any one of the family of death-doomed men. But thy life was spared, and thou art made great and happy. To whom owest thou that great

ness?"

"To my own good arm-to the capacious mind, the aspiring soul, and the vigorous body, which are my rightful inheritance as the head of the royal race of Aad," answered the monarch. "But what reward," added he,-" what reward will this God of our fathers Noah and Shem give to me should I become his servant, hearken to his laws, and kneel before him?" The teacher of wisdom replied, that "no reward was to be claimed by frail man from his Maker as a matter of right; but that to the faithful and obedient was reserved a paradise of never-ending felicity.” "Such a paradise," said the King, his noble countenance brightening with a smile of triumphant pride--" nay, a paradise brighter far than thy dreams ever imaged, will I myself create on earth. Until thou hast seen that, speak not to me of the unreal paradise of thy dreams."

Houd turned away in sorrow. He shook off the dust from his feet, that he might take nothing from the land of Aad, and left it for ever.

This vain and presumptuous desire had no sooner inflamed Shedaud's imagination, than he became restless, impatient, and unhappy, until

he could feast his pride by carrying it into execution.

Such is man. He who receives not with content and thankfulness whatever of life's good may be bestowed, though he should possess the whole world, is as one possessing nothing. What hath the poet said of that most victorious of all the descendants of Esau, Zulkernein* of Macedon, the queller of the nations?

"On the cold ground, his mat the Dervish throws,

And there, without one wish, he soundly, sweetly, sleeps ; Secunder's royal couch knows no repose,

Where for new worlds to rule, the world's great ruler weeps."

Determined to create upon this low earth an abode of luxury and splendour, rivalling the mansion of eternal bliss and glory, Shedaud set himself to collect from his wide domain all that was rich or rare-gold and silver and high wrought works of steel, pearls, and precious stones of price, musk and nard and ambergris and frankincense and all fragrant drugs. The earth was pierced for its mineral riches, and the ocean explored for its treasures hid in the deep.

* Zulkernein (literally "Lord of both horns of the earth,") is a poetical appellation among the Arabs and Persians, for Alexander the Great, who is also called Secunder.

From his Vezzeirs he selected sixteen of the most distinguished for taste and learning.— These he sent forth to survey his dominions, in order to choose a spot where the climate and soil promised that nature would vie with art in giving pleasure to those to whom the great king should open this paradise of his own creation.

These ministers were directed to search throughout the world for an architect whose matchless skill might be worthy to superintend such a creation, and whose genius could execute the grand conceptions of his sovereign. Such a one was soon found in Senmaur the Egyptian; but the Vezzeirs were longer in determining upon a site worthy of the exertion of his talents. At length, at Hadhramouat, in Syria, they found a tract of field and wood lovely and rich, where all the gifts of nature had been poured forth together, in such a union as man rarely finds and can never make. For He who grants all good things to his children, yet giveth not all unto any. Sterile are the mountains and high hills; but there the air is pure and the waters spring bright and clear from the native rock, whilst on the children of the mountain are bestowed the elastic limb, the strong arm, the quick eye and length of days. The treasures of plenty are poured out on the fat plain; but there,

death is in the waters, the air is heavy with pestilence, and the ploughshare when it enters the deep soil turns up disease along with fertility.

But in the interchange of hill and dale, mount and valley, broad and smooth rivers and broken brawling streams, of the favoured spot selected by the envoys of Shedaud, plenty and health and pleasure could dwell together. It was ever green and gay with the freshness of perpetual spring, intermixed with the mellow fruits of autumn's abundance; for it was sheltered from all the fiercer vicissitudes of climate by surrounding lofty mountains, upon whose high tops capped with everlasting snow, Winter seemed bound in his own icy chains, and frowned his distant terrors over the happy region below.

Here Senmaur assembled the artists and architects, the workers in gold and silver and brass and stone and wood, the gardeners and the labourers of nations. He first surrounded the whole extent by an immense wall, far higher than those of ancient Nineveh or Babylon.It was constructed of ponderous masses of granite, with blocks or layers of iron, copper, tin and lead laid in alternate ranges throughout the whole. Then immense fires were kindled around it, until in the dissolving heat the whole became one impenetrable mass of mixed stone and molten

metal, raising its huge bulk towards the level of the neighbouring mountains. When this was done, heaps of metal were again piled on the top, which when also melted by powerful heat, filled up every fissure and chasın, and covered the whole with one polished surface, exhibiting, for many a league, one entire bulwark, of unparalleled strength and matchless workmanship.

But one work of after days has resembled, or aspired to rival this. It was that famed rampart of like workmanship, which Secunder Rumy (he whom the Franks call Alexander of Macedon,) erected on the Derbend, to check the invasions of Gog and Magog and their giant host.*

Outside of this bulwark of human art, Senmaur forced the hand of nature to form a still more impervious barrier. It was a thickly interwoven forest-like hedge of mighty aloes, with their huge thorny leaves closely interwoven and their flowering stems rising high above, like so many tall pines. All the interstices were filled up by the thick growth of the prickly pear, the blackthorn, the quince and the raspberry.

So strong and so high was this living wall, that through it an elephant could not have forced his

*This is a universal oriental tradition. It is difficult to conjecture to what work of Alexander's this story refers.