JERUSALEM.

Long. 35° 20′ E. Lat. 31° 47′ 47′′ N.

The approach to Jerusalem from Jaffa is not the direction in which to see the city to the best effect. Dr. Clarke entered it by the Damascus gate, and he describes the view of Jerusalem, when first descried from the summit of a hill, at about an hour's distance, as most impressive. He confesses, at the same time, that there is no other point of view in which it is seen to so much advantage. In the celebrated prospect from the Mount of Olives, the city lies too low, is too near the eye, and has too much the character of a bird's eye view, with the formality of a topographical plan. "We had not been prepared," says this lively traveller, "for the grandeur of the spectacle which the city alone exhibited. Instead of a wretched and ruined town, by some described as the desolated remnant of Jerusalem, we beheld, as it were, a flourishing and stately metropolis, presenting a magnificent assemblage of domes, towers, palaces, churches, and monasteries; all of which, glittering in the sun's rays, shone with inconceivable splendour. As we drew nearer, our whole attention was engrossed by its noble and interesting appearance. The lofty hills surrounding it, give the city itself an appearance of elevation less than it really has." Dr. Clarke was fortunate in catching this first view of Jerusalem under the illusion of a brilliant evening sunshine, but his description is decidedly overcharged. M. Chateaubriand, Mr. Buckingham, Mr. Brown, Mr. Jolliffe, Sir F. Henniker, and almost every other modern traveller, confirm the representation of Dr. Richard"The appearance of Mr. Buckingham says:

son.

this celebrated city, independent of the feelings and recollections which the approach to it cannot fail to awaken, was greatly inferior to my expectations, and had certainly nothing of grandeur or beauty, of stateliness or magnificence, about it. It appeared like a walled town of the third or fourth class, having neither towers, nor domes, nor minarets within it, in sufficient numbers to give even a character to its impressions on the beholder; but shewing chiefly large flat-roofed buildings of the most unornamented kind, seated amid rugged hills, on a stony and forbidden soil, with scarcely a picturesque object in the whole compass of the surrounding view."

Chateaubriand's description is very striking and graphical. After citing the language of the prophet Jeremiah, in his lamentations on the desolation of the ancient city, as accurately portraying its present state, he thus proceeds:

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"When seen from the Mount of Olives, on the other side of the Valley of Jehoshaphat, Jerusalem presents an inclined plane, descending from west to east. An embattled wall, fortified with towers and a Gothic castle, encompasses the city all round; excluding, however, part of Mount Sion, which it formerly enclosed. In the western quarter, and in the centre of the city, the houses stand very close; but, in the eastern part, along the brook Kedron, you perceive vacant spaces; among the rest, that which surrounds the mosque erected on the ruins of the Temple, and the nearly deserted spot where once stood the castle of Antonia and the second palace of Herod.

"The houses of Jerusalem are heavy square masses,

• Lamentations i. 1-6; ii. 1-9, 15.

very low, without chimneys or windows; they have flat terraces or domes on the top, and look like prisons or sepulchres. The whole would appear to the eye one uninterrupted level, did not the steeples of the churches, the minarets of the mosques, the summits of a few cypresses, and the clumps of nopals, break the uniformity of the plan. On beholding these stone buildings, encompassed by a stony country, you are ready to inquire if they are not the confused monuments of a cemetery in the midst of a desert.

"Enter the city, but nothing will you there find to make amends for the dulness of its exterior. You lose yourself among narrow, unpaved streets, here going up hill, there down, from the inequality of the ground, and you walk among clouds of dust or loose stones. Canvas stretched from house to house increases the gloom of this labyrinth. Bazars, roofed over, and fraught with infection, completely exclude the light from the desolate city. A few paltry shops expose nothing but wretchedness to view, and even these are frequently shut, from apprehension of the passage of a cadi. Not a creature is to be seen in the streets, not a creature at the gates, except now and then a peasant gliding through the gloom, concealing under his garments the fruits of his labour, lest he should be robbed of his hard earnings by the rapacious soldier. Aside, in a corner, the Arab butcher is slaughtering some animal, suspended by the legs from a wall in ruins: from his haggard and ferocious look, and his bloody hands, you would suppose that he had been cutting the throat of a fellow-creature, rather than killing a lamb. The only noise heard from time to time in the city, is the galloping of the steed of the desert it is the janissary who brings the head of the

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Bedouin, or who returns from plundering the unhappy Fellah.

"Amid this extraordinary desolation, you must pause a moment to contemplate two circumstances still more extraordinary. Among the ruins of Jerusalem, two classes of independent people find in their religion sufficient fortitude to enable them to surmount such complicated horrors and wretchedness. Here reside communities of Christian monks, whom nothing can compel to forsake the tomb of Christ; neither plunder, nor personal ill treatment, nor menaces of death itself. Night and day they chaunt their hymns around the Holy Sepulchre. Driven by the cudgel and the sabre, women, children, flocks, and herds, seek refuge in the cloisters of these recluses. What prevents the armed oppressor from pursuing his prey, and overthrowing such feeble ramparts ? The charity of the monks: they deprive themselves of the last resources of life to ransom their suppliants.*. Cast your eyes between the Temple

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Dr. Clarke draws a somewhat different picture of these holy friars he describes them, in the first place, as the most corpulent he had ever seen issue from the warmest cloisters of Spain or Italy. Their comfortable convent, compared with the usual accommodations of the Holy Land, is, he says, like a sumptuous and well-furnished hotel. "The influence which a peculiar mode of life has upon the constitution in this climate, might,” he adds, " be rendered evident, by contrasting one of these jolly fellows" (the guardians of the Holy Sepulchre, or, according to the name they bear, the Terra Santa friars,)" with the Propaganda missionaries. The latter are as meagre and as pale as the former are corpulent and ruddy." In the commotions which have taken place in Jerusalem, the convent of St. Salvador has been repeatedly plundered; yet still, the riches of the treasury are said to be considerable. The Franciscans complain heavily of the exactions of the Turks, who make frequent and

and Mount Sion; behold another petty tribe, cut off from the rest of the inhabitants of this city. The particular objects of every species of degradation, these people bow their heads without murmuring; they endure every kind of insult without demanding justice; they sink beneath repeated blows without sighing; if their head be required, they present it to the scimitar. On the death of any member of this proscribed community, his companion goes at night, and inters him by stealth in the valley of Jehoshaphat, in the shadow of Solomon's Temple. Enter the abodes of these people, you will find them, amid the most abject wretchedness, instructing their children to read a mysterious book, which they in their turn will teach their offspring to read. What they did five thousand years ago, these people still continue to do. Seventeen times have they witnessed the destruc- · tion of Jerusalem, yet nothing can discourage them, nothing can prevent them from turning their faces towards Sion. To see the Jews scattered over the

large demands on them for money. "But," remarks Dr. C., "the fact of their being able to answer these demands, affords a proof of the wealth of their convent." Sir Sidney Smith, during his visit to Jerusalem, rendered them essential service, which they have not forgotten, by remonstrating with the Turkish governor against one of these avanias, as they are called, and finally inducing him to withdraw the charge. Hasselquist states the sum that yearly passed through the hands of the procurator of the convent to be at least half a million of livres. "The revenues," he says, " arise from alms, the greatest part from Spain and Portugal; from those people who permit the barbarians to ruin their trade, and plunder their country, without supplying one piastre for their chastisement; but send yearly a considerable sum to Jerusalem to be devoured by Turks, their inveterate enemies, and by monks, who are useless inhabitants in Europe, and unnecessary at Jerusalem, where they are of no sort of advantage to Christianity."