mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. Our author and his companions gazed on these colossal vestiges with bewildered astonishment. The Abbé Michon was inclined to look upon them as antediluvian, an hypothesis in which De Sauley is by no means disposed to coincide. On the 8th of March, they reached Damascus. The outward aspect of this far-famed city, the pearl of the east, much disappointed them, but they were consoled by finding a superb hotel, with the most luxurious accommodation. The houses of Damascus are generally built of mud and plaster, and out of repair. The Turks seldom attempt to arrest the encroachments of time, who thus operates as their most persevering enemy. Until a very recent date, all Christians were compelled to alight and cross the gate of Damascus on foot, but this humiliating regulation no longer exists, having been abolished since 1850, by the energetic interference of M. De Ségur Duperron, the French consul. The ladies of Damascus are represented as being exceedingly handsome, but disfigured by ungraceful decorations, and a most defective style of costume. The following passage indicates a strange and primitive fashion, still universal amongst the female natives, and which shows itself everywhere as you approach the city : "This fashion is by no means a new one, since it can be traced back to the most remote antiquity; I mean a small gold button, often ornamented with a turquoise, and which females insert into their nostrils, in imitation of a shirt-button. We learn something on this subject from the Bible, when Abraham's servant was sent into Mesopotamia, to seek a wife for Isaac, the son of his master. Cohen translates the passage as follows: I then put a ring to her face, and bracelets to her bands.' The Hebrew text says literally, I put the nezem to her nose, and the bracelets to her hands.' This word nezem has been translated by Mendelsohn, nose-bob, although the Septuagint had rendered it ear-drops. In the 22nd verse of the same chapter it is said, 'And it came to pass, as the camels had done drinking, that the man took a golden ear-ring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold.' The Samaritan text, after the mention of the first ornament, adds, and he put it to her nose.' Any traveller who has passed through the villages in the neighbourhood of Damascus and Baalbek, can have no doubt as to the meaning of these two verses; the orna ment in question is unquestionably the same which the females still wear appended to their noses, and has no resemblance either to a ring or a drop, but is a real button." Damascus has been so often described, that little can be added to what we already know. One of the most ancient places in the world presents scarcely any vestiges to interest the antiquary. But that many exist under the ground of the modern city, and might be dis-interred by a series of diggings on an extensive scale, is a question which can scarcely be disputed, although the undertaking is so difficult as to be impracticable at the present moment. A few years more may effect wonders in this quarter. Baalbek detained De Saulcy and his party for three days. They would willingly have remained a month, had their arrangements permitted. The account of these magnificent ruins is one of the most attractive passages in the book. And here again several errors in the descriptions of earlier travellers are carefully noted and corrected. The size of some of the stones employed in the Temples of Jupiter and the Sun, and the power by which they were raised to their position, exceeds all that we can imagine of mechanical process, and leave us utterly unable to calculate how such miracles of architecture can have been effected in remote periods. On the 20th of March, the enterprising French travellers arrived at Beyrout without accident, after an absence of three months, thus closing a most perilous and difficult expedition with triumphant success, and contributing to our geographical and historical knowledge a series of discoveries equal in importance and extent to any which human intelligence and perseverance have accomplished since Columbus passed the Atlantic Ocean, and added a new and boundless field for the exercise of human energy. M. de Sauley has done much, where little was previously known, and declares that he has left still more to be accomplished by others, whose emulation may be excited by a very encouraging example. The short synopsis we have been enabled to give, will afford the reader but an inadequate idea of the information and amusement he will surely extract from the perusal of these extraordinary volumes. J. W. C. DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE. No. CCL. OCTOBER, 1853. VOL. XLII. CONTENTS. THE LEAVES OF OCTOBER. THE FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS, BY D. F. M CAR- IRISH RIVERS-No. X. THE TOLKA AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF B. R. HAYDON-GUIZOT ON THE FINE ARTS PAGE 383 391 405 416 420 FRANCE, PAST AND PRESENT: A FEW DESULTORY NOTES ON PARIS, WITH A 429 LIVES OF THE LAUREATES 445 SIR JASPER CAREW, KNT. CHAPTER XXXI-HAVRE. CHAPTER XXXII.-MY 460 475 ON THE SITE OF THE DESTROYED CITIES OF THE PLAIN, BY G. S. FABER, B.D. 491 495 DUBLIN JAMES MCGLASHAN, 50 UPPER SACKVILLE-STREET. WM. S. ORR AND CO., LONDON AND LIVERPOOL. SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. TO CORRESPONDENTS. THE Editor of THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE begs to notify that he will not undertake to return, or be accountable for, any manuscripts forwarded to him for perusal. - THE radiant mornings, the glowing noons, the gorgeous sunsets, are all gone. Gone, too, is the sweet breath of early autumn, that set the green leaves a-trembling, but shook them not down from the sprays. And now come the grey mornings, cold and fresh; and the clouds are denser, and more frequent by day; and the evenings fade away through a shorter twilight into the night that is chill with the hoar-frost. The breezes, too, forget their gentleness, and grow wild and gusty, rending away the leaves from the boughs, whirling them through the air, and scattering them along the earth. The beautiful leaves! How they have changed "from glory to glory," from their prime in summer to their de cadence in autumn, as the features of the early-dying grow pure with a lustrous beauty, beneath the touch of disease! See how yon beech glows, like bur. nished copper. What a pallid, sickly yellow is spreading over the ash leaf. Look at the russet livery of the oak the pale silver of the birch-the brilliant yellow and the deep brown with which the nipping frost and the chill wind have painted here and there the foliage of the forest. Yes, the leaves have fulfilled their mission of beauty, and now fall away, as the hoary locks fall from the head of age. Well, be it so. Thank heaven! man lives not upon the loveliness of external nature alone; and when that fades, he can turn to the charms of things spiritual and intellectual, that are as bright and blooming in winter as in summer. Come, let us see if we have not some such pleasures at hand for you, dear readers, to win you from thoughts of sadness, if, indeed, nature suggests such thoughts to you. Is there not a spiritual wind that breathes and blows over human souls, first awakening, then stimulating and next ripening the fancy and the genius and the intellect?—and then, at last, that "wind of the Spirit "sweeps the soul with a more impetuous gust; and the matured thought, like the matured leaf, is severed from its parent, and cast abroad to the world- but oh! not like the leaf, to wither and die and be forgotten. No; it remains ever fragrant, unfading, incorruptible, like those flowers which botanists tell us never perish. Here, then, are a few leaves out of many which have fallen ripe to our hand, and we commit them to that giant spirit of civilisation, which "bloweth where it listeth," and penetrates all regions of the earth - the spirit of the PRINTINGPRESS. Something we have culled to please every taste, to appeal to the intellect, or the fancy, or the heart: "C'est ainsi qu'elle a mis, entre les tropiques, la plupart des fleurs apparentes sur des arbres. J'y en ai vu bien peu dans les prairies, mais beaucoup dans les forets. Dans ces pays, il faut lever les yeux en haut pour y voir des fleurs; dans le notre, il faut les baisser à terre."-SAINT PIERRE. Etudes de la Nature. IN the soft sunny regions that circle the waist Which heave with the throbbings of life where they're placed, VOL. XLII.-NO. CCL. 2 D Where to live, where to breathe, seems a paradise-dream A dream of some world more elysian than this- Where all that can gladden the sense or the sight- To build the frail walls of the Sybarite's heaven. Of some purer enjoyment to speed the bright hours, In vain through the leafy luxuriance of earth Looks the languid-lit eye for the freshness of flowers. No, its glance must be turned from the earth to the skyFrom the clay-rooted grass to the heaven-branching trees— And there, oh! enchantment for soul and for eye, Hang blossoms so pure that an angel might seize : In the climes of the north, which alternately shine- Tracketh star after star through infinitude's night. With fire-throbbing temples and star-dazzled eyes, Ah! thus should we mingle the far and the near, And while striving to pierce what the Godhead conceals, |