3-052-320 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Shepherds watching their flocks by night, drawn by W. J. Webb, 1872. 'Mr. Webb...presents us with a pleasing kind of pastoral idyll...Those Syrian shepherds, watching their flocks of sheep and goats by night, as the moon rises higher in the clear sky of that Eastern clime, and floods the vast plain below them with a silver sea, tranquil as the mind of a saint after prayer, might be likened, at first sight, to the privileged shepherds of another blessed Christmas time...But these careless rustic loungers, perhaps of the ordinary condition among their fellow-countrymen, do not seem to have heard any extraordinary message of divine grace, or of peace and goodwill to mankind; for while they repose in easy attitudes, without fear of molestation, one playing on his fife, another inhaling the fumes of his hookah, in a serene state of "kef," their muskets are placed within reach against the rock behind them, to be ready for instant use, if the wild Bedouins of the desert should attack them, to carry off the animals under their charge. Peace and goodwill to all mankind have not yet become the universal and inviolate rule of life at Bethlehem...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.