SEPHORA.

CHAPTER I.

ON that side of Palestine whose shores are washed by the waves of the Mediterranean, on the banks of the river Kishon, there lived one whom we will call Sephora, and her father and mother Patrobus and Pythonissa.

They were in that station of life, which the wise son of Jakeh prayed might be his, when he said, Give me neither poverty nor riches." By their occupation they were basket-makers, but they also followed the pastoral life, and were the shepherds of their own flock.

The employment of a shepherd in a country and climate like this in which we live, is

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subject to many inconveniences, and is more pleasing to fancy than to experience; but in that happy land which the Almighty had appointed for the residence of his people, and as the type of heaven itself, the most blissful ideas of the poets, as far as concerns the beauties and fruition of nature, were more than realized.

Sephora was of a thoughtful character, lively in her affections, warmly attached to her parents, and awake to all the beauties of creation, which her highly-favoured country presented in every glowing form of majestic grandeur and alluring grace. The nation to which she belonged, the place of her abode, and her manner of life, all had a strong tendency to nourish enthusiastic feelings of friendship, of devotion, and of nature, and her mind seemed to acknowledge their influ

The cottage where this family dwelt was simple, like themselves. It was built of blocks of granite, and was but one story high, and divided into six compartments.

It stood on a gentle eminence in ban

opening of a wood, where spice trees breathed their delightful sweets, where myrtles offered their deepened shade, where the orange and the lemon presented at once both their blossom and their fruit; while the vine festooned her wanton branches from tree to tree in all the wild luxuriance of nature, and decked them with her green and purple clusters.

The humble edifice was sheltered on three sides by this wood; on the south east, a long chain of the Hermon mountains appeared above the trees, softening with the distance till the dark blue mingled with the sky.

This was the usual and most sober suit of this lofty ridge of hills, but nothing could be more beautiful, as the sun's setting beams were reflected on them, than to watch the changeful lights from their fertile base, to their craggy and snow-capped summits; they might then almost vie with the purest gems in the lustre and variety of their tints.

To the north the cottage opened on the steep banks of the river Kishon, whose rapid

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stream swept over its rocky channel and refreshed all the air.

The low-roofed building itself was covered with the rose of Sharon, and adjoining to it was a garden, in which all the family delighted to work, planted with flowers and vegetables, where the useful and the pleasurable lay mingled together, and formed a happy emblem of their lives.

This often employed them, but Sephora passed most of her days in helping her father to drive their sheep to pasture, and while they were watching them, they would sit down under the shade of trees and weave their willow baskets; when Patrobus would relate to her many parts of their wonderful history; of their being the chosen people of God; of the miracles he had wrought for their deliverance out of Egypt; and of the promise of a Messiah who was to be their everlasting prince and Saviour.

Sephora forgot to interlace her osiers as she listened to his words, and often did she lift up her heart to the God of heaven that she

might live to see his promise fulfilled; yet she, like most of her nation, looked for a temporal prince, and an earthly power, and not for the meek and lowly Saviour, whose kingdom is righteousness, peace, and joy.

Sometimes when the flock fed near their home, Sephora would take her harp on which her father had taught her to play, and chant the praises of the Almighty with an overflowing heart, while she found in those constant allusions to a shepherd's life, and that pastoral scenery, with which the Hebrew poetry abounds, a simplicity and beauty she would scarcely have been conscious of, had she been less conversant with rural occupations, or less observant of the varying face of

nature.

But Patrobus and Sephora's work did not always lie near their home; they had often far to seek for pasture for their flock, and this circumstance only added variety and pleasure to their lives.

Sephora was never in greater glee than when they had some new scenes to explore; and her father delighted to retrace, if not to