Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/235

Rh illuminated writing on the walls. The floors are of marble. One side of any room intended for noonday retirement is generally laid open to a quadrangle, in the centre of which there dances the jet of a fountain. There is no furniture that can interfere with the cool, palace-like emptiness of the apartments. A divan (which is a low and doubly broad sofa) runs round the three walled sides of the room. A few Persian carpets (which ought to be called Persian rugs, for that is the word which indicates their shape and dimensions) are sometimes thrown about near the divan; they are placed without order, the one partly lapping over the other, and thus disposed, they give to the room an appearance of uncaring luxury; except these (of which I saw few, for the time was summer, and fiercely hot), there is nothing to obstruct the welcome air, and the whole of the marble floor from one divan to the other, and from the head of the chamber across to the murmuring fountain, is thoroughly open and free.

So simple as this is Asiatic luxury!—The Oriental is not a contriving animal—there is nothing intricate in his magnificence. The impossibility of handing down property from father to son for any long period consecutively seems to prevent the existence of those traditions by which, with us, the refined modes of applying wealth are made known to its inheritors. We know that in England a newly-made rich man cannot, by taking thought and spending money, obtain even the same-looking furniture as a gentleman. The complicated character of an English establishment allows room for subtle distinctions between that which is comme il faut, and that which is not. All such refinements are unknown in the East—the Pasha and the peasant have the same tastes. The broad cold marble floor— the simple couch, the air freshly waving through a shady chamber—a verse of the Koran emblazoned on the wall—the sight and the sound of falling water, the cold fragrant smoke of the narghilè, and a small collection of wives and children in the inner apartments—these, the utmost enjoyments of the grandee, are yet such as to be appreciable by the humblest Mussulman in the empire.

But its gardens are the delight, the delight and the pride of Damascus. They are not the formal parterres which you might expect from the Oriental taste; they rather bring back to your