THE NOVELIST.

NIGHT IN A TURKISH CEMETERY.

The scenery round Aleppo is varied and beautiful, and contains some of the richest objects, peculiar to a land of eastern romance.  When the sunset extends its purple flush around the hills, and the city is gladdened by the sound of silver bells, announcing the return of some Turkish caravan, a landscape of more extraordinary magnificence never entranced the imagination of the traveller!  At the brow of the sunny hill, on which the peaks of Aleppo glance in the stainless azure of heaven, are suspended bowers of rose and cypress trees, through whose fragrant solitudes the streamlet murmurs its liquid song; and the picturesque situation of the scattered vales is so admirably calculated to inspire the musings of a contemplative mind, that Fancy might there embody her dreams and phantasies without the fear of receiving intrusion from the world.  The scenes are decidedly distinguished by such attractive beauty, that I am disposed to think with the poet—­

  Methinks amid such scenes as this,
    Must they have dwelt—­the bards of old,
  Whose numbers, of Arcadian bliss,
    And Tempe’s beauteous vale, have told.[10]

Many an exquisite story has been embalmed in the spirit of song, or invested with the pleasing garb of tradition, while the lighter incidents of life have faded into oblivion without a tongue to record them.  One of these, selected from the many which my heart has kept sacred among the dim recollections of the past, sustains the interest of my present sketch; and a more amusing recital I have never yet transmitted to the pages of The Mirror.

It was a night of deep and tranquil loveliness—­a night that seldom fails to soften the excitement produced by the feverish pursuits of day.  The vivid glow of an eastern sunset quivered on the mountains, and the clouds that displayed their crystal forms in its western glory, seemed coloured with a tint of the richest crimson.  In the azure vault above, emblazoned in the spirit of Byron’s splendid, intellectual coruscation, with—­

  Hues that have words and speak to ye of heaven,

thousands of silver orbs sparkled and gleamed like fairy lamps of fire; and the bowers, in which the “Sultana of the Nightingale” inspired a song from her minstrel lover, assumed the dream-like repose which pervaded the surrounding scenes, and extended its influence to the city of Aleppo.

At this silent hour I wandered among the tombs that lay within the cemetery at some distance from the city:  they were arranged with the most pleasing care, and the statuary exhibited on many of them formed an ornamental grace to their sepulchral beauty.  Some were wholly shrouded in cypress, while others shone in the moonlight beneath a wreath of consecrated roses, designed to embalm the mementos of mouldering marble.  Here a sister’s affection might