This is the loftiest Tell on the plain of Damascus, and having a Wely on the summit, it forms a prominent point in taking bearings, or making a survey. It is also important as commanding a distinct view of the windings of the lower part of the river 'Awaj. The village of Nejha, at the eastern extremity of Jebel el-Aswad, appeared almost at our feet. It is about half an hour distant. Beyond it, fifteen minutes, is the 'Awaj, just leaving the vale between the latter ridge and Mâni'a. Half and hour further down it turns suddenly to the N. E. and sweeps round the base of a little hill, and then meanders across the plain to the lake. The meadows between Nejha and the bend of the river presented a gay and animated picture. A few battalions of Turkish soldiers were there encamped; while little parties wandered along the stream, or galloped about in the exciting exercise of the Jerid. These soldiers were posted here to check the incursions of the rebel Druzes into the plain of Damascus.

The ridge Jebel Mâni'a sinks down into a broad swell opposite Nejha, and is here crossed by the road that I afterward travelled to the Haurân. This swell soon after descends to the level of the plain.

We left at 3.30, passed Kubr es-Sit, fifteen minutes on our left, at 4.30, reached Akraba twenty-five minutes after, and entered the east gate of the city at 5.40.

EXCURSION TO KESWEH.

January 28th, 1853. We left the city at 9.45 by Buwâbet Ullah," The Gate of God," and rode along the Haj road, now, in part, covered with water from the recent rains. In fifteen minutes we had on our left Kubbet el-Haj, a tomb and small mosk around which the Mecca pilgrims spend the first night of their journey. On the opposite side of the road is the large village of Kadam. At 10.25 we saw on our left, a quarter of an hour distant, Sabînet es-Sughra, and ten minutes south of it, Sabineh. Twelve minutes afterwards we crossed a small stream running, in a deep artificial channel, toward the former little village. Its waters are collected, some distance westward, by means of a subterranean aqueduct. A quarter of an hour further we crossed another small stream called Nahr Sabîneh from the village which it waters. It, too, is collected like the former, to the west of Ashrafiyeh. In eight minutes more we came to

the Berdy, a stream in every respect like the preceding, It does not rise on the side of Hermon, as represented in Berghaus's map; nor at Katana, as laid down on Burckhardt's. Its waters are collected like the two already mentioned; and the head of its canal is just twenty minutes west of the road, and five minutes above the Druze village Ashrafiyeh. It never flows either to the lakes of the Barada, or the lake Heijâny; it waters the village Baweidah, about an hour east of the road, and is exhausted in the gardens and fields below it. This stream has no more right to be inserted in a map than a hundred others in different parts of the plain.

A smart canter of eight minutes from the Berdy, brought us to the foot of Jebel el-Aswad. The great Haj road so far is wide and good. It is wide, like most other roads on the plain of Damascus, because there are no fences along its sides, and the mules and camels are rather erratic in their progress; and it is good, just because it is impossible for it to be bad, the plain being flat and the ground firm. It runs from the city gate in a straight line S. 28 W. to the base of the hills. Here it turns a little westward, skirting a hill on the left. On reaching the top of the gentle slope it turns again nearly due south. The road along the whole of this elevated ground is covered with loose fragments of trap-rock. On its eastern side the hills rise up suddenly, but not precipitously; while on the right the ground slopes away gradually into a fine fertile plain. A low spur shoots out westward from the place where the road begins to ascend, and separates this from the main plain. The village of Sahnaya, twenty minutes distant, stands at its extremity.

The low range of Jebel el-Aswad runs from this eastward to Nejha, and is intersected diagonally by three distinct Wadys. The breadth of the base of these hills is from one half to three quarters of an hour, and the greatest elevation above the plain does not exceed 500 feet. On the western side of the Haj road the main body of the hills appears as if it had been lifted from its place and set down half an hour further south. The vale above mentioned occupies its place. The ground immediately on each side of the road is stony, but does not present the rugged appearance one would suspect from reading Burckhardt.' The Meghâret el-Haramiyeh, or "Robbers Cave," mentioned by the same writer, is not very remarkable, and any traveller might

1 Travels in Syria, p. 53.

well be excused for passing it unnoticed. Perhaps I should have done so, had it not been that a negro shepherd was standing beside it, and occasionally turning the wanderers of his flock, by slinging stones at them. The precision with which he could throw his missiles with this apparently unmanageable instrument, afforded a good illustration of that striking incident in the life of David, when the champion of Gath fell before him.

At 11.30 we commenced the gentle descent into the vale of the 'Awaj, down which we could see to Nejha. 'Adaliyeh and Hurjilleh were both in sight on the right bank. The road here runs S. by W. along the foot of the hills to Kesweh. These hills are sometimes called Jebel Kesweh. They are not regular like a chain, but are rather composed of a clump of conical peaks with narrow vales between. At 12.10 we reached Kesweh. The village stands on the north bank of the stream.

The 'Awaj approaches this place from the west, flowing in a deep and tortuous channel. On its southern side is an elevated rocky plateau, that extends nearly as far east as the Haj road. It then gives place to a fertile plain called Ard el-Khiyârah. On the same side of the river, E. by S. of the village, rise up suddenly the lofty peaks of the Jebel Mâni'a. The highest summit is in part isolated and resembles a truncated cone. As this is a conspicuous object from the whole plain of Damascus, I was anxious to ascend it. We accordingly got a guide, and crossing the river by the fine stone bridge, were on the top in forty minutes. A large fortress stood here in ancient times, but is now heaps of ruins. The view is magnificent, embracing the whole district of Wady el-'Ajam, the plain of Jeidûr, the Lejah to the Jebel Haurân, and the vast expanse from Damascus to the Tellûl. My attention was especially confined to the 'Awaj. It lay spread out before me from Sa'sa' to the lake. First running N. E. toward Damascus, then turning and flowing in a serpentine course to Kesweh, where, fringed with willows and poplars, it makes a graceful curve northward round the base of the hill at my feet, and meanders through the meadows of the vale to Nejha. A canal taken from it at Kesweh, and carried along the slopes, waters Adaliyeh and IIurjilleh with their gardens and orchards.

After roughly sketching the whole panorama, and taking bearings of the principal villages and points, we descended and galloped back to Damascus.

Damascus, May, 1853.

ARTICLE VI.

THE NATURE AND INFLUENCE OF THE HISTORIC SPIRIT.

An Inaugural Discourse, by William G. T. Shedd, Professor at Andover.

THE purpose of an Inaugural Discourse is, to give a correct and weighty impression of the importance of some particular department of knowledge. Provided the term be employed in the technical sense of Aristotle and Quinctilian, the Inaugural is a demonstrative oration, the aim of which is to justify the existence of a specific professorship, and to magnify the specific discipline which it imparts. It must, consequently, be the general object of the present discourse to praise the department, and recommend the study, of history.

As we enter upon the field which opens out before us, we are bewildered by its immense expanse. The whole hemisphere overwhelms the eye. The riches of the subject embarrass the discussion. For history is the most comprehensive of all departments of human knowledge. In its unrestricted and broad signification, it includes all other branches of human inquiry. Everything in existence has a history, though it may not have a philosophy, or a poetry; and, therefore, history covers and pervades and enfolds all things as the atmosphere does the globe. Its subject-matter is all that man has thought, felt, and done, and the line of Schiller is true even if taken in its literal sense: the final judgment is the history of the world. If it were desirable to bring the whole encyclopaedia of human knowledge under a single term, certainly history would be chosen as the most comprehensive and elastic of all. And if we consider the mental qualifications required for its production, the department whose nature and claims we are considering, still upholds its superiority, in regard to universality and comprehensiveness. The historic talent is inclusive of all other talents. The depth of the philosopher, the truthfulness and solemnity of the theologian, the dramatic and imaginative power of the poet, are all necessary to the perfect historian, and would be found in him, at their height

1 Resignation, Werke I. 98.

of excellence, did such a being exist. For it has been truly said, that we shall sooner see a perfect philosophy, or a perfect poem, than a perfect history.

We shall, therefore, best succeed in imparting unity to the discourse of an hour, and in making a single and, therefore, stronger impression, by restraining that career which the mind is tempted to make over the whole of this ocean-like arena, and confining our attention to a single theme.

It will be our purpose, then, to speak,

First, Of that peculiar spirit imparted to the mind of an educated man, by historical studies, which may be denominated the historic spirit; and

Secondly, Of its influence upon the theologian.

The historic spirit may be defined to be: the spirit of the race as distinguished from that of the individual, and of all time as distinguished from that of one age.

We here assume that the race is as much a reality as the individual; for this is not the time nor place, even if the ability were possessed, to reopen and reargue that great question which once divided the philosophic world into two grand divisions. We assume the reality of both ideas. We postulate the real and distinct, though undivided, being of the common humanity and the particular individuality. We are unable, with the Nominalist, to regard the former as the mere generalization of the latter. The race is more than an aggregate of separate individualities. History is more than a collection of single biographies, as the national debt is more than the sum of individual liabilities. Side by side, in one and the same subject; in every particular human person; exist the common humanity with its universal instincts and tendencies, and the individuality with its particular interests and feelings. The two often come into conflict with an earnestness, and at times in the epic of history with a terrible grandeur, that indicates that neither of them is an abstraction; that both are solid with the substance of an actual being, and throb with the pulses of an intense vitality.

The difference between history and biography involves the distinct entity and reality of both the race and the individual. Biography is the account of the peculiarities of the single person disconnected from the species, and is properly concerned only with that which is characteristic of him as an isolated individual. But that which is national and philanthropic in his nature; that