this earth. And all in such free flowing outlines; grand in its sincerity,
in its simplicity; in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. There
is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So _true_ every way;
true eyesight and vision for all things; material things no less than
spiritual: the Horse,--"hast thou clothed his neck with _thunder_?"--he
"_laughs_ at the shaking of the spear!" Such living likenesses were never
since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation; oldest choral melody
as of the heart of mankind;--so soft, and great; as the summer midnight, as
the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in
the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit.--

To the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient universal objects of
worship was that Black Stone, still kept in the building called Caabah, at
Mecca. Diodorus Siculus mentions this Caabah in a way not to be mistaken,
as the oldest, most honored temple in his time; that is, some half-century
before our Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some likelihood that the
Black Stone is an aerolite. In that case, some man might _see_ it fall out
of Heaven! It stands now beside the Well Zemzem; the Caabah is built over
both. A Well is in all places a beautiful affecting object, gushing out
like life from the hard earth;--still more so in those hot dry countries,
where it is the first condition of being. The Well Zemzem has its name
from the bubbling sound of the waters, _zem-zem_; they think it is the Well
which Hagar found with her little Ishmael in the wilderness: the aerolite
and it have been sacred now, and had a Caabah over them, for thousands of
years. A curious object, that Caabah! There it stands at this hour, in
the black cloth-covering the Sultan sends it yearly; "twenty-seven cubits
high;" with circuit, with double circuit of pillars, with festoon-rows of
lamps and quaint ornaments: the lamps will be lighted again _this_
night,--to glitter again under the stars. An authentic fragment of the
oldest Past. It is the _Keblah_ of all Moslem: from Delhi all onwards to