the right, and the recess on the left, both connected with, and opening broadly from er-Rahah, presented an area which serves nearly to double that of the plain. Our conviction was strengthened, that here, or on some of the adjacent cliffs, was the spot where the Lord' descended in fire, and proclaimed the law." Here lay the plain where the whole congregation might be assembled; here was the mount that could be approached, and touched, if not forbidden; and here the mountain-brow, where alone the lightnings and the thick cloud would be visible, and the thunders, and the voice of the trump be heard when the Lord' came down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai.' We gave ourselves up to the impressions of the awful scene; and read, with a feeling that will never be forgotten, the sublime account of the transaction, and the commandments there promulgated, in the original words, as recorded by the Hebrew legislator."-pp. 157, 158.

Without stopping to accompany our travellers to the celebrated convent, which is at present in the hands of the Greeks, and of which and its inhabitants a particular account is given, or detaining our readers by any references to the description of their visit to 'Akabah, we at once follow them into the desert Et-Tih, the great wilderness through which the Israelites passed on their way to Canaan. In the course of four days from the latter place, they fell in with the ancient Roman road, marked upon the Peutinger tables, leading from it to Jerusalem, and proceeded on to Hebron and the Holy City. The general character of the desert they describe as exhibiting "vast and almost unbounded plains, a hard gravelly soil, irregular ridges of limestone hills in various directions, the mirage, and especially Wadys, or water courses." In the direction of Gaza and Hebron the plain is immense, consisting chiefly of indurated earth, and black pebbles, and utterly void of vegetation. In a deep gully they found a small pool of rain water.

"It is one of the chief watering places of the Arabs in these parts; and from the number of camels and flocks which come here to drink, the water had acquired a strong smell, and was any thing but inviting. Yet, as we found no water on the way, nor were likely to meet with any for two or three days to come, the water-skins were filled amid the drinking of camels, goats, and dogs. We were thus detained three quarters of an hour. This kind of puddle is called Ghûdher. A few tufts of grass were growing on the sides of the pool, the second time we had seen grass since leaving the region of the Nile."-p. 265.

Describing the mode of obtaining water on another occasion, the writer informs us that, " to do this more quickly, Tuweileb's boy went down naked into the water, and handed it up in our leathern bucket." -p. 280. As they approached Palestine, the face of the country gradually lost its barren and dreary aspect. Some grass, a few flowers, more frequent herbs and shrubs, and a few faint traces of tillage, gave promise of better things to come.

In the course of their progress they discovered the ruins of Elusa, which have remained unnoticed for upwards of eleven centuries. They cover an area of fifteen or twenty acres, and the foundations and enclosures of the houses are distinctly traceable. They entered Palestine at deep wells called Bir er-Seba', the ancient Beersheba.

"These wells are some distance apart: they are circular, and stoned up very neatly with solid masonry, apparently much more ancient than that of the wells at 'Abdeh. The larger one is twelve feet and a-half in diameter, and forty-four and a-half feet deep to the surface of the water; sixteen feet of which at the bottom are excavated in the solid rock. The other well lies fifty-five rods, W.S.W., and is five feet in diameter, and forty-two feet deep. The water in both is pure and sweet, and in great abundance; the finest, indeed, we had found since leaving Sinai.”—p. 300.

The low hills north of the wells, they found covered with the ruins of former habitations. Anxious to get forward to Jerusalem, they merely glanced at Hebron, reserving it for a subsequent visit, and reached that grand point of attraction, after a fatiguing journey of nine days from 'Akabah. It may easily be imagined with what feelings they entered el-Kuds, the Holy City, just at the closing of the gates on the evening before Easter Sunday, and found a welcome home in the houses of their missionary friends and countrymen. Dr. Robinson thus graphically describes his first impressions :

"The feelings of a Christian traveller on approaching Jerusalem can be better conceived than described. Mine were strongly excited. Before us, as we drew near, lay Zion, the Mount of Olives, the vales of Hinnom and Jehoshaphat, and other objects of the deepest interest; while, crowning the summits of the same ancient hills, was spread out the city where God of old had dwelt, and where the Saviour of the world had lived, and taught, and died. From the earliest childhood I had read of and studied the localities of this sacred spot: now I beheld them with my own eyes; and they all seemed familiar to me, as if the realization of a former dream. I seemed to be again among cherished scenes of childhood, long unvisited, indeed, but distinctly recollected; and it was almost a painful interruption, when my companion (who had been here before) began to point out and name the various objects in view." "On entering the gates of Jerusalem, apart from the overpowering recollections which naturally rush upon the mind, I was in many respects agreeably disappointed. From the descriptions of Chateaubriand and other travellers, I had expected to find the houses of the city miserable, the streets filthy, aud the population squalid. Yet the first impression made upon my mind was of a different character; nor did I afterwards see any reason to doubt the correctness of this first impression. The houses are in general better built, and the streets cleaner, than those of Alexandria, Smyrna, or even Constantinople. Indeed, of all the oriental cities which it has been my lot to visit, Jerusalem, after Cairo, is the cleanest and most solidly built. The streets, indeed, are narrow and very rudely paved, like those of all cities in the East. The houses are of hewn stone, often large, and furnished with the small domes upon the roofs which have been already mentioned at Hebron, as perhaps peculiar to the district of Judea. The streets and the population that throngs them may also well bear comparison with those of any other oriental city; although if one seeks here, or elsewhere in the East, for the general cleanliness and thrift which characterize many cities of Europe and America, he will of course seek in vain."-pp. 326, 328.

The 7th and 8th Sections of the work are exclusively devoted to the topography and antiquities of Jerusalem, into the investigation of which Dr. R. enters with all the enthusiasm of an antiquary, yet with all the caution with which it behoved him to tread on ground which had formed the basis of so many monkish and superstitious legendary

tales. In all his investigations he seems to have strictly adhered to the only safe rule which he could have laid down; viz., that all ecclesiastical tradition respecting the ancient places in and around Jerusalem, and throughout Palestine, is of no value, except so far as it is supported by circumstances known to us from the Scriptures, or from other contemporary history. On the other hand, there is another kind of tradition, with which the monasteries have nothing to do, and of which they have in every age known little or nothing-the preservation of the ancient names of places among the common people. To this Dr. R. justly attributes great importance, and has been indebted to it for the discovery of upwards of three hundred Biblical names of places, not hitherto found in our geographies of Palestine.

Into the detail of measurements, both in point of heights and distances, it is impossible for us to enter, any more than into the various topographical features of the city and its environs; but we cannot withhold the expression of our decided opinion, that, from the indefatigable pains taken by the author, the minuteness of his specifications, and the manifest truthfulness of his statements, too much reliance cannot be placed upon his pages. He writes, not like most of his predecessors, on hearsay, or as the result of cursory observation, but as one who has looked at the objects intensely and long with his own eyes, and whose object was not the making of a book, but the discovery and exhibition of truth.

The most interesting discovery made by Dr. Robinson is that of an important portion of the western wall of the ancient area of the temple of Solomon. Speaking of the immense size of the stones which compose the external walls of the enclosure of the mosque of Omar, he says:

"The upper part of these walls is obviously of modern origin; but to the most casual observer it cannot be less obvious, that these huge blocks, which appear only in portions of the lower part, are to be referred to an earlier date. The appearance of the walls in almost every part seems to indicate that they have been built upon ancient foundations; as if an ancient and far more massive wall had been thrown down, and in later times a new one erected upon its remains. Hence the line between these lower antique portions and the modern ones above them is very irregular, though it is also very distinct. The former in some parts are much higher than in others; and occasionally the breaches in them are filled out with later patchwork. Sometimes, too, the whole wall is modern.

"We first noticed these large stones at the south-east corner of the enclosure; where perhaps they are as conspicuous, and form as great a portion of the wall as in any part. Here are several courses, both on the cast and south sides, alternating with each other, in which the stones measure from seventeen to nineteen feet in length, by three or four feet in height; while one block at the corner is seven and a half feet thick. Here, also, on the east side, the lower part is patched in spots. Further to the north, all is new until towards the north-east corner of the area, where the ancient stones again appear; one of them measuring twenty-four feet in length, by three feet in height, and six feet in breadth."

After mentioning some others as making their appearance on the west and at the south-west corner, where the corner stone next above the surface of the ground measures thirty feet, ten inches in length, by six and a half feet broad, &c., he proceeds :

"It is not, however, the great size of these stones alone which arrests the attention of the beholder; but the manner in which they are hewn gives them also a peculiar character. In common parlance they are said to be bevelled; which here means, that after the whole face has first been hewn and squared, a narrow strip along the edges is cut down a quarter or half an inch lower than the rest of the surface. When these bevelled stones are laid up in a wall, the face of it of course exhibits lines or grooves formed by these depressed edges at their junction, marking more distinctly the elevation of the different courses, as well as the length of the stones of which they are composed. The face of the wall has then the appearance of many panels. The smaller stones in other parts of the walls are frequently bevelled in like manner; except that in these only the bevel or strip along the edge is cut smooth, while the remainder of the surface is merely broken off or roughhewn. In the upper parts of the wall, which are obviously the most modern, the stones are small and not bevelled.

"At the first view of these walls I was led to the persuasion that the lower portions had belonged to the ancient temple; and every subsequent visit only served to strengthen this conviction. The size of the stones, and the heterogeneous character of the walls, render it a matter beyond all doubt, that the former were never laid in their present places by the Mohammedans; and the peculiar form in which they are hewn does not properly belong, so far as I know, either to the Saracenic or to Roman architecture. Indeed, every thing seems to point to a Jewish origin; and a discovery which we made in the course of our examination reduces this hypothesis to an absolute certainty.

"I have already related in the preceding section, that during our first visit to the south-west corner of the area of the mosque, we observed several of the large stones jutting out from the western wall, which at first sight seemed to be the effect of the bursting of the wall from some mighty shock or earthquake. We paid little attention to this at the moment, our attention being engrossed by other objects; but on mentioning the fact not long after in a circle of our friends, we found that they also had noticed it; and the remark was incidentally dropped, that the stones had the appearance of having once belonged to a large arch. At this remark a train of thought flashed upon my mind, which I hardly dared to follow out, until I had again repaired to the spot, in order to satisfy myself with my own eyes, as to the truth or falsehood of the suggestion. I found it even so! The courses of these immense stones, which seemed at first to have sprung from their places in the wall in consequence of some enormous violence, occupy, nevertheless, their original position: their external surface is hewn to a regular curve; and being fitted one upon another, they form the commencement or foot of an immense arch, which once sprung out from this western wall in a direction towards Mount Zion, across the valley of the Tyropæon. This arch could only have belonged to THE BRIDGE, which, according to Josephus, led from this part of the temple to the Xystus on Zion; and it proves incontestably the antiquity of that portion of the wall from which it springs.

"The traces of this arch are too distinct and definite to be mistaken. Its southern side is thirty-nine English feet distant from the south-west corner of the area, and the arch itself measures fifty-one feet along the wall. Three courses of its stones still remain; of which one is five feet four inches thick, and the other not much less. One of the stones is twenty feet six inches long; another twenty-four feet

six inches; and the rest in like proportion. The part of the curve or arc, which remains, is of course but a fragment; but of this fragment the chord measures twelve feet six inches; the sine eleven feet ten inches; and the cosine three feet ten inches. The distance from this point across the valley to the precipitous natural rock of Zion, we measured as exactly as the intervening field of prickly pear would permit, and found it to be 350 feet, or about 116 yards. This gives the proximate length of the ancient bridge.

"The existence of these remains of the ancient bridge seems to remove all doubts as to the identity of this part of the inclosure of the mosque with that of the ancient temple:" and, taking the whole dimensions of the locality into account, "we are irresistibly led to the conclusion, that the area of the Jewish temple was identical on its western, eastern, and southern sides, with the present enclosure of the Haram." -pp. 415-450.

Our readers will find ample descriptions of the other walls, the fountains, cisterns, sepulchres, and other objects which present themselves to the eye of the traveller. Dr. R. has clearly shown the absurdity of the hypothesis broached by Dr. Clarke, and adopted by Olshausen, that Mount Zion was the hill on the south of the valley of Hinnom. He also decides against the identity of the present Golgotha and sepulchre with the ancient place of crucifixion; but to the question, where, then, are the true sites of Golgotha and the sepulchre to be sought? the only reply he gives is, "that probably all search can only be in vain."

The whole amount of the population Dr. R. reckons at 11,000, of which 4500 are Mohammedans, 3500 Christians, and 3000 Jews. Of all the natives, as well as throughout Syria and Egypt, Arabic is the vernacular language.

"Most of the Jews now in Palestine appear to be of Spanish or Polish origin; very few are from Germany, or speak the German language. The very motive which leads them to return to the land of promise, shows their strong attachment to their ancient faith; and would of itself point a priori to the conclusion, which is found to be true in fact; viz., that the Jews resident in Palestine are of all others the most bigotted, and the least accessible to the labours of Christian missionaries. The efforts of the English mission have as yet been attended with very slight success; and it remains to be seen, whether the proposed erection of a Jewish-Christian church in Jerusalem will add to the influence and prosperity of the mission. The site was purchased during our stay in the city, and the building is understood to be now in progress."-Vol. ii., p. 87.

Whether the appointment of a converted Jew in the person of Professor Alexander, of King's College, to be Bishop of Jerusalem, with a salary of £1200. a year, will operate favourably on the real conversion of the Jews in those parts, also remains to be seen. To many it would seem more likely to confirm than to break down the prejudices of that hardened race against any of their brethren who profess Christianity; and there is reason to fear that other means will be employed to swell the number of professed converts than those which have been adopted by Mr. Nicholayson and his worthy associates.