And in most cases, they are erected to commemorate the benevolence and public zeal of some wali or pasha who must have made a handsome fortune in the promotion of a public enterprise. Be this as it may. It is not our business here to probe the corruption of any particular Government.
But we observe that this miserable botch of a monument is to the ruins of the Acropolis, what this modern absolutism, this effete Turkey is to the magnificent tyrannies of yore. Indeed, nothing is duller, more stupid, more prosaic than a modern absolutism as compared with an ancient one.
But why concern ourselves with like comparisons? The world is better today in spite of its public monuments. These little flights or frights in marble are as snug in their little squares, in front of their little halls, as are the majestic ruins in their poplar groves. In both instances, Nature and Circumstance have harmonised between the subject and the background.
Come along. And let the rhymsters chisel on the monument whatever they like about sculptures and the wali. To condemn in this case is to praise.
We issue from the Square into the drive leading to the spring at the foot of the mountain. On the meadows near the stream, is always to be found a group of Baalbekians bibbing arak and swaying languidly to the mellow strains of the lute and the monotonous melancholy of Arabic song.
Among such, one occasionally meets with a native who, failing as peddler or merchant in America, returns to his native town, and, utilising the chips of English he picked up in the streets of the New-World cities, becomes a dragoman and guide to English and American tourists.
Now, under this sky, between Anti-Libanus rising near the spring, Rasulain, and the Acropolis towering above the poplars, around these