Rose out of chaos: or if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd Fast by the oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous song. Lines which M. Delille has thus magnificently rendered: Toi donc qui, celebrant les merveilles des cieux, Soit que chantant où Dieu donna sa loi, Le Sina sous tes pieds tressaille encor d'effroi ; Muse sainte, soutiens mon vol presomptueux ! Some relate that this spring suddenly issued from the ground to allay the thirst of Isaiah when the prophet was sawed in two with a wooden saw by the command of Manasses; while others assert that it first appeared during the reign of Hezekiah, by whom we have the admirable song beginning: 66 I said in the cutting off of my days I shall go to the gates of the grave." According to Josephus, this miraculous spring flowed for the army of Titus, and refused its waters to the guilty Jews. The pool, or rather the two pools of the same name are quite close to the spring. They are still used for washing linen as formerly; and we there saw some women, who ran away abusing us. The water of the spring is brackish, and has a very disagreeable taste; people still bathe their eyes with it, in memory of the miracle performed on the man born blind. Near this spring is shewn the spot where Isaiah was put to death, in the manner above mentioned. Here you also find a village called Siloan: at the foot of this village is another fountain, denominated in Scripture Rogel. Opposite to this fountain is a third, which receives its name from the Blessed Virgin. It is conjectured that Mary came hither to fetch water, as the daughters of Laban resorted to the well from which Jacob removed the stone. The Virgin's fountain mingles its stream with that of the fountain of Siloe. Here, as St. Jerome remarks, you are at the foot of Mount Moria, under the walls of the Temple, and nearly opposite to the Sterquiline Gate. We advanced to the eastern angle of the wall of the city, and entered the valley of Johoshaphat. It runs from north to south between the Mount of Olives and Mount Moria; and the brook Cedron flows through the middle of it. This stream is dry the greatest part of the year, but after storms, or in rainy springs, a current of a red colour rolls along its channel. The valley of Jehoshaphat is also called in Scripture the Valley of Shaveh, the King's Valley, the Valley of Melchisedeck*. It was in the valley of * On this subject different opinions are entertained. The King's Valley was probably towards the mountains of Jordan; and that situation would be more consonant with the history of Abraham. Melchisedeck that the king of Sodom went to meet Abraham, to congratulate him on his victory over the five kings. Moloch and Beelphegor were worshipped in this same valley. It was afterwards distinguished by the name of Jehoshaphat, because that king caused his tomb to be constructed there. The valley of Jehoshaphat seems to have always served as a burial-place for Jerusalem: there you meet with monuments of the most remote ages, as well as of the most modern times: thither the Jews resort from the four quarters of the globe to die; and a foreigner sells them, at an exorbitant rate, a scanty spot of earth to cover their remains in the land of their forefathers. The cedars that Solomon planted in this valley*, the shadow of the Temple by which it was covered, the stream flowing through the midst of it, the mournful Songs composed there by David, and the Lamentations there uttered by Jeremiah, rendered it an appropriate situation for the melancholy and the silence of the tombs. Christ, by commencing his passion in this sequestered place, consecrated it anew to Here this innocent David shed tears to sorrow. *Josephus relates that Solomon caused the mountains of Judea to be covered with cedars. + Cedron is a Hebrew word, which signifies darkness and sorrow. It is remarked that there is an error in the Gospel of St. John, who calls this stream the Brook of Cedars. The error arises from an omega being put instead of an omicron; κεδρων for κεδρόν. wash away our crimes, where the guilty David wept to expiate his own sins. Few names awaken in the imagination ideas at the same time more affecting and more awful than that of the valley of Jehoshaphat, a valley so replete with mysteries, that, according to the prophet Joel, all mankind shall there appear before a formidable judge: "I will gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there."- "It is reasonable," says father Nau,“ that the honour of Christ should be publicly retrieved in the place where it was taken from him by such opprobrious and ignominious treatment, and that he should judge men with justice, where they judged him so unjustly." J The valley of Jehoshaphat exhibits a desolate appearance; the west side is a high chalk cliff, supporting the walls of the city, above which you perceive Jerusalem itself; while the east side is formed by the Mount of Olives and the Mount of Offence, Mons Offensionis, thus denominated from Solomon's idolatry. These two contiguous hills are nearly naked, and of a dull red colour. On their desolate sides are seen here and there a few black and parched vines, some groves of wild olive-trees, wastes covered with hyssop, chapels, oratories, and mosques in ruins. At the bottom of the valley you discover a bridge of a single arch, thrown across the channel of the brook Cedron. The stones in the Jews' cemetery look like a heap of rubbish at the foot of the Mount of Offence, below the Ara bian village of Siloan, the paltry houses of which can scarcely be distinguished from the surrounding sepulchres. Three antique monuments, the tombs of Zachariah, Jehoshaphat, and Absalom, appear conspicuous amid this scene of desolation. From the dullness of Jerusalem, whence no smoke rises, no noise proceeds; from the solitude of these hills, where no living creature is to be seen; from the ruinous state of all these tombs, overthrown, broken, and half open, you would imagine that the last trump had already sounded, and that the valley of Jehoshaphat was about to render up its dead. On the brink and near the source of Cedron, we entered the garden of Olivet. It belongs to the Latin fathers, who purchased it at their own expence, and contains eight large and extremely ancient olive-trees. The olive may be said to be immortal, since a fresh tree springs up from the old stump. In the citadel of Athens was preserved an olivetree, whose origin dated as far back as the foundation of the city. Those in the garden of Olivet at Jerusalem are, at least, of the time of the Eastern Empire, as is demonstrated by the following circumstance. In Turkey, every olive-tree found standing by the Mussulmans when they conquered Asia, pays one medine to the treasury; while each of those planted since the conquest, is taxed half its produce by the Grand Signior.* Now the eight * This law is as absurd as most of the other laws of Turkey. How ridiculous to make a shew of sparing the vanquished in the |