Levant

“ Many Europeans [writes the same author] who pay a flying visit to the Levant and hasten to sit down and write a book about their experiences, derive all their information from their cicerones and interpreters [worthless and unscrupulous fellows whom our author justly denounces as ignorant and shameless cheats] who are, as a class, of the worst products of non-Mussulman natives of the Levant. ”

“ The scant and hard fare of nearly all the common people in the East would be unendurable to any American; but I think that the hardy peasantry of the Levant would speedily fall into dyspeptic degeneracy upon the introduction of American rural cooking.
After we had killed our appetites at the locanda, we presented our letters to the American consul, General di Cesnola, in whose spacious residence we experienced a delightful mingling of Oriental and Western hospitality. ”

“ The city of Acre recalls the memory of their useless prowess in the last struggle of the Christians to retain a foothold in Palestine; the name of the Knights of Rhodes brings before every traveller, who has seen it, the picturesque city in which the armorial insignia of this order have for him a more living interest than any antiquities of the Grecian Rose; the island fortress at the gate of the Levant owes all the interest we feel in it to the Knights of Malta; and even the city of David and of the Messiah has an added lustre as the birthplace of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. ”

“ Leuctra, a village in Boeotia, to the S. of Thebes, where in 371 B.C. Epaminondas and his Thebans overthrew the ascendency of Sparta.
Leuthen, a village in the W. of Breslau, in Silesia, where Frederick the Great defeated the Austrians with great loss in 1757.
Levana, the title of a book by Jean Paul on the education of children; title from the name of a Roman goddess, the protectress of foundlings.
Levant (i. e. the Rising) , a name given to the E. of the Mediterranean and the regions adjoining by the western peoples of the Mediterranean. ”

“ The older merchants among the Levantines keep more to the Oriental ways of life, while the younger gentlemen and ladies follow the ugly fashion of Europe, particularly the men, who leave off the cool and convenient Eastern dress to swelter in the tight bandages of the Franks; the ladies, on the contrary, are apt to retain the Oriental costume, which in its turn is neither so becoming nor so easy as the Paris fashions. ”

“ In the Levant, too, were seen the beginnings of commerce, of art, of letters, in the forms in which the modern world best knows them. These, therefore, have always made the lands about the eastern Mediterranean an attraction to cultivated men and the interest of the subject accordingly reinforced the skill of the writer. ”

“ However, I found a very intelligent Greek monk acting as schoolmaster, who had collected a number of fragments of inscriptions in his house. He was a fair scholar, and had studied at Athens. I was astonished to find such a man in so wild a place; a monk thus enlightened by education is a rare phenomenon in this part of the Levant. He took me to see the Acropolis of Ereso, of which the situation is most striking. It crowns the summit of a rock rising straight out of the sea. ”

“ Roll 'neath their lairs profound.'
'Aurora' comes to us as a remnant of that beautiful Grecian mythology that deified and poetized everything; and even to us she is still the 'rosy-fingered daughter of the morn.' The 'Levant,' 'Orient,' and 'Occident' are all of them poetical, for they are all true translations from nature. The 'Levant' is where the sun is levant, raising himself up. 'Orient' will be recognized as the same figure from orior; while 'occident' is, of course, [Pg 388] the opposite in signification, namely, the declining, the 'setting' place. ”

“ This is an account of a tour in the Levant, including Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Constantinople, and Greece. The book is remarkable for the colouring power, and the play of fancy with which its descriptions are enlivened. The writing is of a kind that indicates abilities likely to command success in the higher departments of literature. Almost every page teems with good feeling ”

“ But this is not the case with the Levantine or Christian ladies: although they live in a harem, like the Mahomedans, it is not protected in the same way: the slippers have not the same effect; for the men of the family go in and out whenever they please; and relations and visitors of the male sex are received in the apartments of the ladies.
On one occasion I accompanied an English traveller, who had many acquaintances at Cairo, to the house of a Levantine in the vicinity of the Coptic quarter. ”

“ Still even now, if travellers will be cautious and polite in dealing with people of whose language and customs they are profoundly ignorant, and not bluster unless they know very well what they are about (for I admit that bluster has its uses) , they will find travelling more interesting, diverting, and enjoyable in the Levant than in any other part of the world. ”

“ Until the minds of the women are enlarged by better education, any chance of amelioration among the people of the Levant is hopeless: for it is in the nursery that the seeds of superstition, prejudice, and unreason are sown, the effects of which cling for life to the minds even of superior men.
CHAPTER V. Interview with Mohammed Ali Pasha—Mode of lighting a Room in Egypt—Personal Appearance of the Pasha—His Diamond-mounted Pipe—The lost Handkerchief—An unceremonious Attendant—View of Cairo from the Citadel—Site of Memphis ”

“ So in his village of the Lebanon he grew to man’s estate, and drifted after the fashion of his countrymen into a precarious business in the East. Half proxenete, half dragoman, servile to all above him and civil for prudence’ sake to all below, he passed through the various degrees of hotel tout, seller of p. 148cigarettes, and guide to the antiquities of whatever town he happened to reside in, to the full glory of a shop in which he sold embroideries, attar of roses, embroidered slippers and all the varied trash which tourists buy in the bazaars of the Levant. ”

“ The inhabitants are pale, lean, and sickly; and there is about the men a certain look, almost peculiar to the fishy-fleshy populations of Levantine towns, which I cannot describe, but which exists all along the Mediterranean seaboard, and crops out here again. ”

“ Fancy may have her will as to what strange images of imperial Levantine and lordly German cities, of Byzantium, of Vienna, of Prague, and of the embattled life of those far-off lands, arose before the wondering eyes of these children of the forest, as the story ran; for not one of their kindred survives in any generation to refute her, but all have entered upon their inheritance. ”

“ The day was cloudy and a little cool, and not unpleasant; but there existed all day a ground-swell which is full of all nastiness, and a short sea which aggravated the ground-swell; and although we sailed by the Lebanon mountains and along an historic coast, bristling with suggestions, and with little but suggestions, of an heroic past, by Akka and Tyre and Sidon, we were mostly indifferent to it all. The Mediterranean, on occasion, takes away one's appetite even for ruins and ancient history. ”

“ The villages are mean, but the inhabitants do not look wretched and the men are good sailors. There is something in this Greek race yet; they will become a powerful Levantine nation in the course of time.—What a lovely moonlight evening that was! ”

“ Grass fills all the enclosure, and grain-fields press close about it. No view could be more enchanting than that of the tower and the rolling plain at that hour: the bloom on the wheat-fields, flecked with flaming poppies; the silver of the olive groves; the beds of scarlet anemones and yellow buttercups, blotching the meadows with brilliant colors like a picture of Turner; the soft gray hills of Judæa; the steeples and minarets of the city. All Ramleh is built on and amid ruins, half-covered arches and vaults. ”

“ Levan was solitary. The immediate neighbourhood of the church is even now not very densely populated, for the visible buildings are only the rectory and a cottage; and it can, I conceive, scarcely be called cheerful; for the bell-buoy on that submerged rock, the Rundlestone, out to sea, is for ever heard tolling, sometimes like a funeral knell and at others like some harsh gong, calling lost mariners to dinner down there in weedy caves with the mermaids. ”

“ As we rise, we begin to get glimpses of the snowy peaks which make a sharp contrast with the ravishing view behind us,—the terraced gorges, the profound ravines, the vineyards, gardens, and orchards, the blue sea, and the white road winding back through all like a ribbon. As we look down, the limestone walls of the terraces are concealed, and all the white cliffs are hidden by the ample verdure. ”

“ Levan church-tower suddenly rising before you, scarce above your line of vision. The church, in fact, is built in a hollow—once a solitary hollow—giving upon the sea, a place where few strangers ever came in those distant fifth-century days when St. Levan lived the hermit [239] life. We know very little of that saint, except the tale of the disastrous entertainment he offered his sister when she came to visit him here. It seems that he subsisted entirely upon the fish he caught, and thinking he would spread a dainty meal before his visitors, he went out and caught a chad. ”

“ These lovely hills rising on both sides, these gracious curves are hers, as are these groves and gardens of fruits and flowers, these vines and the abundant green that sometimes conceals and always softens the work of man. ”

“ Perhaps after all the most fundamental truth about Lewes is that she is the capital of the South Downs, and the South Downs are the glory of the South Country; from the noble antiquity of Winchester to the splendour of Beachy Head they run like an indestructible line of Latin verse beneath the blazon of England. They stand up between the land and the sea, the most Roman thing in England, and of all English land it is their white brows that the sun kisses first when it rises over the sea, of all English hills every morning they are the first to be blest. ”

“ Here, therefore, the Levites also, who attended upon the tabernacle partook of those things that were offered to God by all the people,—namely, gifts, offerings, and first-fruits, and tithes, and sacrifices, and oblations, without disturbance, they and their wives, and their sons and their daughters. Since their employment was the ministration to the tabernacle, therefore they had not any lot or inheritance in the land among the children of Israel, because the oblations of the people were the lot of Levi, and the inheritance of their tribe. ”

“ This valley is in every respect a melancholy spot, and during a period of storms, or at night, it is exactly the place which might well be haunted by demon revellers. In the days of the saint from whom the parish has its name—St Leven—he lived a long way up from the cove, at a place called Bodelan, and his influence made that, which is now so dreary, a garden. By his pure holiness he made the wilderness a garden of flowers, and spread gladness where now is desolation. ”

“ When they had become a people, the Divine Influence rested upon them out of love, 'in order to be a God unto them.' In the desert he arranged them in the manner of the sphere in four standards, corresponding to the four quarters of the sphere, and in twelve tribes, corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac, the camp of the Levites being in the centre, just as it is stated in the 'Book of Creation.' 'The holy Temple is exactly in the centre, but God carries them all.' All this points to 'love' for the sake of which the blessing is recited. ”

“ Diverted by this changing spectacle, we descend from Bethany. At first there are wild-flowers by the wayside and in the fields, and there is a flush of verdure on the hills, all of which disappears later. The sky is deep blue and cloudless, the air is exhilarating; it is a day for enjoyment, and everything and everybody we encounter are in a joyous mood, and on good terms with the world. ”

“ Yet it is probable that the Levites having only the cities and suburbs, while the land about pertained to the tribes in which they lay, those of that tribe, for the convenience of occupying that land, might commonly rent houses of the Levites, as they could spare them in their cities, and so live among them as their tenants. ”

“ It is good to see you place your hands together. To me it is a symbol of the marriage of the East and West, for the East and West must mate. Long ago the East went up to God and the West went down to men. The East has learned Vision and the West has learned Action. These two [100] must meet and mate again for the glory of God and the splendour of earth. The East has lifted its soul to the hills and held fast to its memory of the Father's house. The West has descended into the folds of the valley, and won from agony and isolation its efficacy in material things. ”

“ The village at the foot of the Mount, with its little harbour, occupies a humble feudal situation beneath the castle of my Lord St. Levan. If you would seek revived mediævalism in a democratic age, then St. Michael's Mount is the place to find it, for Lord St. Levan maintains a body of gorgeously liveried boatmen to row him across, to and from his island hold; and nowadays, instead of being free to ramble about the craggy sides of the Mount, the stranger must resign himself to a guide. ”

“ The river Leven is one of the finest in the Highlands, and there is no other such series of waterfalls, all seen at once, one above the other, along an immense vista; and all the way up to the farthest there are noble assemblages of rocks—nowhere any want of wood—and in places, trees that seem to have belonged to some old forest. Beyond, the opening in the sky seems to lead into another region, and it does so ”