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BETHLEHEM to the N. E. with the Monastery containing the Cave of the Nativity to the left.

went by the name of the City of David, that monarch having there been born, and tended sheep in his childhood. Abijah, the seventh judge of Israel, Elimelech, Obed, Jesse, and Boaz, were like David, natives of Bethlehem, and here must be placed the scene of the admirable eclogue of Ruth. St. Matthias, the apostle, also received life in the same town where the Messiah came into the world.

The first Christians built an oratory over the manger of our Saviour. Adrian ordered it to be demolished, and a statue of Adonis erected in its stead. St. Helena destroyed the idol, and built a church on the same spot. The original edifice is now blended with the various additions made by the Christian princes. St. Jerome, as every reader knows, retired to the solitude of Bethlehem. Conquered by the Crusaders, Bethlehem returned with Jerusalem under the yoke of the Infidels; but it has always been the object of the veneration of the pilgrims. Pious monks, devoting themselves to perpetual martyrdom, have been its guardians for seven centuries. With respect to modern Bethlehem, its soil, productions, and inhabitants, the reader is referred to the work of Volney. I have not, however, remarked in the vale of Bethlehem the fertility which is ascribed to it: under the Turkish government, to be sure, the most productive soil, will, in a few years, be transformed into a desert.

At four in the morning of the 5th of October, I commenced my survey of the monuments of Bethlehem. Though these structures have frequently been described, yet the subject is in itself so interesting that I cannot forbear entering into some particulars.

The convent of Bethlehem is connected with the church by a court enclosed with lofty walls. We crossed this court, and were admitted by a small side door into the church. The edifice is certainly of high antiquity, and though often destroyed and as often repaired, it still retains marks of its Grecian origin. It is built in the form of a cross. The long nave, or if you please, the foot of the cross, is adorned with forty-eight columns of the Corinthian order, in four rows. These columns are two feet six inches in diameter at the base, and eighteen feet high, including the base and capital. As the roof of this nave is wanting, the columns support nothing but a frieze of wood, which occupies the place of the architrave and of the whole entablature. Open timber-work

rests upon the walls, and rises into the form of a dome, to support the roof that no longer exists, or that perhaps was never finished. The wood-work is said to be of cedar, but this is a mistake. The windows are large, and were formerly adorned with Mosaic paintings, and passages from the bible in Greek and Latin characters, the traces of which are yet visible. Most of these inscriptions are given by Quaresmius. The abbé Miriti notices with some acrimony, a mistake of that learned friar in one of the dates: a person of the greatest abilities is liable to error, but he who blazons it without delicacy or politeness, affords a much stronger proof of his vanity than of his knowledge.

The remains of the Mosaics to be seen here and there, and some paintings on wood, are interesting to the history of the arts; they in general exhibit figures in full face, upright, stiff, without motion, and without shadows; but their effect is majestic, and their character dignified and austere.

nave.

The Christian sect of the Arminians is in possession of the nave which I have just described. This nave is separated from the three other branches of the cross by a wall, so that the unity of the edifice is destroyed. When you have passed this wall, you find yourself opposite to the sanctuary, or the choir, which occupies the top of the cross. This choir is raised two steps above the Here is seen an altar dedicated to the Wise Men of the East. On the pavement at the foot of this altar, you observe a marble star, which corresponds, as tradition asserts, with the point of the heavens where the miraculous star that conducted the three kings became stationary. So much is certain, that the spot where the Saviour of the world was born, is exactly underneath this marble star in the subterraneous church of the manger, of which I shall presently have occasion to speak. The Greeks occupy the choir of the Magi, as well as the two other naves formed by the transom of the cross. These last are empty, and without altars.

Two spiral staircases, each composed of fifteen steps, open on the sides of the outer church, and conduct to the subterraneous church situated beneath the choir. This is the ever-to-be revered place of the nativity of our Saviour. Before I entered it, the superior put a taper into my hand, and repeated a brief exhortation. This sacred crypt is irregular, because it occupies the irregular site of the stable and the manger. It is thirty-seven feet six inches

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