can rest on
a blade of grass without bending it; and the confiding larks and storks
which, not fleeing, seem to welcome the visitors to their haunts. Here
grow oleanders of such magnificence as is seen nowhere else in the
country, twenty feet high, sometimes in clumps a hundred feet in
circumference; and "masses of rosy red flowers, blushing pyramids of
exquisite loveliness."

Our ramblers follow the western shore to the shallow hot stream, where
boy-like,--or manlike as I did--they burn their hands in trying to
secure pebbles from its bottom. They rest under the shade of an olive or
a palm. They gather walnuts which are in great abundance; and grapes and
figs, which can be done ten months in the year; and oranges and almonds
and pomegranates.

They wander through meadows rich in foliage, and gay with the brightness
and richness of flowers which retain their bloom in Galilee when they
would droop in Judaea or Samaria.

We hear the poet Keble asking them,

"What went ye out to see
O'er the rude, sandy lea,
Where stately Jordan flows by many a palm,
Or where Gennesaret's wave
Delights the flowers to lave,
That o'er her western slope breathe airs of balm?

"All through the summer night,
These blossoms red and white
Spread their soft breasts unheeding to the breeze,
Like hermits watching still,
Around the sacred hill,
Where erst our Saviour watched upon His knees."

To the poet's question James and John would answer that they "went out
to see the blue lupin and salvia, the purple hyacinth, the yellow and
white crocus, the scarlet poppy, and gladiolus, the flowering almond,
the crimson and pink anemone."

They also saw the cultivated fields, and the sower casting his seed
which fell on the hardened pathway, or barren rocks, or bounteous soil.
They watched the birds from mountain and lake gather the scattered
grain. They thought not of the parable into which all these would be
weaved; nor of Him who would utter it in their hearing near where they
then stood. They saw the shepherds and their flocks, the sparrows and
the lilies, that became object lessons of the Great Teacher yet unknown
to them. In their rambles they may have climbed the hill, only seven
miles from their home, not thinking of the time when they would climb it
again; after which it would be forever known as the Mount of Beatitudes.

Such were some of the charmin