We will fill our glasses till they look like cups
of amber, and drink profoundly to our gracious hosts in Palestine.
Christianity permits, and sanctions, the drinking of wine, and of
all the holy brethren in Palestine there are none who hold fast to
this gladsome rite so strenuously as the monks of Damascus; not
that they are more zealous Christians than the rest of their
fellows in the Holy Land, but that they have better wine. Whilst I
was at Damascus I had my quarters at the Franciscan convent there,
and very soon after my arrival I asked one of the monks to let me
know something of the spots that deserved to be seen. I made my
inquiry in reference to the associations with which the city had
been hallowed by the sojourn and adventures of St. Paul. "There is
nothing in all Damascus," said the good man, "half so well worth
seeing as our cellars"; and forthwith he invited me to go, see, and
admire the long range of liquid treasure that he and his brethren
had laid up for themselves on earth. And these I soon found were
not as the treasures of the miser, that lie in unprofitable disuse,
for day by day, and hour by hour, the golden juice ascended from
the dark recesses of the cellar to the uppermost brains of the
friars. Dear old fellows! in the midst of that solemn land their
Christian laughter rang loudly and merrily, their eyes kept
flashing with joyous bonfires, and their heavy woollen petticoats
could no more weigh down the springiness of their paces, than the
filmy gauze of a danseuse can clog her bounding step.
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