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that this is the home of Scripture History, the cradle of the Christian Church. But the feeling of attachment to the Holy City and its sacred localities will soon be formed, and will be deepened by time, to a calm satisfaction, a peaceful resting in it as the home of one's affections, which no other spot on earth can impart. For there is a halo about Jerusalem, an atmosphere which one drinks in, not only on the mountains around, but even amid its crumbling ruins, which has an untold charm; and he who shall have resided there for months or years, and has known what it is to suffer in body and in mind, amid the scenes of His sufferings, and has enjoyed the solace of hearty affection from true friends, and a higher consolation still; such an one alone can appreciate the privilege of a residence there, and will not readily forget the parting pang with which the last farewell was accompanied.

But I have to imagine the pilgrim approaching the city. If he is journeying from the West, as most pilgrims do, he will come in sight of the city about a mile from the gates, where it presents its least imposing aspect-merely a dull line of wall, with the Mount of Olives rising above. He will perhaps have read of the desolate appearance of the neighbourhood of the city it is sometimes said to resemble a city of the dead. Travellers who have so written must have been singularly unfortunate in the time of their entrance; for on a bright evening, at any time of the year, nothing can well be imagined more lively than the scene without the Jaffa Gate. It is then that the inhabitants, of whatever nation and whatever faith, walk out "to drink the air," as they express it, and the various companies may be seen sauntering about, or

reclining on the ground. Here will be seen members of the two large families into which the Jews are now divided, the Ashkenazim and Sephardim', the latter easily distinguishable from the former by their brighter and more intelligent looks; and here the Greek monks of the Great Convent, and other native or foreign Christians, and groups of native women and children sitting by the way-side, or amusing themselves with the favourite exercise of swinging under the olive-trees at the head of the Valley of Hinnom. The appearance of the females indeed is somewhat spectral, for a white sheet thrown loosely over their handsome dresses, and their yellow boots, is all that is distinguishable; but the merry laugh may be heard among them, and, with the music of their "tinkling ornaments," would serve to convince the stranger that they were veritable daughters of Eve. He will see little of the desolations of Jerusalem here but let him enter the gates, and the delusion which its compact and well-built walls, and the appearance of its inhabitants, may have produced, will be quickly dispelled. He no sooner enters the city than desolation stares him in the face. The citadel on his right hand, which shewed fair from a distance, is a ruin and patchwork-a Roman tower, with medieval additions and Turkish debasements, erected on a massive foundation of Jewish architecture. On his left he will have an open space covered with ruins; and as he passes through the streets he will find scarcely a house that is not a ruin, and in some parts huge hulks of massive wrecks; as for example, the Hospital of the Knights

1 Ashkenazim; the Jews of Russia, Germany, &c. See Gen. x. 3. Sephar

dim; the Jews of Spain, Portugal, and the shores of the Mediterranean.

[graphic][merged small][merged small]

of St John, and the so-called Palace of Helena. But indeed this may be said of almost any eastern city. It is the pecular province of the Turks to lay waste what other ages have built up. But let him examine more closely he will find traces of former greatness, and even grandeur, here and there. Handsome Saracenic fountains, now dry; some few traces of Gothic architecture, more of Roman, and here and there fragments of a Greek cornice or capital, lying neglected on the side of the street, or built into modern hovels, without any regard to their proper position, and shafts of columns of costly marbles jutting out from the walls in various parts, all attesting its ancient greatness. Or let him repair to any spot near the walls, where excavations may perchance be carrying on for the erection of a new building, and he will see, many feet below the present surface of the ground, massive stones tossed about in the wildest confusion, and rubble to the depth of forty feet on the summit of the hills, and of untold depth in the valleys beneath1; and he will easily believe that he

This is surely a sufficient answer to Mr. Whiting's argument in support of Dr Robinson's Theory of the course of the Tyropoon, communicated in a letter to Dr Robinson, dated August 22, 1847, read at a Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, afterwards published in the New York Observer, December 18, 1847; a copy of which I received, through the civility, I believe, of Dr Robinson. The argument is this, that near the Church of the Forerunner, at the S.E. corner of the street of the Patriarch, in digging for foundations, beneath 15 or 20 feet of rubbish, the top of a vaulted room VOL. II.

was found, the height of which was not known, "but supposing it to have been on the first or lower story, the original foundations must have been at least 30 or 40 feet below the present surface." An equal depth of rubbish was found in laying the foundations of a "large new house opposite the street leading North from the main street, towards the Latin Convent," i. e. near the Jaffa Gate. Now both these sites are "directly over the bed of Dr Robinson's Tyropœon, and the accumulation of rubbish is supposed to indicate the bed of a valley. But then débris on the Northern brow of Sion to the

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