the asses and horses, they became the property of the soldiers; for, according to a singular convention between these robbers, all the beasts with a cloven hoof taken in such expeditions belonged to the pacha, and all the other animals fall to the share of the troops.

Having exhausted Jerusalem, the pacha departs; but in order to save the pay of the city guards and to strengthen the escort of the caravan of Mecca, he takes the soldiers along with him. The governor is left behind with about a dozen men, who are insufficient for the police of the city, much less for that of the adjacent country. The year before my visit, he was obliged to conceal himself in his house, to escape the pursuit of a band of robbers who entered Jerusalem and were on the point of plundering the city. No sooner is the pacha gone, than another evil, the

consequence of his oppression, begins to be felt. Insurrections take place in the plundered villages; they attack each other, mutually intent on wreaking hereditary revenge. All communication is interrupted; agriculture perishes; and the peasant sallies forth at night to pillage his enemy's vine and to cut down his olive-tree. The pacha returns the following year; he demands the same tribute from a country whose population is diminished. In order to raise it, he is obliged to redouble his oppressions and to exterminate whole tribes. The desert gradually extends; nothing is to be seen but here and there habitations in ruins, and near them cemeteries which keep continually increasing; each succeeding year witnesses the destruction of a house, the extinction of a family, and soon nothing is left but this cemetery to mark the spot where once stood a village.

Now that I am about to bid farewell to Palestine, I must request the reader to accompany me once more beyond the walls of Jerusalem, to take a last survey of this extraordinary city.

Let us first pause at the Grotto of Jeremiah near the royal sepulchres. This is a spacious cavern, the roof of which is supported by a pillar of stones. Here, as we are told, the prophet gave vent to his lamentations, which seem as though they had been composed within sight of modern Jerusalem, so accurately do they portray the state of this desolate city.

"How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! how is she become a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the prov. inces, how is she become tributary!

"The ways of Sion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.

"All ye that pass by, behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.

"The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Sion: he hath bent his bow like an enemy: he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying; therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.

"Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars; her kings and her princes are among the Gentiles; the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord.

"Mine eyes do fail with tears; my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people, because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.

"What thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee?

"All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem,

saying: Is this the city that men call the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth?"

When seen from the mount of Olives, on the other side of the valley of Jehoshaphat, Jerusalem presents an inclined plane descending from west to east. An embattled wall, fortified with towers and a Gothic castle, encompasses the city all round; excluding, however, part of mount Sion, which it formerly enclosed.

In the western quarter, and in the centre of the city toward Calvary, the houses stand very close; but in the eastern part, along the brook Cedron, you perceive vacant spaces; among the rest, that which surrounds the mosque erected on the ruins of the temple, and the nearly deserted spot where once stood the castle of Antonio, and the second palace of Herod.

The houses of Jerusalem are heavy square masses, very low, without chimnies or windows; they have flat terraces or domes on the top, and look like prisons or sepulchres. The whole would appear to the eye one uninterrupted level, did not the steeples of the churches, the minarets of the mosques, the summits of a few cypresses, and the clumps of nopals, break the uniformity of the plan. the uniformity of the plan. On beholding these stone buildings, encompassed by a stony country, you are ready to inquire if they are not the confused monuments of a cemetery in the midst of a desert.

You

Enter the city, but nothing will you there find to make amends for the dulness of its exterior. lose yourself among narrow, unpaved streets, here going up hill, there down, from the inequality of the ground, and you walk among clouds of dust or loose stones. Canvas stretched from house to house increases the gloom of this labyrinth; bazars, roofed over, and fraught with infection, completely exclude the light from the desolate city. A few paltry shops expose nothing but wretchedness to view, and even these are frequently shut, from apprehension of the

passage of a cadi. Not a creature is to be seen in the streets, not a creature at the gates, except now and then a peasant gliding through the gloom, concealing under his garments the fruits of his labour, lest he should be robbed of his hard earnings by the rapacious soldier. Aside, in a corner, the Arab butcher is slaughtering some animal suspended by the legs from a wall in ruins: from his haggard and ferocious look, and his bloody hands, you would rather suppose that he had been cutting the throat of a fellow creature than killing a lamb. The only noise heard from time to time in this deicide city is the gallopping of the steed of the desert: it is the janizary who brings the head of the Bedouin, or returns from plundering the unhappy Fellah.

Amid this extraordinary desolation, you must pause a moment to contemplate two circumstances still more extraordinary. Among the ruins of Jerusalem two classes of independent people find in their religion sufficient fortitude to enable them to surmount such complicated horrors and wretchedness. Here reside communities of Christian monks, whom nothing can compel to forsake the tomb of Christ, neither plunder nor personal ill treatment, nor menaces of death itself. Night and day they chant their hymns around the Holy Sepulchre. Stripped in the morning by a Turkish governor, they are found at night at the foot of Calvary, in prayer, on the spot where Christ suffered for the salvation of mankind. Their brows are serene, their lips wear an incessant smile. They receive the stranger with joy. Without power, without soldiers, they protect whole villages against iniquity. Driven by the cudgel and the sabre, women, children, flocks and herds, seek refuge in the cloisters of these recluses. What prevents the armed oppressor from pursuing his prey and overthrowing such feeble ramparts? The charity of the monks; they deprive themselves of the last resources of life to ransom their supplicants. Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Christian schismatics, all throw themselves under the protection of a few indigent religious, who are incapable of defending themselves. Here we cannot forbear acknowledging with Bossuet, that "hands raised toward heaven disperse more battalions than hands armed with javelins.

While the new Jerusalem thus rises from the desert, resplendent in brightness, cast your eyes between the

temple and mount Sion; behold another petty tribe cut off from the rest of the inhabitants of this city. The particular objects of every species of degradation, these people bow their heads without murmuring; they endure every kind of insult without demanding justice: they sink beneath repeated blows without sighing; if their head be required, they present it to the scimetar. On the death of any member of this proscribed community, his companion goes at night and inters him by stealth in the valley of Jehoshaphat, in the shadow of Solomon's temple. Enter the abodes of these people, you will find them, amidst the most abject wretchedness, instructing their children to read a mysterious book, which they in their turn will teach their offspring to read. What they did five thousand years ago, these people still continue to do. Seventeen times have they witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, yet nothing can discourage them, nothing can prevent them from turning their faces toward Sion. To see the Jews scattered over the whole world, according to the word of God, must doubtless excite surprise; but to be struck with supernatural astonishment, you must view them at Jerusalem; you must behold these rightful masters of Judea living as slaves and strangers in their own country; you must behold them expecting, under all oppressions, a king who is to deliver them. Crushed by the cross that condemns them and is planted on their heads, skulking near the temple, of which not one stone is left upon another, they continue in their deplorable infatuation. The Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, are swept from the earth; and a petty tribe, whose origin preceded that of those great nations, still exists unmixed among the ruins of its native land. If any thing among nations wears the character of a miracle, that character, in my opinion, is here legibly impressed. What can appear more wonderful, even to the philosopher, than this spectacle of ancient and modern Jerusalem at the foot of Calvary? the former overwhelmed with affliction at the sight of the sepulchre of the risen Jesus; the latter exulting before the only tomb which will have no deposite to render up at the consummation of ages.

END OF EXTRACTS FROM CHATEAUBRIAND'S TRAVELS.

In the evening we accompanied them on shore, and took some coffee in the house of the consul, where we were introduced to the ladies of his family. We were amused by seeing his wife, a very beautiful woman, sitting cross legged by us upon the divan of his apartment, and smoking tobacco with a pipe six feet in

length. Her eye-lashes, as well as those of all the other women, were tinged with a black powder made of the sulphuret of antimony, and having by no means a cleanly appearance, although considered as essential an addition to the decorations of a woman of rank in Syria, as her ear-rings, or the golden cinctures of

her ankles. Dark streaks were also penciled, from the corners of her eyes, along the temples. This curious practice instantly brought to our recollection certain passages of Scripture, wherein mention is made of a custom among Öriental women of “putting

the eyes in painting;" and which our English translators of the Bible, unable to reconcile with their notions of a female toilet, have rendered "painting the face."

As to those who call themselves Christians, in opposition to the Moslems, we found them divided into sects, with whose distinctions we were often unacquainted. It is said there are no Lutherans; and if we add, that, under the name of Christianity, every degrading superstition and profane rite, equally remote from the enlightened tenets of the Gospel, and the dignity of human nature, are professed and tolerated, we shall afford a true picture of the state of society in this country. The cause may be easily assigned. The pure Gospel of Christ, every where the herald of civilization and of science, is almost as little known in the Holy Land as in California or New Holland. A series of legendary traditions, mingled with remains of Judaism, and the wretched phantasies of illiterate ascetics, may now and then exhibit a glimmering of heavenly light; but if we seek for the blessed effects of Christianity in the land of Canaan, we must look for that period, when "the desert shall blossom as the rose, and the wilderness become a fruitful field." For this reason we had early resolved to make the sacred Scriptures our only guide throughout this interesting territory; and the delight afforded by the internal evidences of truth, in every instance where their fidelity of description was proved by a comparison with existing documents, surpassed even all that we had anticipated. Such extraordinary instances of coincidence, even with the customs of the

country as they are now exhibited, and so many wonderful examples of illustration afforded by contrasting the simple narrative with the appearances presented, made us only regret the shortness of our time, and the limited sphere of our abilities for the comparison. When the original compiler of "Observations on various Passages of Scripture," undertook to place them in a new light, and to explain their meaning by relations incidently mentioned in books of voyages and travels into the East, he was struck by communications the authors of those books were themselves not aware of having made; and, it is possible, his commentators may discern similar instances in the brief record of our journey. But if the travellers who have visited this country, and many of them were men of more than ordinary talents, had been allowed full leisure for the inquiry, or had merely stated what they might have derived solely from a view of the country, abstracted from the consideration and detail of the lamentable mummery whereby the monks in all the convents have gratified the credulity of every traveller for so many centuries, and which in their subsequent relations they seem to have copied from each other, we should have had the means of elucidating the sacred writings, perhaps in every instance, where the meaning has been "not determinable by the methods commonly used by learned men."

THE dress of the Arabs, in this part of the Holy Land, and indeed throughout all Syria, is simple and uniform; it consists of a blue shirt, descending below the knees, the legs and feet being exposed, or the latter sometimes covered with the ancient cothurnus, or buskin. A cloak is worn, of very coarse and heavy camel's hair cloth, almost universally decorated with broad black and white stripes, passing vertically down the back; this is of one square piece, with holes for the arms it has a seam down the back. Made with

out this seam, it is considered of greater value. Here then, we perhaps beheld the form and materials of our Saviour's garment, for which the soldiers cast lots; being "without seam, woven from the top throughout."

It was the most ancient dress of the inhabitants of this country. Upon their heads they now wear a small turban, or dirty rag, like a coarse handkerchief bound across the temples, one corner of which generally hangs down; and this, by way of distinction, is sometimes fringed with strings, in knots.

THE rest of this short journey, like the preceding part of it, was over steril limestone, principally ascending, until we entered a narrow defile between

the hills. This suddenly opening toward our right, presented us with a view of the small town or village of Nazareth, situated upon the side of a barren rocky

elevation, facing the east, and commanding a long valley. Throughout the dominion of Djezzar Pacha, there was no place that suffered more from his tyrannical government than Nazareth. Its inhabitants, unable to sustain the burdens imposed upon them, were continually emigrating to other territories. The few who remained were soon to be stripped of their possessions; and when no longer able to pay the tribute exacted from them, no alternative remained, but that of going to Acre to work in his fortifications, or to flee their country. The town was in the most wretched state of indigence and misery; the soil around might bid defiance to agriculture; and to the prospect of starvation were added the horrors of the plague. Thus it seemed destined to maintain its ancient reputation; for the Nathaniel of his day might have inquired of a native of Bethsaida, whether "any good thing could come out of Nazareth?" A party of Djezzar's troops, encamped in tents about the place, were waiting to seize even the semblance of a harvest which could be collected from all the neighbouring district. In the valley, appeared one of those fountains, which, from time immemorial, have been the halting place of caravans, and sometimes the scene of contention and bloodshed. The women of Nazareth were passing to and from the town, with pitchers upon their heads. We stopped to view the group of camels, with their drivers, who were there reposing; and, calling to mind the manners of the most remote ages, we renewed the solicitation of Abraham's servant unto Rebekah, by the well of Nahor. In the writings of early pilgrims and travel lers, this spring is denominated "the fountain of the Virgin Mary," and certainly, if there be a spot, throughout the Holy Land, that was undoubtedly honoured by her presence, we may consider this to have been the place; because the situation of a copious spring is not liable to change; and because the custom of repairing thither to draw water has been continued among the female inhabitants of Nazareth, from the earliest period of its history. Marinus Sanutus, who accurately describes its situation, nevertheless confounds it with the fountain of Sephoury. He relates the ancient traditions concerning it, but mingles with his narrative the legendary stories characteristic of the age in which he lived.

After leaving this fountain, we ascended to the town, and were conducted to the house of the principal Christian inhabitant of Nazareth. The tremendous name of Djezzar had succeeded in providing for us, in the midst of poverty, more sumptuous fare than is often found in wealthier cities; the convent had largely contributed; but we had reason to fear, that many poor families had been pinched to supply our board. All we could do, therefore, as it was brought with cheerfulness, was to receive it thankfully; and we took especial care that those from whom we obtained it should not go unrewarded.

Scarcely had we reached the apartment prepared for our reception, when, looking from the window into the court yard belonging to the house, we beheld two women grinding at the mill, in a manner most forci. bly illustrating the saying of our Saviour, before alluded to, in the account given of the ancient hand mills of the island of Cyprus. They were preparing flour to make our bread, as it is always customary in the country when strangers arrive. The two women, seated upon the ground, opposite to each other, held between them two round flat stones, such as are seen in Lapland, and such as in Scotland are called querns. This was also mentioned in describing the mode of grinding corn in the villages of Cyprus; but the circumstance is so interesting, our Saviour's allusion actually referring to an existing custom in the place of his earliest residence, that a little repetition may perhaps be pardoned. In the centre of the upper stone was a cavity for pouring in the corn; and, by the side of this, an upright wooden handle, for moving the stone. As the operation began, one of the women, with her right hand, pushed this handle to the woman opposite, who again sent it to her companion, thus communicating a rotatory and very rapid motion to the upper stone; their left hands being all the while employed in supplying fresh corn, as fast as the bran and flour escaped from the sides of the machine. [Vide on Matth. xxiv. 41. page 344.]

The convent of Nazareth, situated in the lower part of the village, contains about fourteen friars, of the Franciscan order. Its church, erected, as they relate, over the cave wherein the Virgin Mary is supposed to have resided, is a handsome edifice; but it is degraded, as a sanctuary, by absurdities too contemptible for notice, if the description of them did not offer an instructive lesson showing the abject state to which the human mind may be reduced by superstition. So powerful is still its influence in this country, that, at the time of our visit, the Franciscan friars belonging to the convent had been compelled to surround their altars with an additional fencing, in order to prevent persons infected with the plague from seeking a miraculous cure, by rubbing their bodies with the hangings of the sanctuary, and thus communicating infection to the whole town: because, all who entered saluted these hangings with their lips. Many of those unhappy patients believed themselves secure, from the moment they were brought within the walls of this building, although in the last stage of the disorder. As we passed toward the church, one of the friars, rapidly conducting us, pointed to invalids who had recently exhibited marks of the infection; these were then sitting upon the bare earth, in cells, around the court yard of the convent, waiting a miraculous recovery. The sight of these persons so near to us rather checked our curiosity: but it was too late to render ourselves more secure by retreating. We had been told, that, if we chose to venture into the church,

the doors of the convent would be opened; and therefore had determined to risk a little danger, rather than be disappointed; particularly as it was said the sick were kept apart, in a place expressly allotted to them. We now began to be sensible we had acted without sufficient caution; and it is well we had no reason afterward to repent of our imprudence.

Having entered the church, the friars put lighted wax tapers into our hands, and charging us on no account to touch any thing, led the way, muttering their prayers. We descended, by a flight of steps, into the cave before mentioned; entering it by means of a small door, behind an altar laden with pictures, wax candles, and all sorts of superstitious trumpery. They pointed out to us what they called the kitchen and fire place of the Virgin Mary. As all these sanctified places, in the Holy Land, have some supposed miracle to exhibit, the monks of Nazareth have taken care not to be without their share in supernatural rarities; accordingly, the first things they show to strangers descending into this cave, are two stone pillars in front of it; one whereof, separated from its base, is said to sustain its capital and part of its shaft miraculously in the air. The fact is, that the capital and a piece of the shaft of a pillar of gray granite has been fastened on to the roof of the cave; and so clumsily is the rest of the hocus pocus contrived, that what is shown for the lower fragment of the same pillar, resting upon the earth, is not of the same substance, but of Cipolino marble. About this pillar a different story has been related to almost every traveller since the trick was first devised. Maundrell, and Egmont, and Heyman, were told that it was broken by a pacha in search of hidden treasure, who was struck with blindness for his impiety. We were assured that it separated in this manner when the angel announced to the Virgin the tidings of her conception. The monks had placed a rail, to prevent persons infected with the plague from coming to rub against these pillars: this had been, for a great number of years, their constant practice, whenever afflicted with any sickness. The reputation of the broken pillar, for healing every kind of disease, prevails all over Galilee.

It is from extravagances of this kind, constituting a cemplete system of low mercenary speculation and priestcraft throughout this country, that devout, but weak men, unable to discriminate between monkish mummery and simple truth, have considered the whole series of topographical evidence as one tissue of imposture, and have left the Holy Land worse Christians than they were when they arrived. Credulity and skepticism are neighbouring extremes; whosoever abandons either of these, generally admits the other. It is hardly possible to view the mind of man in a more forlorn and degraded state, than when completely subdued by superstition; yet this view of it

is presented over a very considerable portion of the earth; over all Asia, Africa, almost all America, and more than two thirds of Europe: indeed, it is difficult to say where society exists without betraying some or other of its modifications; nor can there be suggested a more striking proof of the natural propensity in human nature toward this infirmity, than that the Gospel itself, the only effectual enemy superstition ever had, should have been chosen for its basis. In the Holy Land, as in Russia, and perhaps in Spain and Portugal, the Gospel is only known by representations more foreign from its tenets than the worship of the sun and the moon. If a country, which was once so disgraced by the feuds of a religious war, should ever become the theatre of honourable and holy contest, it will be when reason and revelation exterminate ignorance and superstition. Those who peruse the following pages, will perhaps find it difficult to credit the degree of profanation which true religion has here sustained. While Europeans are sending messengers, the heralds of civilization, to propagate the Gospel in the remotest regions, the very land whence that Gospel originated is suffered to remain as a nursery of superstition for surrounding nations, where voluntary pilgrims, from all parts of the earth, men warmly devoted to the cause of relig ion, and more capable of disseminating the lessons they receive than the most zealous missionaries, are daily iustructed in the grossest errors. Surely the task of converting such persons already more than half disposed toward a due comprehension of the truths of Christianity, were a less arduous undertaking than that of withdrawing from their prejudices, and heathenish propensities, the savages of America and of India. As it now is, the pilgrims return back to their respective countries, either divested of the religious opinions they once entertained, or more than ever shackled by the trammels of superstition. In their journey through the Holy Land, they are conducted from one convent to another, each striving to outdo the former in the list of indulgences and of relics it has at its disposal, bearing testimony to the wretched ignorance and sometimes to the disorderly lives of a swarm of monks, by whom all this trumpery is manufactured. Among the early contributors to the system of abuses thus established, no one appears more pre-eminently distinguished than the empress Helena, mother of Constantine the First; to whose charitable donations these repositories of superstition were principally indebted. No one laboured more effectually to obliterate every trace of whatsoever might have been regarded with reasonable reverence, than did this old lady, with the best possible intentions, whensoever it was in her power. Had the sea of Tiberias been capable of annihilation by her means, it would have been desiccated, paved, covered with churches and altars, or converted into