As he awoke, numbers of uninitiated youths were admitted to hear his account of the Paradise which the power of the Old Man had permitted him to taste. And thus tools were found and formed for the execution of the wildest projects. That glimpse of Paradise for ever haunted the inflamed imagination of the novices, and any death appeared welcome that could restore them to such joys. [20] _De Regionibus Orient._, lib. i. c. 28. Such is the theory of this singular people, as maintained by Von Hammer, which it remains for future discoveries--now that Mr Walpole has opened the way for them--to vindicate or refute. There are also some remnants of the Persian tribes of this people, an account of which, by Mr Badger, we are informed, is soon to appear: the Syrians scarcely know of their existence. The Syrian Ansayrii amount, as we have said, including Ismaylis, to about forty thousand souls: they have always preserved their seclusion inviolate; setting at nought the various tyrannies that have harassed the neighbouring states, denying the authority of the Sultan, and blaspheming the Prophet, while they outwardly conform to his rites. They occupy the northernmost range of the Lebanon, from Tortosa and Latakia, as far as Adana. Notwithstanding Von Hammer's elaborate and ingenious theory, many (amongst whom is our author) have seemed disposed to treat the whole story of the Assassins, and the Old Man of the Mountain himself, as myths. It was, they say, the sort of romance that the Crusaders would have lent a ready ear to, and that their troubadours would have made the most of. They deny the existence of the powerful hill fortresses surrounded by the intoxicating gardens; they point to the renowned Syrian castle of El Massiat, whose ruins occupy a space of only one hundred yards square, and in whose vaulted stables there is an inscription purporting that the castle was "the work of Roostan the Mameluke." Mr Walpole, however, does not enter into any controversy respecting this strange people. Of the little that he has confided in his present two volumes to the public, the following extracts must be taken as an instalment:--