CHAP. I.]

ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM.

73

with considerable compensation, for they had im-ported and spent immense treasures, and, with alltheir doleful memorials, left also much wealth ofevery kind behind them, and refinements andfashions, and usages, from the best of every land overthe civilised globe; and that long fallow and thosetremendous slaughters had rendered its fertile plainmore fertile than ever; so that with a gayer andmore vivid vegetation than before, it lay in a laby-rinth of villas and gardens. The roofs were flat, withterraces ; so that you could go from one end of thecity to the other in an uninterrupted walk on thesame level, without descending into the street, asis partially the case in Aleppo even now; and thestreets were wide for the Levant, which might beworse respecting sun, but gave air, and above allwas better for riders, and all knights went then onhorseback as universally as the Turks now. Thewhiteness of the cut stone houses, those marbleterraces ornamented with jars of orange and lemontrees and flowers, the universal practice of glasswindows, then a singularity everywhere else, with-out excepting London or Paris of that day (whichis certain), but even of the present, which may bedoubtful—paintings decorating the interior of theprincipal houses, the gilded cupolas, domes, mina-rets, steeples standing out from the brightness of the