DJOUNI, THE RESIDENCE OF LADY HESTER STANHOPE—p.19.
In its intricate, wild, convolved appearance, this scene resembles many among the Appenines; the road is seen in front, winding up, in a zig-zag course, to the building; a kind of "break-neck road," as if her ladyship wished to make the pilgrim toil and murmur to her dwelling, and, like Christian going up the hill Difficulty, "endure hardness" ere he reaches her bower of delights. A more capricious choice of a home has never been made, in this world of caprice and eccentricity; the land abounds with sites of beauty and richness, vales and shaded hills, screened by loftier hills, with many waters. Lebanon has a hundred sites of exquisite attraction and scenery; but this lady, ever loving the wild and the fearful more than the soft things of this world, has fixed her eagle’s nest on the top of a craggy height that is swept by every wind. The dark foliage that appears above its walls are the gardens, which are remarkably beautiful and verdant, the creation of her own hands. Nowhere in the gardens of the East is so much beauty and variety to be seen—covered alleys, pavilions, grass-plats, plantations, &c. all in admirable order.
