Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/233

 light for a Syrian Christian to look up and say that the Englishman’s faith was his too. If I was vexed at all that I could not give the man a lift and shake hands with him on level ground, there was no alloy to his pleasure. He followed me on, not looking to his own path, but keeping his eyes on me. He saw, as he thought, and said (for he came with me on to my quarters), the period of the Mahometan’s absolute ascendency, the beginning of the Christian’s. He had so closely associated the insulting privilege of the path with actual dominion, that seeing it now in one instance abandoned, he looked for the quick coming of European troops. His lips only whispered, and that tremulously, but his fiery eyes spoke out their triumph in long and loud hurrahs: "I, too, am a Christian. My foes are the foes of the English.  We are all one people, and Christ is our King." If I poorly deserved, yet I liked this claim of brotherhood. Not all the warnings which I heard against their rascality could hinder me from feeling kindly towards my fellow-Christians in the East. English travellers, from a habit perhaps of depreciating sectarians in their own country, are apt to look down upon the Oriental Christians as being "dissenters" from the established religion of a Mahometan empire. I never did thus. By a natural perversity of disposition, which my nursemaids called contrariness, I felt the more strongly for my creed when I saw it despised among men. I quite tolerated the Christianity of Mahometan countries, notwithstanding its humble aspect and the damaged character of its followers. I went further and extended some sympathy towards those who, with all the claims of superior intellect, learning, and industry, were kept down under the heel of the Mussulmans by reason of their having our faith. I heard, as I fancied, the faint echo of an old crusader’s conscience, that whispered and said, "Common cause!" The impulse was, as you may suppose, much too feeble to bring me into trouble; it merely influenced my actions in a way thoroughly characteristic of this poor sluggish century, that is, by making me speak almost as civilly to the followers of Christ as I did to their Mahometan foes.

This "holy" Damascus, this “earthly paradise” of the Pro