swelled into a heap, and is abetted by use, and corroborated by newlyentertained principles, and is insinuated into his nature, and hath possessed his affections, and tainted his will and understanding; and by this time a man is in the state of a decaying merchant, his accounts are so great, and so intricate, and so much in arrear, that to examine them will be but to represent the particulars of his calamity; therefore they think it better to pull a napkin before their eyes, than to stare upon the circumstances of their death.Jeremy Taylor.

ELIJAH AT HOREB.

BEHIND the desert plain dark Sinai frown'd

Like some old fortress - ruin, wrapt around

With silent gloom; no blast of trumpet broke

O'er those bare heights, or trembling echoes woke,

Where rocks on rocks, magnificently piled,

Hung o'er the gaping gorges, grandly wild.

In flight majestic to those summits grey The savage eagle bore his struggling prey,

And wild goats, bounding light from ledge to ledge,

Cropp'd scanty greenery on the chasm's edge;

"The mount of God," lonely and desolate,

Emblem prophetic seem'd of fallen Israel's fate.

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seek!" Abrupt he spoke, and ceased, as hearts o'erflowing speak.

"Go forth, and stand upon the mount." His word

The seer obey'd, and stood before the Lord,

Who passed by; while muttering tempests hoarse

Broke o'er the mountain-heights with vengeful force,

And swift tornadoes swept old Horeb's

crown

In crumbling fragments to the caverns down;

Dire earthquake cleft the ground, which reel'd and roll'd,

While muffled thunder-booms the moments toll'd;

And livid lightnings flash'd in fearful ire

From cliff to cliff, wrapping the rocks in fire.

ACRE, anciently Accho, is a seaport of Palestine. (Judges i. 31.) It was afterwards called "Ptolemais," from Ptolemy Philadelphus, who rebuilt, enlarged, and beautified it. (Acts xxi. 7.) It is situated in the province of Galilee, in Syria, distant about twenty-seven miles south of Tyre, and about seventy north of Jerusalem. On the land side, north and east, it is encompassed by a spacious and fertile plain. On the west, the walls are washed by the Mediterranean Sea; and, on the south, by a magnificent bay, extending from the city as far as Mount Carmel, being three leagues broad and two in depth. The port, on account of its shallowness, can only be entered by vessels of small burden; but there is excellent anchorage on the opposite side of the bay. With such advantages of situation it is not to be wondered that great importance has at all times been attached to the possession of this place.

In the first partition of the Holy Land, under Joshua, Accho belonged to the tribe of Asher; but it was one of those places out of which they never extirpated the Canaanites. Accho, and all beyond it, northwards, was considered as a heathen land by the Jews. When Syria was subjected by the Romans, it was made a colony by the Emperor Claudius. The Arabs still call it Akka. Its name can be traced to no Hebrew or Syriac

root, and may be presumed of Arabic origin, from Ak, which signifies "sultry."

There are several medals of Accho, or Ptolemais. Those bearing its Phoenician name, Ok or Akko, have dates of the era of Alexander, whence it may be inferred that it received favours from that prince, probably at the time he was detained in Syria by the siege of Tyre. From others it appears that the city assumed the privilege of asylum and of sanctity, and that it possessed a temple of Diana.

Christianity was planted here at an early period; and here St. Paul visited the saints in his way from Ephesus to Jerusalem, and rested here one day. (Acts xxi. 7, where it is called "Ptolemais.")

Subsequently falling into the possession of the Saracens, it recovered some semblance of its former name in that of Akka, by which it is at present known. By the knights of St. John of Jerusalem it was called St. Jean d'Acre, from a VOL. XV.-Second Series.

magnificent church which was built within its walls, and dedicated to St. John.

It was first taken by the Saracens in 636, and the Christians first became masters of it in 1104. Saladin got possession of it in 1184, and held it till 1191, when it was retaken by the Crusaders. The latter held it for exactly one century. It was then subject to the Mamlouk sultans of Egypt till the year 1382, when they were dispossessed by a body of Circassians, who successively ruled till 1517.

During the frenzy of the religious war excited by Peter the Hermit, called the Crusades, it was repeatedly the object of obstinate and bloody contentions. When taken by the victorious Saladin, it was speedily invested by all the Christian forces in Palestine; and, after a vigorous and obstinate resistance on the part of the Saracens, it surrendered to the

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armies of Philip Augustus of France, and Richard I. of England; two monarchs whose ardour in the cause of the Crusades excited them to extraordinary deeds of valour. The possession of the city was dearly purchased by the assailants: they lost more than one hundred thousand men before its walls; more were destroyed by disease and shipwreck; and very few soldiers of the Christian armies, which amounted to nearly six hundred thousand persons, returned to their respective countries.

The pretended wood of the true cross was then in Acre, and of this enviable prize the Christians obtained possession. They also procured the liberation of numbers of Christians who had been made prisoners by the Saracens. Saladin, however, refused to ratify the capitulation of the city, which so exasperated Richard I., that he ordered five thousand of the Saracens to be massacred; an act of cruelty that was severely retaliated on the Christians. About a century afterwards, when the Christians were finally expelled from Jerusalem by the Saracens, and when the attempts made by St. Louis of France, Edward I. of England, and other princes, had been completely unsuccessful, Acre became a kind of metropolis in Syria for the Latin Christians. The city was then adorned with many elegant and magnificent edifices, churches, aqueducts, and was strengthened by a double wall. Pilgrims and fugitives were attracted to it; and, as it increased in population, the morals of the citizens became extremely licentious. Bands of adventurers sallied out from its gates; and, under the banner of the Cross, plundered the adjacent villages. Nineteen Syrian merchants were, on one occasion, robbed and murdered, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity; and, when satisfaction was demanded, it was refused with contempt. At length the Sultan Khalil, exasperated by these enormities, marched against Acre at the head of an army consisting of one hundred and sixty thousand infantry, and sixty thousand cavalry. After a short siege, the besiegers forced the double wall, the city was stormed, and sixty thousand Christians were either massatred or made slaves. The fortress of the

Knights Templars was destroyed, the Grand Master slain, and, out of five hundred of them, only ten survived, who probably, as Gibbon observes, perished on the scaffold.

This event took place on the 21st of May, 1291, and on that day there was so great a tempest, that numbers of the fugitives from the garrison, unable to reach the ships in the bay, perished. A few of the besieged, among whom were the King of Jerusalem, the Patriarch, and the Grand Master of the Hospital, escaped by sea to Cyprus. There was a convent, the abbess of which, say Maundrell, ordered the nuns to mangle their faces, in order to avoid the violence which was apprehended from the Saracens, setting the example herself: the victors, enraged and disappointed, put them all to the sword. The Saracens then dilapidated Acre, and reduced it almost to a ruin. It remained in this condition till 1750, when it was fortified by an Arab sheikh, named Dakir, who was in arms against the Grand Seignior, and had maintained his independence for many years, until he was basely assassinated at the advanced age of eight-six. Under his wise administration, Acre recovered a part of its trade. He was succeeded by the famous tyrant, Djezzar Pacha, who fortified and embellished the town.

When the French army, under Napoleon, advanced against it in 1799, it could boast of little else than a few old towers mounted with rusty cannon, some of which burst when a round was fired.

Acre was invested by Napoleon, but the French were replused in every mode of attack, by the skill and intrepidity of Sir Sydney Smith. The garrison, assisted by the British marines, repulsed the French with great loss. At length, Bonaparte announced his intention of raising the siege, and on the sixty-first day of the siege commenced his retreat, and was finally driven out of Syria into Egypt.

Such being the brief outline of its eventful history, it cannot be presumed to contain any edifice of great antiquity, entire. The havoc of war is everywhere apparent; a few prostrate columns of grey and red granite, and some stone balls lying about the streets being the only

relics observable of early times. Among the Gothic remains are those of the Cathedral Church of St. Andrew, near the sea, now a modest chapel. The ruins of that of St. John, the tutelar saint of the place, and erected by the knights of that order, are likewise shown. Amongst the most remarkable modern buildings, is a beautiful mosque, erected by Djezzar Pacha. The interior court is entirely paved with white marble. The public is likewise indebted to this prince for a very fine fountain, near the entrance of the Serai, or "palace." The materials which served for its construction, as well as those of the mosque, were brought from Cæsarea.

The sites of ancient cities, particularly those lying on the sea-coast, at the present day, serve for quarries to more modern cities rising up in their vicinity, owing to the ready building materials they afford. Thus, many of the finest structures of antiquity have been wantonly destroyed by the barbarous occupants of the soil.

The houses are mostly built of stone, and with a solidity that would indicate a necessity for defence. They are all flat-roofed; the terraces forming agreeable recreation-places in fine weather. They are constructed in the following manner :-Across the beams forming the ceiling of the uppermost story, deal planks are laid, fitting nicely together, over which rafters are placed in an opposite direction, the interstices being filled up with chopped hay or straw, mixed up with lime or small pebbles. Upon this a layer of pounded charcoal is placed; then one of lime and sand, mixed up with ashes and charcoal, and levelled with a roller. The whole is beat down with a mallet till it assumes a bright polish, and is rendered impermeable to rain. Lord Lindsay, in his "Letters from Edom," &c., states, that "Acre looks nobly from a distance; but within its walls is most wretched, houses in every direction in ruins, and broken arches."

LIFE AMONG RECRUITS. BEHIND the National Gallery, in rooms connected with that home of art, are the

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barracks for the London Recruiting District. Excepting the officers and noncommissioned officers belonging to the department, and the recruits, very few people have ever visited the place; and yet it is full of interest at times, and always presents new incidents and strange views of human nature.

My duty, as Minister to Wesleyan soldiers, requires me to go to these barracks, and though many readers of the "Miscellany" would shrink from personally inspecting them, they may have no objection to accompany me in imagination on such a visit they will not need Eau-de-Cologue, and their ears shall not be pained by sounds that would startle, perhaps disgust them, if they actually went with me. We enter a large gateway, walk through a small yard, pass the rudely-furnished lavatories, go though a corridor, and find ourselves at the foot of stairs leading to the sleeping-rooms: on each side of the bottom of these stairs is a large room; that to the right is the canteen; that to the left the recruits' day-room. We may as well look at the canteen first. This is a new institution. Formerly the recruits were billeted at publichouses, and a horrible arrangement it was; now they have these barracks, and can buy their food at a reasonable and fixed tariff of prices. The canteen is kept by a discharged sergeant, and the articles sold at it are of good quality. From early morning to late at night you find a brisk trade going on. There are no settled hours for meals: the recruits get their daily pay, and spend it when and how they choose; so that the tables are seldom quite deserted.

Opposite the canteen is the recruits'dayroom; a cheerless-looking spot, barely furnished, having two or three strong moveable forms, a gaslight, and a fireplace. In that room you find a motley set any day. Men loll there for hours, seated on the window-ledge, watching squads of guardsmen drilling in the yard of St. George's Barracks, or staring vacantly into space; others lie on the floor, sleepy or sullen. The forms are generally taken near the fire, and men sit there talking. Little groups are up and down the room; and solitary youths