is in the great church, with its profusion of shrines and altars, of monster candles and bad pictures, and extravagant if not tawdry ornament.

It is, however, only with painful reluctance that I can bring myself to abandon the recognised Via Dolorosa. Yet if Colonel Conder's theories be correct, only a small portion can have been in the actual line of the procession. At the foot of the hill by the broken column, where Simon was called to bear the cross, they must have turned to the right instead of to the left, towards the Damascus Gate, on the site of which an ancient gate existed, very possibly from those times. Once beyond the gate, the place of execution would be straight before them. The way would in this case be shorter and less toilsome than that leading to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The words of the evangelists, however, do not seem to point to a long road. There are many other things, too, of course, which must be given up if the accepted site of the Sepulchre is not the genuine For myself, I grieve chiefly to think how hopelessly off the right track St Helena must have been, with all her treasured discoveries

one.

mere illusions. I think of her sitting in the chair that is pointed out in her chapel, watching her men at their work,-I picture her to myself in the yellow drapery given her in a picture of Tintoretto's in a small church at Venice, on the further side of the Rialto, I think, Santa Maria Mater Domini,—and all the growing excitement as the explorations went on, and the frantic enthusiasm when the crosses were discovered. I can imagine even then cynical courtiers remarking to each other that when a pious (and probably generous) Empress undertakes excavations with the avowed object of finding certain crosses, crosses are pretty sure to turn up somehow or other. It is hard to think of so much pious enthusiasm being thrown away, and of the good Empress exulting over what she thought to be her great discoveries; one might almost believe that she had been handed over to some tricksy evil spirit with full licence to cheat her and lead her astray. However, I believe that certain historical critics maintain that there is no evidence that St Helena ever had anything to do with it, only that excavations were made in the time of Constantine, and that

he built a magnificent church over what was supposed to be the sepulchre of our Lord. In which case, as I do not care three straws for any illusion that Constantine may have been led into, I should unhesitatingly give my vote for Colonel Conder. At any rate, it would be a

comfort to think that it was not over the actual tomb of our Lord that the miserable jugglery of the "sacred fire" is perpetrated, nor around it that the annual bear-fight takes place, which precedes and accompanies that astounding ceremony.

III.

JERUSALEM: THE TEMPLE.

ONE of the earliest convictions impressed upon the mind of the traveller to Palestine is that the Turk is a nuisance. The gigantic absurdity, to call it nothing more, of leaving all these holy places, the centre of veneration to all Christendom, in Mohammedan hands, produces a natural feeling of irritation, which is constantly freshened and revived by some vexatious regulation or piece of official red-tapeism, causing the most peaceable pilgrim to regret that the period of holy wars is past, and consider seriously the advisability of preaching a crusade himself on his return from the parts of the infidel. It is sufficient to talk with any resident who has ever had any serious business with that hopeless Government-especially those who are trying to

introduce any kind of progress or improvement in Palestine--to find a good solid foundation for this feeling against the Turkish rulers; the ordinary traveller is exasperated by their mere presence. Here we find, in the first place, the unspeakable Turk occupying for his own purposes the site of the Temple, and raising beautiful buildings thereupon for his own worship. This, we consider, is bad enough; but when he comes to celebrating his own religious festivals there, and consequently excluding all but Mohammedans from the whole area during the time that we are at Jerusalem, the enormity is still more remarkable. This is not even a coincidence. The benighted paynim does not want for worldly wisdom, and, having no confidence whatever in the doctrine of peace on earth and goodwill towards men, as understood by enthusiastic pilgrims, he has established a feast of his own, which attracts a sufficient number of Mohammedans to counterbalance the Christians. To these latter the whole of the Haram-esh-Sherif1 is closed, and many poor pilgrims who cannot

1 The Noble Sanctuary; the Arabic name for the Temple enclosure.