night!'

Miriam gazed upon the wide prospect of the moonlit capital. The elevated
position of the citadel afforded an extensive view of the mighty groups
of buildings-each in itself a city, broken only by some vast and hooded
cupola, the tall, slender, white minarets of the mosques, or the black
and spiral form of some lonely cypress--through which the rushing
Tigris, flooded with light, sent forth its broad and brilliant torrent.
All was silent; not a single boat floated on the fleet river, not a
solitary voice broke the stillness of slumbering millions. She gazed
and, as she gazed, she could not refrain from contrasting the present
scene, which seemed the sepulchre of all the passions of our race,
with the unrivalled excitement of that stirring spectacle which Bagdad
exhibited on the celebration of the marriage of Alroy. How different
then, too, was her position from her present, and how happy! The only
sister of a devoted brother, the lord and conqueror of Asia, the bride
of his most victorious captain, one worthy of all her virtues, and whose
youthful valour had encircled her brow with a diadem. To Miriam, exalted
station had brought neither cares nor crimes. It had, as it were, only
rendered her charity universal, and her benevolence omnipotent. She
could not accuse herself, this blessed woman--she could not accuse
herself, even in this searching hour of self-knowledge--she could not
accuse herself, with all her meekness, and modesty, and humility, of
having for a moment forgotten her dependence on her God, or her duty to
her neighbour.

But when her thoughts recurred to that being from whom they were indeed
scarcely ever absent; and when she remembered him, and all his life,
and all the thousand incidents of his youth, mysteries to the world, and
known only to her, but which were indeed the prescience of his fame, and
thought of all his surpassing qualities and all his sweet affection,
his unrivalled glory and his impending fate, the tears, in silent agony,
forced their way down her pale and pensive cheek. She bowed her head
upon Bathsheba's shoulder, and sweet Beruna pressed her quivering hand.

The moon set, the stars grew white and ghastly, and vanished one by one.
Over the distant plain of the Tigris, the scene of the marriage pomp,
the dark purple horizon shivered into a rich streak of white and orange.
The solemn strain of the Muezzin sounded from the minarets. Some one
knocked at the door. It was Caleb.