perpendicularly down, and most probably it was the quarry from which the greater part of the stones were taken for building the city. The precipitous edge of the ravine is more covered with earth on the side of Mount Zion than on the other side, which is probably owing to the barbarous custom of razing cities from their foundation, and tumbling both earth and stone into the ditch below. The loose stones have been all removed from it for building the present city. This ravine extends further North than the present wall of the city, and ends in a gradual slope of deep earth, so as to countenance the opinion that it once extended further than it does now.' Vol. II. pp. 348-50.

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The high ground here described on the opposite side of this trench, is, we apprehend, what Pococke has marked as the • Hill of Evil Council,' which he places to the Westward of the • Mount of Offence.' It still contains, according to our Author, the remains of a ruined village, generally called,' that is, by themonks, the Casa di mal Consiglio, because here the priests and scribes are said to have taken counsel to put our Lord_to ⚫ death.' These remains are the sumptuous edifices' of Dr. Clarke; not that he examined them, but that is his version of the words of Sandys, who says, that their height yet shews the relics of no meane buildings.' According to Dr. C., the mountain,' as he calls it, is covered with ruined edifices,' and his lively fancy sees in them the probable ruins of a citadel;' and then, by a bolder flight, he imagines the eminence as once surmounted by the "bulwarks, towers, and regal buildings" of the House of David.' It is certainly much to be regretted, that no modern traveller should have thought it worth his while to examine these remains, and strange that not even the modern name of the eminence should be known. The Mount of Offence, and the Hill of Evil Council, are appellations without meaning, and only serve to proclaim the ignorance of those who have undertaken to illustrate the topography of the sacred city. They have not even been uniformly applied to the same localities; for the Mount of Offence of Sandys is the Hill of Evil Council of Pococke, who applies the former designation to the rocky_flat on the South-east of the city, at the end of the valley of Jehoshaphat. But what is in itself sufficient to overturn Dr. Clarke's hypothesis, is, the fact, that his Mount Zion is decidedly lower than the ground on the opposite side of the ravine, over which the wall of the modern city passes; whereas we are told by Josephus, that the hill which contained the upper city was much higher than Acra. So far from its being a position of greater strength or more commanding aspect, answering to the idea of a citadel, Dr. Richardson's account makes it appear that it was in every respect less adapted to stand a siege than

the opposite elevation, as, besides being absolutely lower ground, it would be with ease approached from the West. Mount Zion, on the contrary, has the ravine on three of its sides, while the Tyropæon running in a transverse direction, separated it from the hill sustaining the lower city, so that it appears to have been defended on all sides, either by a natural or an artificial ravine.*

We can no longer hesitate, then, to give up Dr. Clarke's conjecture as wholly unworthy of his learning and great abilities; and while we plead guilty to having once entertained it as probable, we must be allowed to remark, that it was something more positive than the want of correct information which misled us. But where is the Tyropæon? We look for it in vain in Dr. Richardson's Plan, and were surprised to find him. citing Josephus as stating that the ravine between Mount ⚫ Zion and the lower city was filled up by the Asmoneans.' The valley filled up under the Asmonean dynasty, was that which separated Acra from that part of Mount Moriah on which the Temple was built, and which Josephus states was naturally lower than Acra: the top of Acra was taken off at the same time, so as to reduce the elevation, and the city was thus joined to the Temple. Dr. Clarke with some justice ridicules the idea that the deep valley described by Josephus as of use in fortifying the city, could be filled up; though the Author whom he cites, is not responsible for the absurdity he charges upon him. The words of Rauwolff are, not that the valley was absolutely filled up, but only, so filled up,' since the desolation, that no depth at all appeareth in our days, but only without the fountain gate, by the fountain Siloa.' This exception is important as marking the termination of the ravine, while the words, no depth at all,' would lead us to expect that some trace of it was still discernible. It is at this point, that a more minute examination, aided, if necessary, by excavation, would be most likely to throw light on the subject. The Pool of Siloam itself would seem to have particular claims to attention. It is described by Dr. Richardson as receiving a strong current of water by a subterraneous passage cut in the North side of Mount Zion, which seems as if it came by a conduit ⚫ cut through the rock from the Pool of Hezekiah on the West side of the city.' That Pool is just without the city, near the Bethlehem gate; and in all probability, a line drawn from that gate, or from the Castle of David, to the Pool of Siloam, would give the direction of the Tyropæon or Valley of Millo. Either

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Josephus de Bello Jud. lib. vi. c. 6.

by excavating the ravine near the Pool of Hezekiah, or by examining the source of that of Siloam, this fact might, one would think, be easily ascertained. The latter is also called the Fountain of the Stairs.'

A flight of sixteen steps leads down to a platform, and another flight of thirteen steps leads down to the water, which is fresh and good: The passage by which the water comes out, has obviously been formed by art, and is so large that a person, by stooping a little, may walk along it under the mountain. The water is about three feet deep, and seems to be stagnant in the pool; but there is a considerable stream constantly flowing from it, by a passage which is also cut in the rock for a good way down, and goes to water the gardens on the lower slopes of Mount Zion. There are the remains of a Christian Church that once adorned the entrance to this pool, which, like the fountain of Castalia, or the Spring of Arethusa, seems in days of yore to have been treated with signal respect.' Vol. II. pp. 357, S.

If future travellers will but follow out the hint here furnished, they may possibly return from the Pool of Siloam, seeing much more clearly than their predecessors, as regards the topography of the holy city. Till this point, we mean the direction of the Tyropæon, is ascertained, the topography of Zion cannot be considered as complete. But there is little room to doubt that in this direction were "the stairs that go down by the city of David," referred to Neh. iii. 15; and if so, the identity of the mount must be considered as established beyond all possibility of mistake.

As to Mr. Buckingham's conspicuous mountain command⚫ing the whole of Jerusalem,' which he places to the South of the modern town, and which we supposed to be meant for the same as the Zion of Dr. Clarke,-his description turns out to be so wholly inapplicable to the Hill of Evil Council, that we must rather refer it to the high mountain rising directly from the bed of the Siloa,' marked 100 in Dr. Richardson's plan, but hitherto unexamined by any traveller. This we presume to be what Pococke means by the Mount of Offence: it is strange that no one has ever thought of learning its real name from some intelligent Jew. It is considerably higher than the groupe of hills on which Jerusalem lies, and, together with the Mount of Olives on the East, Scopo and Mount Gihon (if that be its proper appellation) on the North, and the low rocky flat on the West, forms a chain of elevations answering to the Scripture representation of Jerusalem as guarded by mountains: "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the "Lord is round about his people from henceforth, even for ever." (Psalm cxxv. 2.)

There is still much confusion and uncertainty in the appli

cation of Scripture names to the fixed features of the adjacent places. The Valley of the Son of Hinnom has been placed East, West, and South of Jerusalem. Dr. Richardson applies it to the ravine which runs round the city on the West and South-west. We have given our reasons for believing it to be the same as the Valley of Jehoshaphat, which is on the East of Jerusalem, where Eusebius places it;* and here was Tophet, which still seems to exhibit the fulfilment of the ancient prediction, as a place of death and defilement. What name was given to the ravine, appears to us quite uncertain, or rather unknown. But as the Valley of the Son of Hinnom is stated, in the Book of Joshua, to be at the end of the Valley of the Giants northward,+ we may perhaps venture, though the pas sage is very obscure, to consider the latter as the Scripture name of the broad Valley of Santa Saba, along which runs the brook Kedron, and into which the Valley of Jehoshaphat may be said to open or terminate.

With regard to the interior of Jerusalem, the little that remains to be discovered, lies, in all probability, far below the surface of the soil. No part of Dr. Richardson's volumes will be read with greater interest, than that which describes his visit to the Mosque of Omar; but as most of our readers will probably not be contented without seeing the whole work, we purposely refrain from forestalling this part of the narrative. The Doctor warms into a poetic enthusiasm while he dilates on the recollected glories of the sacred enclosure, the sunny spot of • Moslem devotion."

There is no reflected light,' he says, like the light from the Sakhara: like the glorious sun itself, it stands alone in the world; and there is but one spot on earth, where all things typical were done away, that sinks a deeper interest into the heart of a Christian.'

By far the most important details relate to the square chamber and subterranean colonnade which our Author was admitted to see; they are situated at the South-east corner of the Haram Schereeff, the sacred enclosure which contains the two name of the El Sakhara and El Aksa. The chamber bears the mosques of grotto of Sidn Aisa, the Lord Jesus; and in it is shewn a sarcophagus or stone trough, with a small round pillar of variegated marble at each angle, supporting a canopy above, which is called our Lord's bed or tomb, Sereer Sidn Aisa. These columns, Dr. Richardson conceives to be of Roman workmanship; and the whole thing is probably as old as the days of the Empress Helena. If so, this is doubtless the original Holy

* Vide Jer. xix. 2; vii, 31. + Josh. xv. 8.

Sepulchre; we mean that which was originally exhibited as such by the religious hierophants of former days, the original patentees. This explains why the lying priests of the Sepulchre are driven to exhibit a detached sarcophagus of marble as our Lord's tomb, when, as our Author remarks, any stone, • wooden, leaden, or iron coffin in the world is just as much ⚫ entitled to the appellation. When the Saracens captured the city, they found, no doubt, this precious relic; and they have kept it, and preserved its name. As they acknowledged Jesus to have been a prophet, there was probably some reverence for the stone alleged to have contained his body, superadded as a motive to the pleasure of robbing the Christians of their worshipped relic. And the Moslems have treated them no worse in this instance, than they have been constantly accustomed to treat each other. Stealing relics has always been held a venal offence, if not a praiseworthy action, in the Romish Church; and the holy fathers who still shew, in the anti-room of the Sepulchre, the stone on which the angel sat, candidly admitted, when strictly questioned on the subject, that the true stone was stolen by the Armenians, who exhibit it in their own chapel on Mount Zion, adding, that the polished block of marble serves their purpose equally well; and it is kissed and venerated accordingly.

If,' says Dr. Richardson, the historians of the sacred premises were to exercise the same degree of candour with the guide above alluded to, respecting the stone on which the Angel sat, we might probably learn that the stone trough called the Sereer Sidn' Aisa by the Turks, was the sarcophagus originally exhibited as the tomb of Christ. And should the Greeks or Romans ever expel the Mussulmans, and become masters of the Holy City, we should not wonder if the present sarcophagus were slyly smuggled away, and the other replaced in its stead; or it might be reinstated with mighty pomp, as Siroes restored the true Cross to Jerusalem, which his father Cosroes had carried away; or as Bonaparte remanded to the church of Notre Dame the true Crown of Thorns that had been made at his command, and called the old original crown preserved in the Royal Library during the stormy period of the Revolution, and which he then exhibited in a new gilt case, to gull and amuse the Parisians, and divert their attention from his purposes of despotism and aggrandisement. My Lady of Loretto might, perhaps, deign to send a wax candle to burn on the occasion in Jerusalem, as she did one to shine upon the christening of the King of Rome in Paris.'

Vol. II. p. 336.

The subterranean colonnade which supports the lower edge of the Haram Schereeff, and which the Turks call the Berca Solymon, is an object of much greater interest, inasmuch as the workmanship is, in Dr. Richardson's opinion, decidedly Jewish.