April 6.――This was the last day I passed with Lady Hester Stanhope: she was in bed, not being very well, and I drank tea with her. It was the only time she had taken tea during the many evenings I had sat with her, and I thought she had abandoned it altogether: however, she had not wholly forgotten this part of English life. Although in bed, she did the honours, as ladies do in England, sitting up and pouring out the tea, handing the cup to me, presenting me the cakes, &c.; all which things surprised the black slave, in a country where they are not used to see great people do anything with their own hands: and it was the same when I dined with her. There were three sorts of excellent rich cakes, made of almond paste in different ways. Travellers in the East may perhaps recollect _mâmool_, _gharyeby_, and _baklâawy_. She asked me how I liked them, and, on my answering that they were delicious, she said I should find a chest of each sort prepared for the use of my family on the passage; and, true enough, they had been sent to Mrs. ―――― after I had come away from home. After this, she produced the list of her debts, which I read over to her, she making observations as I proceeded, on the manner in which she had been led to contract them. Being on the eve of my departure, I had not time to write down what she said until I was in the vessel; but, as far as I recollected, the first was dated in 1827. The whole, however, originated in charitable and benevolent motives. Among the distressed persons whom she had assisted figured Abdallah Pasha himself, when, upon being amerced by the Porte, he had applied to her for a large sum of money, which she had lent him. The next were the wife and family of the Sheykh Beshýr, who, when the Sheykh was imprisoned, were driven from their princely palace, and compelled to wander and hide themselves in distant parts of Syria. To them she sent money and clothes. Then there was the widow of Girius Baz, principal secretary of the Emir Beshýr, who was reduced, by the decapitation of her husband, and the confiscation of his property, from affluence to poverty. Other individuals of less note had shared her bounty. All her debts bore interest at from 15 to 25 per cent. When once she got into the nets of the money-lenders, she had never been able to extricate herself again, and the evil had gone on increasing up to the present time, when she owed, according to a rough calculation, nearly £14,000.