JOHN A. GRAY, PRINTER, STEReotyper, and Binder, Corner of Frankfort and Jacob Streets, FIRE-PROOF BUILDINGS. THE submarine telegraph which for a short time united the Old World with the New, in its first message flashed forth the glad words spoken long ago by angel voices in the hearing of the shepherds of Syria: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." The time will come when this watchword *Exposé de la Religion des Druzes, tiré des Livres Religieux de cette Secte. Par M. SILVESTRE DE SACY. Paris. 1838. Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai, and Arabia Petroa: a Journal of Travels in the Year 1838. By EDWARD ROBINSON, D.D. London: John Murray. 1841. The Lands of the Bible visited and described. By JOHN WILSON, D.D. Edinburgh: Whyte. 1847. Mount Lebanon: a Ten Years' Residence, from 1842 to 1852. By Colonel CHURCHILL, Staff-Officer on the British Expedition to Syria. London: Saunders and Otley. 1853. VOL. LIL NO. 1. of the millennial dawning shall be sent continuously, and in its perfect truth, by every electric wire upon the face of the earth; but the agency that recently thus carried it, amid the currents of the agitated sea, has since been mute--as if to teach us, with most impressive solemnity, that there is a great work for us to perfect before we can arrive at the universal establishment of the principle it presents. In an opposite course, the first extension of the same subtle power was followed by utterances of another order, daily recounting to us the progress of the strife in the greatest siege of modern warfare. From that time the character of its responses has seemed as if intended to bring to our minds another lesson, in the oft-repeated echoes it has given of the world's woes: the same series of wires having startled us with the intelligence of a revolt in India. 1 and the massacre of numbers of our brave | dwelling-place in Zion." The snow-clad countrymen, attended with acts of cruelty ridges of Lebanon must have been regardtowards their wives and helpless children ed, both by prophet and people, with revwhich will long exhibit one of the darkest erence and much marvel. It was the pages in the annals of crime. Under the storehouse whence they drew the most good providence of God we were permit- striking scenes of their wondrous imagery; ted to hear, in due time, that the contest its name was a synonym for all that is had ceased; and there followed the more magnificent; and when the plains below welcome notes of peace. We had then a were withered by the burning sun, the momentary pause in the story of blood; maidens of Israel would sigh for the privibut the silence has been broken by the lege of reclining amidst its sheltered cewail of martyred thousands, slain amidst dar-groves, or of listening to the soothing scenes consecrated in our memory by the voice of its streams as they came cool from holiest associations. We were interested the melting snows; while the stalwart in the revolt in India by the fact that its man would wish himself nearer its outpromoters were our fellow-subjects, and spread glaciers, that he might join in the the objects of its vengeance our own kin; chase of the gazelle. We have an insight and we are not the less interested in the into the national feeling from the prayer atrocities that have recently been perpe- of Moses, who asked of God that he trated upon Lebanon, as they take us to might see "the good land, that is beyond the land where the woodman's ax struck Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebadeep for the honor of God, and the timber non." The inspired writers tell of its frahe prepared was for the most glorious of grance and flowers; its box, fir, and pine earthly shrines. trees; its thistles, thickets, and cedars; its streams and snow; and its eagles, leopards, and lions. The cedar forests upon its sides, though so vast in their extent, are declared to be insufficient for the fuel of a burnt-offering that shall find acceptance with the Lord, and all its beasts will not avail for the sacrifice of propitiation. Its trees wail forth a mournful lament for the coming desolations of Israel, and its deep ravines answer to the passes of Bashan in their cry of distress. But the sweet singer of Israel, in that grandest of prophetic psalms, consecrates its associations to a nobler purpose, and tells us that such shall be the luxuriance attendant on the Messiah's reign, that even upon the top of the mountain the corn shall wave, and "the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon." The mountains of every land are a wonder and a mystery to the inhabitants of the plain at their feet. In the two great mythologies of the world, Olympus and the Himalayas are the realm of innumerable legends; the chosen abode of the gods, and of the godlike from among men. But from the superstitions arising from this source the people of Israel were preserved by the teachings of their inspired word. Under the influence of the majesty of the mountain they sang, in one of their sacred hymns: "The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon;" but it was revealed to them that the tabernacle of Jehovah was nearer to their own dwellings, and that the locality he had chosen for the place of his presence was in the midst of their own homes; so that they could sing in more joyous melody: "In Judah is God known; his name is great in Israel; in Salem also is his tabernacle, and his Like a rampart to protect the land of the people of God from the northern blasts in the cold of winter; like the wall of a mighty reservoir, whence its streams were to be filled in the hour of the summer's drought; or like a troop of lions crouching in silent majesty to espy afar off the coming of the foe, ready with their thunder-voices to scare the robber of the desert from his intended prey, stand the two ranges of Lebanon. They are parallel with each other, and run with the trending of the coast from north-east to south-west. The western chain, known as Lebanon Proper, is the higher in its average elevation, the best cultivated, and the most nu |