the Arab against his elder brother, the
Greek against the Latin, that the Turk
retains his power over the numerous sects
which are found in Syria. It was the
same spirit of disunion which in older
days gave birth to fifty Gnostic sects in
the Holy Land, and which created the
twelve Christian creeds which are now to
be found side by side in Jerusalem.

group of cottages on the north, near Jeremiah's Grotto. The Jews are almost all abjectly poor, and the majority are of the Polish and Russian Ashkenazim; the nobler Sephardim having a distinct quarter on the south-east side of Jerusalem, not far from the Harem. The Ashkenazim are a degraded people, of very poor physical type, and of most repulsively unclean habits. They are, perhaps, the most superstitious race in the country, and are led entirely by the rabbinical autocracy.

The same spirit of disunion exists also among the Bedawin, and, indeed, manifested itself among the early conquerors of Islam as soon as their prophet was dead. Recent events in Egypt and Sinai The Jews have established pickets round have not shown us the "noble Arab," in Jerusalem, and buy up a large proportion whom we have been told we are to put our of the market produce from the peasantry trust, in a very favorable light; and the before they come in sight of the town; student of history, whether in Omar's time for the poor fellâhah woman, who has to or in the days of Napoleon, will find that trudge back so many miles to her home, the Bedawin have never fulfilled the expec- with her baby slung on her back, is only tations of their admirers, and have rarely too glad to part with her vegetables, eggs, evinced any great nobility of character. skinny fowls, or firewood of olive-roots As allies no nation could be more unsat- the last vestiges of the once fair oliveisfactory. They skulked over the Kas- yard of the hamlet, for even a very low sassin battle-field to rob and mutilate the price. The cost of living, on the other dead; they took money to murder English- hand, within the walls has risen most conmen who trusted to their reputation for siderably; and a Jewish paper currency good faith; and they stole a few cows from has been established which the issuers the British camp. They never took a side | refuse to redeem except at a very large heartily for or against Arabi, and they discount, and which, though periodically deserted him in his need. Truly, the suppressed by the Turks, is found so noble Arab is not found either in Moab, lucrative a method of trading without in Sinai, or in Egypt; and we may well capital that it appears again and again in question if he exists in Arabia, for those the market, and is even forced on the who know the Syrian Arabs well say that tourist. the Nejed and Yemen tribes differ only in being fiercer and more warlike; while as regards the Sakhûr and the Anezeh and other large clans who are more remote from European influence than the Belka Bedawin, it has been my experience that they only differ in being greater savages, more ignorant, crafty, and unreliable than those who know better the power of the West. Truly, one is tempted to regard the noble Arab (as the Red Indian has already been described) as "an extinct race which never existed."

The increasing number of the Jews in Syria is another element of some importance in the question. It is more than doubtful whether their presence adds to the prosperity of the country. At Jerusalem they now number fifteen thousand out of a population of perhaps thirty thousand. Before the Crimean war there were only a few Hebrew families in the city, but now their cottages extend for more than a mile along the Jaffa road, while their building clubs have erected a quadrangle of houses (called "the Hundred Gates") on the north-west, and another

Such are the benefits which the Ashkenazim are conferring on Judea, and it need hardly be said that the better class of Jews in Palestine look with disfavor and alarm at the sudden increase of the pauper element of the population, espe cially as consisting of the more degraded of their own countrymen.

Colonies, we hear, are established at Gaza and Jaffa, and in northern Syria, but we may well doubt whether a people who have never thriven as agriculturists can add to the prosperity of a ruined land where they can find no trade to develop.

From such a picture of Syria as it is a sketch which is certainly not too darkly colored we may turn to the Lebanon province as governed by Rustem Pasha. "The Mountain " embraces a rugged limestone chain with deep gorges and stony slopes, a total area of some two thousand square miles. It possesses hardly any visible advantages over the rest of Syria, unless the cooler climate of the high range be considered to add vigor to the population. The soil is certainly not more fruitful than that of the plains beyond, nor

is the mountain better watered than Gilead | mon, their original sacred centre, and or Carmel; yet in Lebanon we find a popu- developing in great numbers in the Jebel lation as thick as the land will support, ed Druz and the Hauran. The hate of and already obliged to push out on all Druze and Maronite may not be extinsides, to Cyprus, Palestine, or Damascus, guished, but they are less likely to come by the rise in the value of land within the into collision. The Moslem and the bounds of the favored province. Here Druze round Damascus now stand in the traveller passes through fields and somewhat the old relation of Druze and villages with every sign of prosperity, Maronite, and thus with the emigration of through fine vineyards above and mul- the old dominant people, so feared by the berry gardens which feed a large silk trade more timid followers of Mâr Mârûn, the below. He meets plump, rosy girls, fine, power of these heretical subjects of the well-made youths, with smiling faces so pope, and of the clergy whose influence strangely different from the gaunt sad over them is unlimited, has increased so fellâhin of Palestine or Egypt. He finds much that they now aspire to dominate the country guarded by a smart, well- all other sects in Lebanon, whether Mosdrilled police, who contrast remarkably lem, Latin, or Greek, and to take, in fact, with the sultan's poor soldiers, in their the whole administrative power into their patched coats and shoes (or even slippers) without soles. The aspect of the people and the land suggests liberty, content, prosperity, yet the taxes are only a shilling a head, and the heights of Lebanon are of grey rock capped with snow.

hands.

This Maronite ambition Rustem Pasha has steadily opposed, he has dealt equal justice to all men in his province, and has set an example of righteous rule, which is equally disliked by all the intriguing parAll this is due to one cause, namely, to ties of the country. For this he is now an upright government. All this change apparently deserted to the tender mercies (for even in the last ten years a great ad- of one power, which appears to be dissat vance is visible) is the result of the sys-isfied by his too honest discharge of his tem worked out by Lord Dufferin, and duty. Whatever be the ultimate design approved by England and France; and of France on Syria, she evidently sees in not less to the honest, firm, and impartial execution, in their original spirit, of the laws laid down for "the Mountain" after the massacres of 1860. All this it is now apparently intended to destroy; and, without any cause assigned, Rustem Pasha, the able and impartial governor, who has held the post ever since its establishment, is to be disgraced and superseded at the command of France.

the deposition of Rustem Pasha an immediate means of regaining, among the powerful Maronites, the prestige of which the acquisition of Cyprus and the occupation of Egypt have deprived her, even more completely than the disasters of the Franco-German war. As Rustem Pasha is dispossessed because the Maronites so will it, and because France makes a bid for influence amongst them, the result will be regarded as a triumph of French diplomacy in Lebanon, and will lead to a material access of French prestige in all parts of Syria.

Those who know Syria will not have far to seek for the reason. Twenty years ago an Englishman could hardly travel in Lebanon without being insulted. The Maronites looked on France as their pro- Since the French diplomatic representatector, and on the Englishman as a friend tive has triumphed over Rustem Pasha, we of the Druze;_ but times have changed have heard of other efforts to create dissince then. French influence has de- turbance in Syria, which, though promptly clined, the English have become near suppressed by the waly of Damascus, yet neighbors in Cyprus, and England has serve to show the tendency of those inmade a bold stand in the Eastern ques-trigues which, for the last three years, tion. The Egyptian campaign has no have become so rife in the country. It doubt materially added to our prestige in Syria. English is now perhaps better known among the Maronites than French, and the development of Mr. Cook's tours has been by no means the least important circumstance in the case; but at the same time the difficulties of government in Lebanon, though changed, are not lessened. The Druzes have almost entirely evacuated the mountain, retiring to Her

is on this later occasion not the rough Maronite of Kasrawân with his barbarous dialect, scarcely intelligible to the southern Arabs, who has been stirred up. against the lawful governor of Lebanon, but the fanatical Metawileh Moslem of the hills of Phoenicia who has been induced to believe in a Muhammadan government in France which is to free him from the Sunnee Turk. This little in

cident, mentioned in a telegram in the | the Sunnee Moslems. The oldest of the Standard, gives a good illustration of one four is the Ismáîleh sect, who are the of the most important features of the most degraded and poverty-stricken of all Syrian question as yet but little under the inhabitants of Syria. They are a stood in England, for few Englishmen miserable remnant of the medieval assaswho have not devoted special attention to sins or "hemp-smokers "(Hashîshîn), and the question can be supposed to know the derive their doctrines from that early religious differences which separate the Shîáh sect who believed that Ismáîl the Metawileh from the other Moslems of the sixth Imâm was a divine incarnation, and country, nor is it possible without special destined to reappear at the end of the study to appreciate the influence of those world. The old Haoma ritual still surinnumerable antagonisms which exist es- vives among these heretics, together with a pecially in Syria, not only between various veneration of the sun, moon, planets, and Moslem sects and different Christian stars, which is most probably of Persian Churches, but also and even more in- derivation. In numbers and energy they tensely between the various schismatic are, however, too contemptible to be bodies themselves of either Moslem or turned to any great political account, and Christian belief, who hate each other yet it will scarcely be necessary for modern more cordially than they detest the adhe- diplomatists to profess any faith in the rents of the opposite faith. return of Ismáîl to earth.

The Nuseireh or Anseirîyeh are a very similar set, hough their numbers are greater and their character for fierce courage more formidable. They are the immediate neighbors of the Maronites on the north, and extend thence to the ridge of Mount Casius above Antioch. The Druzes state that they are schismatics from Druze orthodoxy, but historically they appear to have originated before the establishment of the Druze Hamzeh in Hermon.

We have already alluded to the various schools of the Sunnee Moslems in Turkey, Syria, Egypt, and India; but in addition to these we find in Syria various Moslem heresies which are divided yet more sharply from Sunnee orthodoxy. These include the Druzes, the Metawileh, the Anseirîyeh, and the Ismáîleh. The Christians of Syria on the other hand are divided into no less than twelve sects, including the Greek orthodox, the Russian Church, the Greek Catholics, the MaroSome have identified them nites, the Armenians, the Armenian with the Manichæan Gnostics, but the Catholics, the Syrians, the Copts, the points of resemblance are more probably Latins, the Lutherans, the English Prot- due to the Persian origin of many of the estants, the Temple Society. Of these tenets of Manes. The same syncretism the two first, with the Maronites, Arme- which is so remarkable among the Druzes. nians, and Latins, are the most ambitious is, however, also observable among the and powerful; and the smaller Oriental northern sect of the Anseireh, and they sects are interesting rather from an his- themselves connect their mystic eucharist torical and antiquarian point of view than with the Christian rite, as well as with from the standpoint of practical politics. the "veiling of the Lord in light that is The Melchites are the descendants of Ze- in the eye of the Sun." They believe nobia's Arabs converted to Ebionite equally in the divinity of Imâm Aly, and, Christianity in the Hauran in the early like the Ismáîleh and the Druzes, they centuries of the Christian era. The poor are allowed publicly to abjure in words Syrians (or Jacobites) and the Copts from their real creed in order to avoid persecuEgypt are powerless among the dominant tion, so long as they do not infringe by factions, and conspicuous for their meek act its more important prohibitions. It and humble appearance. The Protestants is to this sect that Lord Beaconsfield alhave but little political influence, and ludes in "Tancred," and rightly attributes keep aloof from the unprincipled intrigues to them the preservation of many pagan of Latins and Greeks. The German beliefs. And now that a line has been Temple Society, though gradually increas- drawn by Europe between Druze and ing in prosperity, seems destined entirely to lose its distinctive religious character as well as its exclusive organization.

The four Moslem heresies of Syria are founded on the Shîáh beliefs, and the division which separates these sects from each other is almost as deep as that which distinguishes their tenets from those of

Maronite, it is perhaps among the An, seireh that the political agitator has the best opportunity of fomenting that ill feel ing which leads to convenient massacres, always attributed to a fanaticism which remains dormant in the East till roused by the intriguing nations of the West.

The Druze is the best known and most

powerful of the four Moslem heresies, on | ation. The Druzes of Hermon and the Hauran are said to be able to gather ten thousand horsemen, making a population of at least ten times that amount. The Metawileh are found mainly in upper Galilee, their capital at the beginning of the century being at Tibnin (the Crusading fortress of Toron), while at the same peri

and spread along the coast to Sidon. They are also numerous in the Antilebanon as far as Homs, where they are mingled with Melchite Christians, whom (were it expedient) they might easily be persuaded to massacre.

account of the warlike character of the race, their magnificent physique, and their political intrigues. In Syria they are re garded as English protégés, on account of our action in their behalf in 1860; but the sceptical character of the race and their selfish faithlessness render them very doubtful allies in cases where inter-od they built modern Tyre from its ruins est conflicts with loyal friendship. There are two things which seem not generally known concerning the Druzes, namely, first their migration from Lebanon to the Hauran a change resulting from the establishment of the Lebanon government; and secondly, the fact that their The Metawileh are almost pure Shîáh, religious tenets are no longer the myste- representing Persian Muhammadism rious secret they once were, since the among the Sunnees and Christians of the French dug up their sacred books on Levant. Their future prophet is the Hermon, and since De Sacy and others "twelfth Imâm," and their eschatology is have made a special study of that con- almost purely Mazdean. They adore the fused and syncretic system of belief, martyred Hasan and Hosein, and believe which embraces Christian teaching to in the divinity of Aly. They carry with gether with Moslem orthodoxy, and Bud- them the sacred Persian soil, as did the dhist ideas with the Mazdeism of Persia. shah when he visited England. They The Druze, indeed, differs from the Is- also wear a peculiar curl which is remark. máîleh mainly in one tenet, the former ably similar to the love-lock of the Jewish holding that the insane Fatemite khalif Pharisee. It is among these fanatical Hakem was a divinity incarnate, while and ignorant mountaineers, who equally the latter attributes the same honors to hate the Christian and the Sunnee Mosthe earlier Imâm Ismáîl. The details of lem, and who refuse to eat from one dish, Druze faith have but little interest save or drink from one cup, with any but their for the student of the religions of western own co-religionists, that the agents of Asia, but it is important to keep in view France are said to have penetrated of the scepticism which fin all these Oriental late, and to have induced them apparently sects is the result of the highest initia- to believe in a great non-Christian Westtion; because the idea which some writern race, which is to secure their triumph ers have suggested, that the Akkáls of over every other sect; the ends of diplo this people may possess secrets of mystic macy being in this case furthered by the value which it would be most interesting statement of a real truth - that the gov. for the European to penetrate, is directly ernment of France cannot be considered contrary to all that we know of the early Christian. history of Islam and of the gradual growth of scepticism in Asia.

From a political point of view the Druzes are more formidable perhaps than any non-Christian sect in Syria. They are believed to have allied themselves (or to have been brought into relations through the agency of Europeans) with the Bedawin of the Nejed and Shammar, and with the wild tribes of the Anazeh. Their attempted rebellion in 1881 was in all probability fomented from without, though we may hope that the suspicions of the Turkish government were wrongly directed when they accused the British nation of abetting the malcontents.

The Metawileh are less known than the Druzes and far less powerful. They are estimated to number eighty thousand souls, though this is perhaps an exagger

We must now turn briefly to review the more powerful Christian sects who live amidst the various Moslem factions just noticed. The majority of Christians who are of Greek or Syrian birth belong to the Greek Church under the patriarchs of Jerusalem and Antioch. They bear, it must be confessed, a very evil reputation in the land, and the exhibition of fanatical fury which annually disgraces the Jerusa lem cathedral at Easter is due mainly to the action of the native Greek Christians, and is little chargeable against Russians or Armenians, and still less against the peaceful Melchites, Syrians, and Copts. The ignorance and degradation of the Greek clergy are only too well known to residents in Syria; and the spirit of unprincipled ambition and selfish rapacity which too often disgraced the councils of

1

the Church in the fourth and fifth centu-
ries has certainly not become extinct in
the Eastern Church. It is far safer to
trust to the honesty of a Moslem, of a
Maronite, or even of a Druze, than to that
of a Greek Christian when employed in
money affairs. The advantage taken by
even great dignitaries of the Greek Church
of the simple faith of pilgrims is one of
the scandals of the Holy City; and many
yet graver accusations have been brought
by impartial observers against the Greek
clergy as a class.

tion which boasts the name of " eldest son of the Church."

Of the Maronites (who are Monothelites) we have already said something. In common with Greek and Armenian Catholics they present the curious spectacle of a sect preserving the peculiar dogmas of the Eastern Church, yet acknowledg ing as a spiritual head the pontiff of the Western rite. The Armenians alone remain to demand a passing notice.

The Armenian Church springs from the ancient Docetic heresy, and from the doctrines of Eutyches condemned by the Second Council of Ephesus in 449 A.D. They believe (as do the Buddhists of their master) that our Lord was born from the right side of the Blessed Virgin, and that his body was not of the substance of his mother, but divine, incorruptible, and miraculous. They are thus equally obnoxious to the Monophysite Jacobites (or Syrians), the Monothelite Maronites, the Ebionite Melchites, and to the three great sects which call themselves orthodox.

The Russian Church in Palestine exists almost entirely for the sake of pilgrims from the dominions of the czar. The stately cathedral outside Jerusalem, and the great hospice and hospital beside it, have been built with money granted by the imperial government. The number of Russian pilgrims of both sexes, and often of great age, increases apparently every year; and pilgrimage is encouraged by the granting of a passage, at an almost nominal fare, from the Russian ports to Jaffa, the steamboat companies receiving, it is said, a handsome subsidy from the The Armenians have the reputation of Russian treasury. This zeal for the faith being the cleverest people in the East. is equally shown by whole crews of Rus- "Ten Greeks," says the proverb, "to sian gunboats, and by the royal grand cheat a Jew, ten Jews to cheat an Armedukes, as well as by the poorest mujik; by | nian." They are in Syria found as a sect the maréchal de noblesse who scourges only at Jerusalem, but are there perhaps. himself in the Sepulchre church by night, the richest and most influential of all the and reads Voltaire and Renan by day, not Christian communities. As diplomatists, less than by the bald and hairless mem- as accountants, as money-lenders and ber of one of the most frightful and well financial agents, the Armenians are more known of Russian sects, who in the nine- successful than any other race; and the teenth century follow the venerable ex-power which they have thus obtained, ample of the famous Origen. Such zeal has of course no connection with politics; and we should be able to measure its value if we found that it was equally fostered by government, after a compact had been arranged which might give to France in Syria an equivalent for Russian extension of influence in Armenia and Asia Minor.

together with their reputation for selfishness and usury, very closely resembles the influence and character of the Oriental Jews.

Such, very briefly described, are the various struggling factions which divide the little land of Syria, a country whose area does not exceed fifteen thousand square miles at most, and whose popula The Latins in Syria are recruited tion has been roughly estimated as only mainly by conversions from the Greek half that of London. From such a reChurch. The priests of the Latin Church view, however imperfect (and it is impos- often men of great ability and consid- sible to enter into detail in the space at erable education, are Italian or French our command), it will be evident how by birth as a rule, and sometimes pass difficult and dangerous is the task of but a few years in Palestine. There is dealing with so many contending interoften danger of the relapse of whole con-ests, and with populations so nearly balgregations to the older faith, and to the anced and so easily incited to mutual teaching of the native Syrian priests, who outrage and bloodshed. The policy of. are always Greek; but on the whole the almost any one of the larger parties may Latins are gaining considerably in influ- for a time turn the scale in favor of its ence and prosperity, especially of late, and own special interests; yet the domination since the duty of protecting the faithful of any Christian sect over the large mahas become so clearly evident to a na-jority of the populace who profess the