93605 JUDEA CAPTA. BY CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH. NEW YORK: M. W. DODD, CORNER OF PARK ROW AND SPRUCE STREET, OPPOSITE THE CITY HALL. 1845. PRICE TWENTY-FIVE CENTS. JUDEA CAPTA. CHAPTER I. At this time, the position of Jerusalem, as regards its natural strength and compact beauty, was, and yet was not, what " AGAIN Will I build thee, and thou shalt travellers now behold it. The everlasting be built, O virgin of Israel!" saith the hills do indeed maintain their ancient Lord. Evermore bearing in mind this places, but the deep ravines, naturally alpromise, regarding it as a beacon of hope, most impassable by a hostile force, are yea, of positive certainty, brightening the now choked up by the accumulated ruin dark path that we are about to traverse, and neglect of many centuries, divesting we may the better bear to fix a stedfast the site of its otherwise isolated appeargaze on the desolations of many genera-ance, particularly since Zion has been tions, to recall, in what has been, the painful prelude to what now is; and to relate how, with the stroke of a cruel one the holy city was smitten, her spiritual privileges extinguished, and her temporal glories buried in the dust. ploughed like a field; and the city of David presents, on its magnificent external acclivity, little else than a waste of desolate ground. Our ideas concerning the place are in general extremely confused and errroneous: many will speak and write of Zion and Moriah, the city of David and the Temple, as though they had formed an undistinguished mass, and were convertible terms. So far is this Jerusalem of the Bible, that we require to obtain a clear, and in many instances a wholly novel, view of its geographical position, before we can comprehend even the proceedings of the Roman invader. "Beautiful for situation," that which constituted its principal beauty was also its main strength. Judea is peculiarly a "hill country ;" and in the neighbourhood of the holy city these mountainous eleva- | from being correct, in reference to the tions are rendered so conducive to its defence as to have furnished King David with an illustration of the divine guardianship: "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people." What the size and aspect of the city may have been in the days of its highest splendour, when Solomon swayed the sceptre of Israel, not then disunited from Judah, or even what it may have been when Zerubbabel had reared the second temple, and Nehemiah | rebuilt the walls, it is not our present intention to inquire. We come before the city of the great king in darker days, intent on describing it as seen by the beleaguering hosts of Rome, advancing to fix the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, in the holy place. I We will first speak of its boundaries, as they existed eighteen hundred years ago. Northward of the city rose an undulating ground, termed Scopus, which stretched away also to the westward, rendering the approach in that direction comparatively easy; it was, indeed, the only accessible point, and all the enemies who have attacked Jerusalem made it their highway. Towards the south-west the ground began to deepen into a valley, whence rose in lofty grandeur the noble hill of Zion. This was called the valley of Gihon, and soon spread into another valley, that of |