[32] Mr White here introduces a digression on the other relics of the Prophet, the Moslem festivals, &c., his account of which presents little novelty; but he falls into the general error of describing the Mahmil, borne by the holy camel in the pilgrim caravan, as containing the brocade covering of the Kaaba, when it is in fact merely an emblem of the presence of the monarch, like an empty carriage sent in a procession.—(See Lane's Modern Egyptians, ii. p. 204, 8vo. ed.) It is indeed sufficiently obvious, that a box six feet high and two in diameter, could not contain a piece of brocade sufficient to surround a building described by Burckhardt as eighteen paces long, fourteen broad, and from thirty-five to forty feet high.
THE MOUNTAIN AND THE CLOUD.
(A Reminiscence of Switzerland.)
The cloud is to the mountain what motion is to the sea; it gives to it an infinite variety of expression—gives it a life—gives it joy and sufferance, alternate calm, and terror, and anger. Without the cloud, the mountain would still be sublime, but monotonous; it would have but a picture-like existence.
How thoroughly they understand and sympathize with each other—these glorious playmates, these immortal brethren! Sometimes the cloud lies supported in the hollow of the hill, as if out of love it feigned weariness, and needed to be upheld. At other times the whole hill stands enveloped in the cloud that has expanded to embrace and to conceal it. No jealousy here. Each lives its own grand life under the equal eye of heaven.
As you approach the mountains, it seems that the clouds begin already to arrange themselves in bolder and more fantastic shapes. They have a fellowship here. They built their mountains upon mountains—their mountains which are as light as air—huge structures built at the giddy suggestion of the passing breeze. Theirs is the wild liberty of endless change, by which they compensate themselves for their thin and fleeting existence, and seem to mock the stationary forms of their stable brethren fast rooted to the earth. And how genially does the sun pour his beam upon these twin grandeurs! For a moment they are assimilated; his ray has permeated, has etherealized the solid mountain, has fixed and defined the floating vapour. What now is the one but a stationary cloud? what is the other but a risen hill?—poised not in the air but in the flood of light.
I am never weary of watching the play of these giant children of the earth. Sometimes a soft white cloud, so pure, so bright, sleeps, amidst open sunshine, nestled like an infant in the bosom of a green mountain. Sometimes the rising upcurling vapour will linger Just above the summit, and seem for a while an incense exhaling from this vast censer. Sometimes it will descend, and drape the whole side of the hill as with a transparent veil. I have seen it sweep between me and the mountain like a sheeted ghost, tall as the mountain, till the strong daylight dissolved its thin substance, and it rose again in flakes to decorate the blue heavens. But oh, glorious above all! when on some brightest of days, the whole mass of whitest clouds gathers midway upon the snow-topped mountain. How magnificent then is that bright eminence seen above the cloud! How it seems rising upwards—how it seems borne aloft by those innumerable wings—by those enormous pinions which I see stretching from the cloudy mass! What an ascension have we here!—what a transfiguration! O Raphael! I will not disparage thy name nor thy art, but thy angels bearing on their wings the brightening saint to Heaven—what are they to the picture here?
Look! there—fairly in the sky—where we should see but the pure ether—above the clouds which themselves are sailing high in serenest air—yes, there, in the blue and giddy expanse, stands the solid mountain, glittering like a diamond. O God! the bewildered reason pent up in cities, toils much to prove and penetrate thy being and thy nature—toils much in vain. Here, I reason not—I see. The Great King lives—lo there is his throne.