covered with buildings comparatively modern,-the house of Caiaphas, the place where Christ held his Last Supper, -and the tomb or palace of David. The first of these is now a church, the duty of which is performed by the Armenians; the second, consecrated by the affecting solemnity, with the memory of which it is still associated, presents a mosque and a Turkish hospital; while the third, a small vaulted apartment, contains only three sepulchres formed of dark-coloured stone. This holy hill is equally celebrated in the Old Testament and in the New. Here the successor of Saul built a city and a royal dwelling,-here he kept for three months the Ark of the Covenant,-here the Redeemer instituted the sacrament which commemorates his death,— here he appeared to his disciples on the day of his resurrection, and here the Holy Ghost descended on the apostles. The place hallowed by the Last Supper, if we may believe the early Fathers, was transformed into the first Christian temple the world ever saw, where St. James the Less was consecrated the first bishop of Jerusalem, and where he presided in the first council of the church. Finally, it was from this spot that the apostles, in compliance with the injunction to go and teach all nations, departed, without purse and without scrip, to seat their religion upon all the thrones of the earth.

It

Descending Mount Zion on the east side, you perceive in the valley the Fountain and Pool of Siloam, so celebrated in the history of our Saviour's miracles. The brook itself is ill supplied with water, and, compared with the ideas formed in the mind by the fine invocation of the poet, usually creates disappointment. Going a few paces to the northward, you come to the source of the scanty rivulet, which is called by some the Fountain of the Virgin, from an opinion that she frequently came hither to drink. appears in a recess about twenty feet lower than the surface, and under an arched vault of masonry tolerably well executed. The rock had been originally hewn down to reach this pool; and a small crooked passage, of which only the beginning is seen, is said to convey the water out of the Valley of Siloam, and to supply the means of irrigating the little gardens still cultivated in that spot. Notwithstanding the dirty state of the water, and its harsh and

brackish taste, it is still used by devout pilgrims for diseases of the eye.*

It is said to have a kind of ebb and flow, sometimes discharging its current like the Fountain of Vaucluse, at others retaining and scarcely suffering it to run at all. The Levites, we are likewise told, used to sprinkle the water of Siloam on the altar at the Feast of Tabernacles, saying, "Ye shall draw water with joy from the wells of salvation." The reader will find on the opposite page a representation of the Fountain or Pool of Siloam, as it appeared to the eye of an able traveller; a considerable part of the arch having fallen down, or been destroyed by the barbarians who continue to hold Jerusalem in subjection.

The Valley of Jehoshaphat stretches between the eastern walls of the city and the Mount of Olives, containing a great variety of objects, to which allusion is made in the Sacred Writings. It was sometimes called the King's Dale, from a reference to an event recorded in the history of Abraham, and was afterward distinguished by the name of Jehoshaphat, because that sovereign erected in it a magnificent tomb. This narrow vale seems to have always served as a burying-place for the inhabitants of the holy city: there you meet with monuments of the most remote ages, as well as of the most modern times: thither the descendants of Jacob resort from the four quarters of the globe, to yield up their last breath; and a foreigner sells to them, for its weight in gold, a scanty spot of earth to cover their remains in the land of their forefathers. "Observing many Jews, whom I could easily recognise by their yellow turbans, quick dark eyes, black eyebrows, and bushy beards, walking about the place, and reposing along the Brook Kedron in a pensive mood, the pathetic language of the Psalmist occurred to me, as expressing the subject of their

*The invocation alluded to must be familiar to the youngest reader:
"Sing, Heavenly muse, that on the secret top
Of Öreb or of Sinai didst inspire

That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning, how the heavens and earth
Rose out of chaos; or, if Zion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence

Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous song."

Paradise Lost, book i.

meditation By the rivers we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.' Upon frequently inquiring the motive that prompted them in attempting to go to Jerusalem, the answer was, "To die in the land of our fathers.'"*

This valley or dale still exhibits a very desolate appearThe western side is a high chalk-cliff supporting the walls of the city, above which you perceive Jerusalem itself; while the eastern acclivity is formed by the Mount

* Travels by Rae Wilson, vol. i. p. 220. El ce

of Olives and the Mount of Offence, so called from the idolatry which oppresses the fame of Solomon. These two hills are nearly naked, and of a dull red colour. On their slopes are seen, here and there, a few bleak 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 Kedron. The stones in the Jewish cemetery look like a heap of rubbish at the foot of the Mount of Offence, below the Arab village of Siloane, the paltry houses of which are scarcely to be distinguished from the surrounding sepulchres. From the stillness of Jerusalem, whence no smoke arises and 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 trumpet had already sounded, and that the Valley of Jehoshaphat was about to render up its dead.

Amid this scene of desolation three monuments arrest the eyes of the intelligent pilgrim,-the tombs of Zachariah, of Absalom, and of the king whose name still distinguishes the valley. The first-mentioned of these is a square mass of rock, hewn down into form, and isolated from the quarry out of which it is cut by a passage of twelve or fifteen feet wide on three of its sides; the fourth or western front being open towards the valley and to Mount Moriah, the foot of which is only a few yards distant. This huge stone is eight paces in length on each side, and about twenty feet high in the front, and ten feet high at the back; the hill on which it stands having a steep ascent. It has four semicolumns cut out of the same rock on each of its faces, with a pilaster at each angle, all of a mixed Ionic order, and ornamented in bad taste. The architraves, the full moulding, and the deep overhanging cornice which finishes the square, are all perfectly after the Egyptian manner; and the whole is surmounted by a pyramid, the sloping sides of which rise from the very edges of the square below, and terminate in a finished point.

The body of this monument, we have already stated, is one solid mass of rock, as well as its semicolumns on each face; but the surmounting pyramid appears to be of masonry. Its sides, however, are perfectly smooth, like the

coated pyramids of Sahara and Dashour, and not graduated by stages like those of Djizeh in Lower Egypt.

Inconsiderable in size and paltry in its ornaments, this monument, as Mr. Buckingham observes, is eminently curious. There is no appearance of an entrance into any part of it; so that it seems, if a tomb, to have been as firmly closed as the Egyptian pyramids, and, perhaps, for the same respect for the repose of the dead. It is probable, indeed, that the original style and plan of the building are derived from the country of the Pharaohs; while the Grecian columns and pilasters may be the work of a much later period, when the Jews had learned to combine with the massy piles of their more ancient architecture the elegant lightness which distinguished the times of the Seleucida.*

In the immediate vicinity is the tomb of Jehoshaphat,-a cavern which is more commonly called the Grotto of the Disciples, from an idea that they went frequently thither to be taught by their Divine Master. The front of this excavation has two Doric pillars of small size, but of just proportions. In the interior are three chambers, all of them rude and irregular in their form, in one of which were several gravestones, removed, we may suppose, from the open ground for greater security. Like all the rest, they were flat slabs of an oblong shape, from three to six inches in thickness, and evidently a portion of the limestone rock which composes the adjoining hills.

Opposite to this, on the east, is the reputed tomb of Absalom, resembling nearly in the size, form, and decoration of its square base that of Zachariah already described, ex cept that it is sculptured with the metopes and triglyphs of the Doric order. This is surmounted by a sharp conical dome, having large mouldings running round its base, and on the summit something like an imitation of flame. There is here again so strange a mixture of style and ornament, that one knows not to what age to attribute the monument as a whole. The square mass below is solid, and the Ionic columns which are seen on each of its faces are half-indented in the rock itself. The dome is of masonry, and on the eastern side there is a square aperture in it. Generally speaking, the sight of this monument rather confirms the

* Travels in Palestine, vol. i. p. 297.