deity. The mountain, as well as the city, would undergo a correspondent change of name; and thus, Baal-Hermon would become Panium, and Baal-Gad, Panias. In like manner, Baal-Bek was changedwe might say, translated into Heliopolis. A sacred fountain in Greece almost invariably points out the site of an ancient temple; and the usual characteristics of these agiasmata, or holy fountains, are, a romantic landscape, and the neighbourhood of a cavern or grove. Here we have every circumstance united, that superstition required to give sacredness to the place.

But, in reference to the ancient names, there is a remarkable passage in Josephus, which deserves consideration. The marshes of Lake Semechonitis reach, he

66 says, as far as the place Daphne, which, in other respects, is a delicious place, and hath such fountains as supply water to what is called Little Jordan, under the temple of the golden calf, where it is sent into Great Jordan." ."* Reland supposes that the text is corrupted, and that, instead of Daphne in this place, we should read Dan. If not, we may conclude that the ancient Dan was afterwards called Daphne. The Little Jordan is, most probably, the Banias of Burckhardt, which, at the distance of an hour and a half in the plain below, falls into what Seetzen denominates the Hasbeia, — the Moiet Hasbeia, which is the larger branch. Near the confluence of these streams, we must look for the Dan of the Scripture, and the exact situation of one of Jeroboam's golden calves. + Panias, supposed by the ancients to be the source of the Jordan, can hardly be the place referred to by Josephus. It

• Wars, book iv. chap. 1.

+ See Judges xviii. 29; 1 Kings xii. 29.

must, therefore, be below it; and we are strongly inclined to believe, that the sequestered mound and the grove of venerable oaks, described by Dr. Richardson in such glowing language, will be found to answer most completely to the Daphne of Josephus, and the Dan of Scripture, where once stood the temple of the golden calf. It must be near this delicious spot, that the river of Hasbeia meets with the Banias or Little Jordan; and the marshes of Samachonitis extend almost to the base of the mount. It is observable also, that the plain changes its name nearly about the same place, from Ard Houle to Ard Banias; and it is by the confluence of the streams here, that the river is formed, which Josephus distinguishes as the Great Jordan.

CONCLUDING REMARKS.

HAVING now traversed the whole Land of Israel west of this boundary, from Beersheba to Dan, we close here our account of Palestine; preferring, for the convenience of the arrangement, to include the districts east of the Jordan, under the general denomination of Syria, which in strictness applies to the whole country. The parts we have described, however, are all that are usually comprehended under the term Holy Land; although, as the scene of Scripture history, the theatre of miracle and of prophecy, the Peninsula of Mount Sinai, the shores of the Idumean Sea, and the coasts of Asia Minor, might lay claim to the appellation. But we have now visited the whole of Palestine, Judea, Samaria, and Galilee those

Lightfoot says, that Riblah, a place on the border of Israel, is by the Targumists rendered Daphne. They render Numbers xxxiv. 11, "and the border shall go down to Daphne."

countries which, above all others under the sun, are interesting to the Christian. And abhorrent alike from reason and from true piety, as is the superstition that has grafted itself upon this interest, yet, the curiosity which inspires the traveller, in reference more peculiarly to these scenes, is rational and laudable. If Troy and Thebes, if Athens and Rome, are visited with classic enthusiasm, much more worthy of awakening the strongest emotions in the mind of a Christian, must be the country whose history as far transcends in interest that of every other, as its literature (if we may apply that term to the divine volume) excels in sublimity, all the ethics, and philosophy, and poetry, and eloquence of the heathen world. This sentiment of interest or of reverence has, indeed, no necessary connexion with religious principle or enlightened worship; for it may actuate alike the pious and the profligate. And, in the character of the Greek or Romish pilgrim, it is too generally found in connexion with an utter destitution of moral principle. The savage fanaticism of the Crusades was an illustration of this fact on a grand scale; and the same spirit that breathed in Peter the Hermit, yet survives; the same fanaticism in a milder form actuates the pilgrims who continue to visit the Holy Sepulchre, with the view of expiating their sins by the performance of so meritorious a penance. The Mussulman hadgi, or the Hindoo devotee, differs little in the true character of his religion, from these misguided Christians, and as little perhaps in his morals as in his creed. Only the stocks and stones in which their respective worship alike terminates, are called by less holy names. It becomes the Protestant to avoid the appearance of symbolising with this degrading and brutalizing idolatry. But were all this mummery

swept away, and the Holy Land cleared of all the rubbish brought into it by the Empress Helena, the holy sepulchre included, more than enough would remain to repay the Christian traveller, in the durable monuments of Nature. We know not the spot where Christ was crucified; nor can determine the cave in which, for part of three days, his body was ensepulchred; nor is the exact point ascertainable from which he ascended to heaven. The Scriptures are silent, and no other authority can supply the information. But there are the scenes which he looked upon, the holy mount which once bore the temple, that Mount Olivet which once overlooked Jerusalem ;. there is Mount Gerizim overhanging the Valley of Shechem, and the hill where once stood Samaria; there is Nazareth, within whose secluded vale our Lord so long awaited the time appointed for his public ministry, the Plain of Gennesareth and the Sea of Galilee, the mountains to which he retired, the plains in which he wrought his miracles, the waters which he trod,—and there the Jordan still rolls its consecrated waters to the bituminous lake where Sodom stood.