of Jerusalem; and no other authority than his would have been sufficient to ensure him either an introduction to the temple, or protection. The character of the physician is held in such estimation by the Orientals, as to partake of a sort of ecclesiastical sanctity. He who is a physician, is pardoned for being a Christian: religious and national prejudices disappear before him, and even the recesses of harems are thrown open to him. "The physician who visits Jerusalem," says Dr. Richardson, “ may assure himself of a cordial reception, provided he is properly recommended; and the best of all recommendations is that of travelling with a family of distinction. Both Turks and Arabs and Oriental Christians are perfect gluttons in physic, and place greater confidence in its wonder-working powers than the more enlightened people in Europe are disposed to do; but they have been so often gulled by pretenders to the art, that a solitary traveller declaring himself to be of that profession is looked upon with suspicion, and must work his way through lengthened files of gossipping quacks and anile competitors, fraught with legions of nostrums from every country under heaven, against every ailment with which the human body can be assailed, from a scratch of the finger to a schirrous ulcer or a pestilential boil. But all their clamours are silenced by such an introduction; his prescriptions are received with unlimited confidence, and applications for advice are without end. Crowds of invalids, the halt, the blind, the lame, and the sick of every disease, collected from all quarters of the country,“ assail him, so that unless he give his whole time up to them, he will find it impossible to satisfy their demands. It is the hardest of all refusals for a medical man at any time to decline giving advice for the

health of a fellow-creature, but more especially so in Jerusalem. The patients seize upon him as if only he stood between them and death: they fall down before him on the ground, grasp his legs, kiss his feet, and supplicate him, for the love of God, to look at them, and prescribe for their complaints. They rarely present him with silver or gold; but the father, the mother, the sister, the brother, or some friend or relation of the patient, stands by with a sheep, a lamb, or a goat, a chaplet of beads, a carved shell, or some other portion of his property, to reward him for his trouble. The soul is touched when the body suffers, Whether he is in his and any thing for health.

lodgings, walks in the streets, or sits down in the market-place, the physician is equally beset; some needy sufferer finds him out, and comes up under the wing of some favoured Turk, who prefers an unnecessary request in behalf of the invalid: no sooner has he prescribed for one, than another victim of disease pathetically assails him; and thus he is kept in constant employ, and hunted, as if by a dog, both over town and country.

"The medical practitioner who travels in these countries, and wishes to be useful, which it is hoped every member of the profession does, should take along with him a set of surgical instruments, particularly such as are necessary for operations on the eye, and for laying open fistulous sores; also a chest of medicines well stored with calomel and jalap, bark, the liquor of ammonia, which, from the debilitated state of the digestive organs, occasioned by the excessive use of tobacco, he will find of great service; powders for making soda-water, and the spirits of nitrous ether, he will find universally called for; and a small quantity of them will be sufficient to secure him the temporary

friendship of any great man in the country; he ought also to take opium along with him, which, strange as it may appear, I hardly ever found good in those countries; and he will find the ointment of the nitrate of mercury of great service in the eruptive diseases on which he will often be consulted. Such other medicines as he may have occasion for, he will generally meet with in the convents or the shops of the country. If it fall to his lot, as it did to mine, he will have many eyes to operate upon, and many fistulous sores to lay open, most of them arising from neglected gunshot wounds, which are very frequent in those countries, where every man who carries a gun may fire it almost with impunity at any other man who comes in his way."

On leaving the Haram Schereeff, our favoured traveller passed out by the gate called Bab-el-Sette Mariam, which is close by the gate of the city called St. Stephen's gate; and, turning to the left, proceeded along a narrow street, which, in a short time, brought him to the Serai, or palace of the governor ; an old irregular building, in bad repair, apparently of Roman architecture, said to occupy the site of Pontius Pilate's palace. The monks pretend to shew in this house the very room in which our Lord was kept in custody. The palace joins the wall of the Harám Schereeff; and, from the south side of it, there is a delightful view of the sacred enclosure. A little onward is the arch called Ecce Homo. The street between the Serai and the church of the Sepulchre is the Strada Dolorosa, or mournful way; which the monkish cicerones of Jerusalem gravely point out as the way by which our Lord was led to his crucifixion. It crosses the road leading to the Damascus gate, and then proceeds up an ascent to what is now called

Calvary; which is described by Dr. Richardson as by no means high, but merely a bluff point on the lower slope of the mountain base, as it approaches the edge of the lower ground on which the centre of the city stands. To the north and west, the rock rises considerably above it. That is to say, the spot ignorantly fixed upon as the site of the crucifixion, so far from ever having been without the walls of the ancient city, (as, from the Scriptures, we know that Calvary was,) is on the lower part of the sloping hill which Josephus distinguished by the name of Acra, near where it was joined to Mount Moriah by the filling up of the interjacent ravine, under the Asmonean princes; consequently near the centre of the city.*

*The historical evidence in favour of the supposed identity of the sacred places, mainly rests on an assertion of Jerome's (Epist. ad Paulinum de Instit. Monac.), that" from the time of Hadrian to the reign of Constantine, an interval of about 180 years, an image of Jupiter marked the site of the Holy Sepulchre, and a statue of Venus the place of the Resurrection; the persecutors of the Christians thinking to destroy the faith of the Cross, by thus polluting with idols the sacred places." This representation, as Dr. Clarke has remarked, is at direct variance with the assertion cited by Chateaubriand from the author of the “ Epitome of the Holy Wars," that Adrian gave the Christians permis. sion to build a church over the tomb of their God. Dion Cas. sius states, that Adrian built a city on the site of Jerusalem, giving it the name of Elia Capitolina, and that in the place where the Temple of God had been, he erected one to Jupiter. Jerome seems to have confounded the site of the Temple with the place of the Resurrection. Gibbon says, on the authority of Jerome and Tillemont: "Either from design or accident, a chapel was dedicated to Venus on the spot which had been sanctified by the death and resurrection of Christ." There is no proof of any such design; nor could we, on the mere testimony of Sozomen, admit the credibility of such an accident. But the spot in question, as we have seen, could never have been either a burial-place or a place of crucifixion, not being without the

THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.

THE church of the Holy Sepulchre is built partly on the low ground, and partly on the ascent. It is not entered from the Via Dolorosa; the traveller has to ascend the next street, and then, turning to the left, to proceed along a winding descent, till he arrives at the large open court in front of the church, where he will find every thing his heart can wish in the form of crucifixes, carved shells, beads and bracelets, saints and sherbet; all exposed to sale, and the venders seated on the ground beside their wares. The court is bounded by the wings of the convent: that on the right contains Mount Calvary, and other supposititious sacred places; that on the left, the Greek chapel, and anciently the belfry. The door of the church faces the court; it is on the side of the building. It is open only on certain days in the week, and certain

city. Dr. Clarke supposes that the accidental fissure in the rock, which is shewn by the priests as the effect of the earthquake, might lead the Empress Helena to fix on the spot now called Calvary, as the site of the crucifixion. The mode resorted to for discovering the cross, by inflicting tortures on the Jews, and the miracle which distinguished the true cross out of the three produced by the Jews, which are parts of the tale, betray the wretched ignorance and superstition of the principal agents in these transactions. Theodoret affirms, that Helena, on her arrival at Jerusalem, found the fane of Venus, and ordered it to be thrown down. The old lady was then about eighty years of age. If such fane existed, (Jerome, we have seen, says merely statua ex marmore Veneris,) a sufficient reason would be furnished for selecting the place: the pagan edifice, instead of being thrown down, would have been doubtless transformed into a Christian temple, and the legend be adapted to the locality. In like manner, the church of the Purification, which occupied the site of the mosque of El Aksa, was probably no other, originally, than the temple erected by Hadrian to Jupiter..