The Sun.
London, England, 1860-07-23 00:00:00

DA 3L4 SCUS.

dr.

Damascus might well be the first of the four ter-
restrial paradises of Mabomet. Not a few Er glish
travellers have seen it from the Saiahieh by even-
ing light; and they are probably all agreed that
nowhere on earth have, they beheld a scene so
lovely. The dense but varied verdure which lies
in the midst of the desert, an oasis of 30 mites round ;
the creamy city peeping out of it—sending up its
40 minarets among the slim poplars, and disclosing
little bridges where the rivers of Damascus, Phar-
par, and Abana, wind among the thickets of fruit
trees and flowering shrubs ; the villages standing in
and out of the verge of the towering forest; the
yellow plain stretching around, with its shifting,
shadows and islands of mist, and the red and pur-
ple hills which frame the whole ;—this picture may
well be beloved by the Mussulman as the Prophet's
favourite, and the sultana of cities. But, once
within the gates, all is changed. The gaiety which.
is the great external feature, the harmony and
brightness :which exhilarate more than they melt
the heart, have vanished. Like Syria generally,
Damascus is full of ruins which tell of religious
strife. Here we pass a mosque now roofless, where
the carved stonework lies hidden in the long grass,
and the water runs to waste from the broken tank;
and there we may see, by a little climbing, the shat-
tered portico of the once grand Christian cathedral,
round whose broken columns the Arabs have built
their mud hovels. The Jews have their Holy
Places where Elisha anointed the King of Syria,
and where the law was preserved when Jerusalem
fell. The old heathen faiths of Syria are also repre-
sented there. All have ruins to show; and all cherish
deep resentments, imputing the ruin to one another.
This wrath enters into the whole life of Damascus,
for the new-comers are compelled to take it into
account in all their concerns. The doom of blood-
feud hangs over every relation and every transac-
tion of life there; and every class of believers
calumniates every other. All Christians regard all
Mahommedans as impatiently waiting for the final
opportunity of exterminating the whole race of
" infidels ' the Madommedans point with disgust
to the idols of the Greek Church, and the stupid
legends
of the Latin monks. These last tell tra-
' yellers every Holy week that the Jews in the next
street crucified a child the week before. The Jews
shrug their shoulders at Christianity being called
by the missionaries a religion of peace, while the
Maronites, who are in communion with Rome,
cherish the institution of the avenger of blood as
the dearest part of their religion. While their
women aid peasants are at work in the fields
and groves, their monks are poring over Thomas
Aquinas in the convents, and kindling up the
scorn of their dependents against the Druses, who
keep up heathen mysteries, and i*ake a Messiah,
and even a god, of their Ifakim, whom Jews and
Christians abhor. Amidst this stormy chaos of
religious passions, life is neither tranquil nor gay
in the first of earthly paradises. Sometimes the
Jews are tortured to death ; sometimes the Chris-
tians are shut up in their dwellings ; sometimes a
Mussulman is left dead in the street, and very often.
there are skirmishes on the mountain roads when
Druses and Maronites encounter. In going along
the streets men glance before and behind; every
group in the environs is watched ; every stranger
who crosses a bridge is inspected ; every evening
party is conducted with caution and tact to obviate
offence, and broken up at the first ruffle.
This is an epitome of life everywhere in the Holy
Lands of the earth, where the great faiths of man-
kind have for the most part originated, and where
they are now collected as if on purpose to
jar. It is believed in Syria that there are moun-
tain recesses where Baal and Ashtaroth are still
worshipped. The reflection of the fire-worship is
still seen, we are told, in certain gorges of the
Lebanon ; and Jezebel herself and the priests at
Baalbec were not more devoted sun worshippers
than some who are now watching the slaughter in
Colo Syria from their perches on either hand.
MuCh more is notorious even to us at home. We
know how Christians are received at Nablous;
and how the Turkish Governor at Jerusalem has for
years been called upon to keep the peace between
the Greek and Latin Christians in the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre, even removing the altar-cloth
himself, because the rival sects flew at each other's
throats in the struggle to do it. We know how
the Jews in Jerusalem sit in the dust in their
Place of Wailing, actually wailing over their ex-
clusion from the site of their Temple, embracing
the stones of the wall which Solomon deposited
there, and muttering to the proud Mussulman on
the other side that cruel fence, " Happy shall he
be who shall take thy little ones, and shall dash
them against the stones." We have known through-
out that missionaries go to Syria and Palestine
with their lives in their hands, as they go to Mada-
gascar or Cochin China.
Moreover, we have for some time been aware
that a new virulence has been excited in zealots of
all creeds in the East by some fresh exasperation of
Mussulman passion. For four years past we ought
to have been aware whatmust happen in Syria, and
Arabia, and Palestine, if the most vigorous check
was not interposed in time. It was not done ; andnow
the male children of whole tribes in the Lebanon
lie in heaps, torn limb from limb ; all the men of
whole districts are slaughtered ; and the wives and
daughters of Christian settlers and converts are
carried off to the harems of the Mussulman mur-
derers. It is now known that the Maronites pro-
voked the present quarrel ; and when it is consi-
dered that the Maronites are from 115,000 to
140,000 in number, while the Druses are not
above 30,000, we cannot wonder at the outcry on the
spot against the Christians; and we must admit the
necessity of warning European society against sym-
pathising with the Christians as if they were dis-
ciples of a religion of peace and goodwill. But, of the
500 Christians slain at Damascus, and the Christian
residents at Beyrout, Aleppo, Jerusalem, and other
places now in peril, there must be many whom
we may heartily sympathise with, and feel eager
to acknowledge as brethren in the faith. The
practical questions then are—first, how they can be
most quickly rescued from peril ; and next, what
must be done about these Holy Lands which are
for ever steeped in blood in the name of religion.
It is so entirely agreed upon that the Sovereign
of those countries must be compelled by his allies
and supporters to keep his subjects in order, at
any necessary cost of his dignity and independence,
that there need be no time lost in disputing that
point. If the Sultan cannot keep the peace in e.
case where so many interests are involved, his
supporters must do it and settle the matter with
him afterwards. Every day costs many lives,
and the slaughter must be stopped, in the
first place, by any power which can do it—of
any faith and any nationality. Any demon-
stration that the Mussulman is not to extirpate the
Christians just at present will break the force of
the immediate superstition, will cow the Druses,
and check the treachery of the Turks.
But it is another thing for a single European
Power to say that, without asking whether the
Sultan is able to fulfil his promise to restore order
and do justice in the Lebanon, it will send its own
troops into Turkish territories. We are not to be

blinded by the allegation of a self assumed " mission

of humanity" to the dangers. of precipitate inter-
meddling. It was not very humane of the Czar to
bring on the Crimean war, and yet his intervention
had deliverance from oppression as its avowed
object. The Christian nations of Europe
cannot remain indifferent to the massacres

ately perpetrated in the East, but they
are bound so to act as not to bring on the cataclysm
which it has been • the study of all wise states-
sten to avert. Even in England there has been too
little looking to consequences in the public discus-
sions which have taken place, but the French Go.
vernment, which announces an intention to inter-
vene in Syria, irrespective of the action of the other
powers, pursues a course which naturally excites
suspicion. The declaration that the Emperor is
resolved on sending an armed expedition to Syria
is not recommended by being connected with alarm-
ing reports from the French consuls in that coun-
try, for the consular agents o _ f France have for
years been inflaming the Christian population, and
preparing them for the advent of a French army.
The policy now proclaimed will impose duties
on us, for Syria can never be entrusted to any
power which has agitated its population. By
whatever machinery those lands may be,henceforth
ruled, it must be ordained for the v, elfare of the in-
habitants, and not for the furtherance of any Euro-
pean ambition. Meantime it would be well, for the
sake of future peace, if the cost of restoring the set.
tlements,
and lepairing the ravages in the Lebanon
were charged upon the parties, Mussulman, Chris-
tian,
Jew, or heathen, who either provoked the
war, or failed in the engagement to keep the peace.
A fine 6f three millions of pounds sterling, in the
form of compensation to sufferers, might secure
future tranquillity when no religious or moral con-
siderations can be brought to bear. Where religious
persecution is regarded as a duty, and felt as a plea-
sure, the only way is to make it expensive; and
the cost is in this case only a small part of a really
natural retribution.—Daily News.

AN AMBASSADOR FORGETTING HIS SPEECH.—
Otto Von Konigsmarck (uncle of the Konigsmarck who
shot Tom Thynne, of Longleat) appeared as Ambassador
at the court of Louis XIV., and had to make a Swedish
speech at his reception before the Most Christian King.
Otto was a famous dandy and warrior, but he forgot his
speech, and what do you think he did ? Far from being
disconcerted, he recited a portion of the Swedish Catechism
to his Most Christian Majesty and his court, not one of
whom understood his lingo with the exception of his own
suite, who had to keep their gravity as best they might.—
Thackeray's .Four Georges,