on themselves, and only live for other people's good, it is surprising what may be done in thirty years." "Thirty years," said I, a little interested again. "O dear me, she must be oldish then ?" "Well, sir, you may see her soon, judge for yourself. I wonder she has not been here before; but she's sure to call this evening, on her way home. She lives, with a servant or two, all alone in the cottage on the hill there." Now I perceived that, for some reason or other, my dear landlady was in a quarter of a second or so of a good cry; so, by way of changing the conversation, I said: "And what a beautiful view she must have from it, both of land and sea?" "Ah! yes, indeed," she sobbed, and the tears stole over her plump cheeks, and into the dimples about her little mouth, in a flood that only Mr. Aprhys could (with propriety) have dried up or impeded in quite the correct way. "And sad and sore sights she has seen from it, as ever woman's eyes have borne to look upon." "Good gracious! What a charming -I mean, what a dreadful-mystery! Pray tell it, Mrs. Ap"-But just as the tender-hearted little woman was making herself ready for a start as improvisatore, there came a knock at the door. "Hush! it's her!" she said; and she trotted off on her comfortable legs like metaphor fails me-like anything. Now, I am not naturally of an inquisitive turn of mind; but, as a late philosopher observed to his friend, we must stop somewhere;" and I stopped at the parlor-door and looked through the crack. I felt conscience-smitten and rightly punished the next instant: they spoke in Welsh, and the lady was sixty, if she was a day. Yet her face had not only the remains of beauty, but a present charm Her hair was snow-white; and her blue eyes, though far from bright, were full of tenderness and expression; her voice was as soft and musical as a girl's; and I fancied that I could discern in it that she was accustomed to speak with the sick and sorrowful; for her part, it was clear, by the deep, though quiet mourning that she wore, that she had had woes irreparable of her own; woes not recent, for a settled resignation seemed to possess her features, as if where the harrow of trouble had once passed, the seeds of patience and benevofence had sprung up and effaced its cruel traces. I backed cautiously to the fire-place, and waited for the interview to be over with some eagerness; for I was getting interested, in spite of myself, in Penlanrhyndoldovey and the house upon the hill. I beat up the cushions of the armchair, and placed a foot-stool for the accommodation of Mrs. Aprhys. I even put a chair for the landlord in the middle, in case "her" should be of a jealous temperament, and desire to be present. I was meditating as to what would be the correct drink for me to offer so obliging a a hostess when she appeared suddenly herself with my tea. "Another cup, if you will be so good," said I. So, over that cozy meal, she told me the story. "It so happens," she began, "that this very day is the properest of any to tell you this sad tale. I forgot the date, which no poor soul in this village is likely to have done, but remembered it so soon as ever I saw Miss Ellen's face. She has been with the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, since early dawn, and now she has gone back to her lonely home. Though the storm has been driving down this ten hours, she has brought calm and sunlight to many a dwelling; and amongst the huts by the sea-beach, where there live men that would seem to you mere brutes, she has carried such help and comfort, that they would risk life and limb for the sake of her. Them that the waves and winds make mock of she cares the most for, because she mourns night and day for one beneath the seas; and especially them that are lovers, the fisher lads and lasses, for whom she speaks to their parents, and makes a little golden road for true love to run smooth on-perhaps, because she once was loved herself, and loved again, and she knows what it is for two fond hearts to be sundered." "My dear Mrs. Aprhys," I said, "I perceive this is going to be something of a love story. If you will permit me to run up stairs for my slippers, I shall be back directly, and will not interrupt you again on any account; but in the first place, it seems likely the tale may be a little protracted, and secondly, I have always found it impossible to appreciate sentiment in boots." This arrangement having been completed, I nodded to my companion, who had apparently remained in deep thought duing the interval, and she continued her recital in a low and feeling voice, as if soliloquising, rather than addressing another person: "I can just remember what she was about five-and-thirty years back; but my old man could tell you of her much earlier. She lived up on the hill there with her blind father, and was as bonnie a maiden as any Snowdon top could see. Many and many a time I've seen her lead him through the town to the market (there was no market-house then), and there the old carle would chaffer and wrangle about a penny; for he was awful miserly, and the folk always let him have his way in the end, for the young lady, they well knew, would suffer nobody to lose, but made it right at last, herself. I cannot say I ever liked the look of him; but Miss Ellen would gaze upon his white head and sightless eyes as though she were a-worshipping. I suppose there is a love which child bears to parent, and parent to child, such as I, who never knew either, can scarcely understand. Anyways, she doted upon him, and, indeed, he on her; but there are, you know, two kinds of affection-one which only cares for the happiness of its object, and the other, which looks after its own as well." (I objected to Mrs. Aprhys' putting the remark in this personal form, but gravely nodded my assent.) "She would have died to save his life, and he would have died for grief, perhaps afterwards. "They used to sit together in the summer-time under their cottage porch, which was then, as now, a mass of round red roses, for he loved their beautiful perfume, although of course their color was nothing to him; the lilies in the tarn close by, too, and all the wild-flowers on the hillside, were lost to him; but he liked to hear the wind coming through the tree-tops of the copse, and bending the feathery tops of the brook-rushes. He knew all the fairness of nature that way, he said: and perhaps she does whisper more things to the blind than she does to us; not but that Miss Ellen was always by, to guide his finger right from east to west. She told him of the wood-crowned hill Penallyn, which the sun makes golden in the morning, and over whose shoulders rises old Snowdon's hoary head from far away; of the harbor and the pier, and the great black nets on the shingle; of the red-sailed vessels putting out to sea. They could hear, if it was a calm day, the shouts of the sailors as they heaved their anchors, the roll of their oars in the rowlocks, the dip of the oar-blades, and all the pleasant stir of the little town. She read aloud to him, as from an open book, all things that passed, and through her music, I warrant, they lost but little. From quite in the early morning to sunset, when the damsels would be crossing the stepping-stones that lead from the pasture-meadows, each with her uplifted arm and her full pitcher, and when the mountains to westward were reddening and burning, the teacher and the taught would sit there the girl and her blind father. Now, I don't mean to say but that poor Miss Ellen had a delight of her own in this, besides that of pleasing him. There was, indeed one fishing-boat in Penlanrhyndoldovey which carried in her eyes a richer freight than all the rest besides; and she knew when it was on board by a little white flag. I think, too, Richard Owen, whose vessel it was, had generally a glimpse of a white handkerchief waved from the cottage on the hill when he set his red sails or furled them; and it took him, in the latter case, but a short half hour to come from the pier to the porch of roses. It must have been a great convenience, after all, that the old gentleman who made the third of that little company was blind; and I think Aprhys would have preferred it, at one time, himself, under like circumstances. Mr. Davies soon saw or heard enough, at all events, to tell him that those two were lovers, and he hardened his heart against them from that time. I believe that he was jealous of Richard Owen because he could see, because he was young, and because he was generous; and that he hated him because he had divided, or stolen a 6 portion of his daughter's heart, which he | morning, although there was no hand to wanted wholly for himself. The old man's be got to help him work his ship. And ear was keener than that of love itself to he did sail as soon as the day dawned; catch young Richard's footfall, as he came and, for all it was so early, the whole town over the hill; and then upon his sightless was as near the beach as they durst go, face a shadow would fall, which Ellen to see him and his little crew off; and could not but see. He would never speak there was one, we may be sure, in the out about it, but would mutter: "They house on the hill, whose tearful, sleepless are waiting for my death-they wish me eyes were fastened upon the bonnie boat dead!" And she heard him, and wept more than all. She watched it for hours, bitterly. This went on for a long time, as it now lay upon its side in the heaving and the poor thing hoped and hoped; but bay, and now sank out of sight except for never, I think, had any intention of leav- the white pennant (which he had nailed to ing her old father. Richard was no tardy the mast) that shone out against the black or backward wooer, and had not much pa- water, and now rose high, as if upon a tience to be so sorely tried; and one day mountain. She saw it grow dimmer and he spoke to her boldly in the old man's dimmer, in spite of the gale, and the points presence, telling her how she was sacrific- rounded one after the other, and nearly ing herself when there was no cause. into the open sea; so far had the good 'For he can live with us,' he said, and ship got at last, though it scarcely seemed be tended by you, even as now; but it to move; but while it was beating up opis twelve long months that I have waited posite Hell's Mouth, and near to Bardsey for you, Ellen dear, and you are no nearer Island, she lost all sight of it for that time. to me now than at first. I shall come up She saw it again the same evening, alas! to-night for your final answer, and I pray for the wind and the tide brought it back that your father's heart may be turned to- to harbor, keel uppermost. She was wards us; but else I leave the town to- not more than twenty or so, poor girl; morrow for good and all; and it may be, but her hair turned from that hour as you will be sorry never to see the bonnie white as it looks now. She grew thin and white flag again.' pale, but never let a word of complaint escape her, nor her father know how her heart had lost its hope, or her form its beauty; only once, when he attempted to condole with her, and thank her for what she had done for him, and suffered for his sake, she stopped him with a word or two in such a tone as he never dared to draw forth from her again. She tended him hour by hour, while his feet were treading the downward way, for years, and the flowers upon his grave are kept alive till now by her loving hands; but her heart is not buried, I think, with him at all, but somewhere under the deep sea with her drowned lover's. "The old man said not a word all that time, and never let go nor ceased stroking his daughter's hand; but, when Richard was gone, he so worked upon her feelings with his piteous selfish talk, that she told him to have no further trouble for her sake. 'I will never leave thee alone and blind, my father,' she said, although my own Richard loves me so well.' And what a bitter struggle that must have been for her, we now know. "When her lover came up, then, for that last time, she gave him a steadfast answer, although it nigh broke her heart, and it stirred his man's pride within him so, that he strode away through the windy night without so much as a good-bye. "I well remember that same evening; for he came into the Leck to bid adieu to his old friends, whom he was about to leave; and my uncle, who then kept the inn, but had been a sailor in his youth, besought him not to think to put to sea in such tempestuous weather; for the October gales had set in, and the waves swept right over the pier-head, and made the very harbor unsafe. What a fine brave young fellow I thought him, when he replied that he would sail the morrow "The old man left her very wealthy (for these parts), which I dare say he thought would make up to her for all the rest. Our town is quite another place in consequence; and, as I told you at first, the poor folk whose trade is on the great waters, she seems to consider as if they were her own children; them that are laden with the like trouble as herself especially, who have lost husband or kinsman at sea, and for whom her almshouses were built, she visits and cares for continually; and on this day, above all-this day, thirty years ago, upon which poor |