"In the name of the Most High," said he, "tell me, O Bey, what you are going to do with these stones. So many thousands of purses spent on such things! Can it be, as you say, that your people learn wisdom from them? or is it as his reverence the Cadi declares, that they are to go to the palace of your Queen, who, with the rest of the unbelievers, worships these idols? As for wisdom, these figures will not teach you to make any better knives, or scissors, or chintzes, and it is in the making of these things that the English show their wisdom." 6. Such was the view very generally taken of Layard's work by both Turks and Arabs, from the Pasha down to the humblest digger in his band of laborers, and he seldom felt called upon to play the missionary of science, knowing as he did that all such efforts would be but wasted breath. This want of intellectual sympathy did not prevent the best understanding from existing between himself and these rangers of the desert. The primitive life which he led amongst them for so many months, the kindly hospitality which he invariably experienced at their hands during the excursions made and the visits he paid to different Bedouin tribes in the intervals of recreation which he was compelled to allow himself from time to time--these are among the most pleasurable memories of those wonderful, dreamlike years. He lingers on them lovingly and retraces them through many a page of both his books[C]--pages which, for their picturesque vividness, must be perused with delight even by such as are but slightly interested in the discovery of buried palaces and winged bulls. One longs to have been with him through some of those peerless evenings when, after a long day's work, he sat before his cabin in the cool starlight, watching the dances with which those indefatigable Arabs, men and women, solaced themselves deep into the night, while the encampment was lively with the hum of voices, and the fires lit to prepare the simple meal. One longs to have shared in some of those brisk rides across plains so thickly enamelled with flowers, that it seemed a patchwork of many colors, and "the dogs, as they returned from hunting, issued from the long grass dyed red, yellow, or blue, according to the flowers through which they had last forced their way,"--the joy of the Arab's soul, which made the chief, Layard's friend, continually exclaim, "rioting in the luxuriant herbage and scented air, as his mare waded through the flowers:--'What delight has God given us equal to this? It is the only thing worth living for. What do the dwellers in cities know of true happiness? They never have seen grass or flowers! May God have pity on them!'" How glorious to watch the face of the desert changing its colors almost from day to day, white succeeding to pale straw color, red to white, blue to red, lilac to blue, and bright gold to that, according to the flowers with which it decked itself! Out of sight stretches the gorgeous carpet, dotted with