We visited all the stations till we came to the summit of Calvary. Where shall we look in antiquity for any thing so impressive, so wonderful, as the last scenes described by the evangelists? These are not the absurd adventures of a deity foreign to human nature it is the most pathetic history, a history which not only extorts tears by its beauty, but whose consequences, applied to the universe, have changed the face of the earth. I had just beheid the monuments of Greece, and my mind was still profoundly impressed with their grandeur; but how far inferior were the sensations which they excited to those which I felt at the sight of the places commemorated in the Gospel!

The church of the Holy Sepulchre, composed of several churches, erected upon an unequal surface, illumined by a multitude of lamps, is singularly mysterious; a sombre light pervades it, favourable to piety and profound devotion. Christian priests, of various sects, inhabit different parts of the edifice. From the arches above, where they nestle like pigeons, from the chapels below, and subterraneous vaults, their songs are heard at all hours both of the

day and night. The organ of the Latin monks, the cymbals of the Abyssinian priest, the voice of the Greek caloyer, the prayer of the solitary Armenian, the plaintive accents of the Coptic friar, alternately, or all at once assail your ear: you know not whence these concerts proceed; you inhale the perfume of incense, without perceiving the hand that burns it ; you merely perceive the pontiff who is going to cele brate the most awful of mysteries on the very spot where they were accomplished, pass quickly by, glide behind the columns, and vanish in the gloom of the temple.

I did not leave the sacred structure without stopping at the monuments of Godfrey and Baldwin. They face the entrance of the church, and stand against the wall of the choir. I saluted the ashes of these royal chevaliers, who were worthy of reposing near the tomb which they had rescued. These ashes are those of Frenchmen, and they are the only mortal remains interred beneath the shadow of the tomb of Christ. What an honourable distinction for my country!

THE name of Sion doubtless awakens grand ideas in the mind of the reader, who is curious to hear something concerning this mount, so mysterious in Scripture, so highly celebrated in Solomon's Song; this mount, the subject of the benedictions or of the tears of the prophets, and whose misfortunes have been sung by Racine.

This hill, of a yellowish colour and barren appearance, open in form of a crescent toward Jerusalem, is about as high as Montmartre at Paris, but rounder at the top. This sacred summit is distinguished by three monuments, or more properly by three ruins; the house of Caiaphas, the place where Christ celebrated his last supper, and the tomb or palace of David. From the top of the hill you see, to the south, the valley of Ben-Hinnon; beyond this the Field of Blood, purchased with the thirty pieces of silver given to Judas, the Hill of Evil Counsel, the tombs of the judges, and the whole desert toward Hebron and Bethlehem. To the north, the wall of Jerusalem, which passes over the top of Sion, intercepts the view of the city, the site of which gradually slopes from this place toward the valley of Jehoshaphat.

The residence of Caiaphas is now a church, the duty of which is performed by the Armenians. David's tomb is a small vaulted room, containing three sepulchres of dark coloured stone; and on the spot where Christ held his last supper, stand a mosque and a Turkish hospital, formerly a church and monastery occupied by the fathers of the Holy Land. This last sanctuary is equally celebrated in the Old and in the New Testament. Here David built himself a palace and a tomb; here he kept for three months the ark of the covenant; here Christ held his last passover, and instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist; here he appeared to his disciples on the day of his resurrection; and here the Holy Ghost descended on the apostles. The place hallowed by the last supper was transformed into the first Christian temple the world ever beheld, where St. James the Less was consecrated the first Christian bishop of Jerusalem, and St. Peter held the first council of the church. Finally, it was from this spot that the apostles, in compliance with the injunction, to go and teach all nations, departed without purse and without scrip, to seat their religion upon all the thrones of the

earth.

HAVING descended mount Sion on the east side, we came at its foot, to the fountain and pool of Siloe, where Christ restored sight to the blind man. The

spring issues from a rock, and runs in a silent stream, according to the testimony of Jeremiah, which is contradicted by a passage of St. Jerom. It has a kind

of ebb and flood, sometimes discharging its current like the fountain of Vaucluse, at others retaining and scarcely suffering it to run at all. The Levites sprinkled the water of Siloe on the altar at the feast of tabernacles, singing, Haurietis aquas in gaudio de fontibus Salvatoris. Milton mentions this spring, instead of Castalia's fount, in the beautiful invocation with which his poem opens.

—Heavenly muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb or of Sinai didst inspire

That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of chaos; or if Sion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song;

lines which M. Delille has thus magnificently rendered;

Toi donc qui, celebrant les merveilles des cieux,
Prends loin de l'Helicon un vol audacieux

Soit que te retenant sous ses palmiers antiques,
Sion avec plaisir répète tes cantiques;
Soit que chantant où Dieu donna sa loi,

Le Sina sous tes pieds tressaille encor d'effroi ;
Soit que près du saint lieu d'où partent tes oracles
Les flots de Siloe te disent ses miracles;
Muse sainte, soutiens mon vol presomptueux !
Some relate that this spring suddenly issued from
the ground to allay the thirst of Isaiah when the proph-

et was sawed in two with a wooden saw by the command of Manasses; while others assert that it first appeared during the reign of Hezekiah, by whom we have the admirable song, beginning: "I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave."

According to Josephus, this miraculous spring flowed for the army of Titus, and refused its waters to the guilty Jews. The pool, or rather the two pools of the same name are quite close to the spring. They are still used for washing linen as formerly; and we there saw some women, who ran away abusing us. The water of the spring is brackish, and has a very disagreeable taste; people still bathe their eyes with it, in memory of the miracle performed on the man

born blind.

Near this spring is shown the spot where Isaiah was put to death, in the manner mentioned. Here you also find a village called Siloan; at the foot of this village is another fountain, denominated in Scripture, Rogel. Opposite to this fountain is a third, which receives its name from the Blessed Virgin. It is conjectured that Mary came hither to fetch water, as the daughters of Laban resorted to the well from which Jacob removed the stone. The Virgin's fountain mingles its stream with that of the fountain of Siloe.

THE valley of Jehoshaphat is also called in Scripture the valley Scaveh, the King's Valley, the Valley of Melchisedec.* It was in the valley of Melchisedec that the king of Sodom went to meet Abraham, to congratulate him on his victory over the five kings. Moloch and Beelphegor were worshipped in this same valley. It was afterward distinguished by the name of Jehoshaphat, because that king caused his tomb to be constructed there. The valley of Jehoshaphat seems to have always served as a burial place for Jerusalem: there you meet with monuments of the most remote ages, as well as of the most modern times. Thither the Jews resort from the four quarters of the globe to die; and a foreigner sells them, for its weight in gold, a scanty spot of earth to cover their remains in the land of their forefathers. The cedars that Solomon planted in this valley,† the shadow of the temple by which it was covered, the stream flowing through the midst of it, the mournful songs composed there

On this subject different opinions are entertained. The King's Valley was probably toward the mountains of Jordan; and that situation would be more consonant with the history of Abraham.

† Josephus relates that Solomon caused the mountains of Judea to be covered with cedars.

Cedron is a Hebrew word, which signifies darkness and sorrow. It is remarked that there is an error in the Gospel of St.John, who calls this stream the Brook of Cedars. The error arises from an omega being put instead of an omicron : κεδων for κεδρον.

by David, and the lamentations there uttered by Jeremiah, rendered it an appropriate situation for the melancholy and the silence of the tombs. Christ, by commencing his passion in this sequestered place, consecrated it anew to sorrow. Here this innocent David shed tears to wash away our crimes, where the guilty David wept to expiate his own sins. Few names awaken in the imagination, ideas at the same time more affecting and more awful than that of the valley of Jehoshaphat, a valley so replete with mysteries, that, according to the prophet Joel, all mankind shall there appear before a formidable judge : "I will gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there." "It is reasonable," says father Nau, "that the honour of Christ should be publicly retrieved in the place where it was taken from him by such opprobrious and ignominious treatment, and that he should judge men with justice, where they judged him so unjustly."

The valley of Jehoshaphat exhibits a desolate appearance: the west side is a high chalk cliff, supporting the walls of the city, above which you perceive Jerusalem itself; while the east side is formed by the mount of Olives and the mount of Offence, mons Offensionis, thus denominated from Solomon's idolatry. These two contiguous hills are nearly naked,

4

and of a dull red colour. On their desolate sides are seen here and there a few black and parched vines, some groves of wild olive-trees, wastes covered with hyssop, chapels, oratories, and mosques in ruins. At the bottom of the valley you discover a bridge of a single arch, thrown across the channel of the brook Cedron. The stones in the Jews' cemetery look like a heap of rubbish at the foot of the mount of Offence, below the Arabian village of Siloan, the paltry houses of which can scarcely be distinguished from the sur

rounding sepulchres. Three antique monuments, the tombs of Zachariah, Jehoshaphat, and Absalom, appear conspicuous amid this scene of desolation. From the dulness of Jerusalem, whence no smoke rises, no noise proceeds; from the solitude of these hills, where no living creature is to be seen; from the ruinous state of all these tombs, overthrown, broken, and half open, you would imagine that the last trump had already sounded, and that the valley of Jehoshaphat was about to render up its dead.

JERUSALEM was founded in the year of the world 2023, by the royal priest Melchisedec, who called it Salem, which signifies peace. At that time it occupied only the two hills of Moriah and Acra.

Fifty years after its foundation it was taken by the Jebusites, the descendants of Jebus, a son of Canaan. They erected on mount Sion a fortress, to which they gave the name of Jebus, their father. The whole city then received the appellation of Jerusalem, which signifies vision of peace. In Scripture it is always spoken of in very magnificent terms.

Joshua made himself master of the lower town of Jerusalem, in the first year after his arrival in the Land of Promise: he put to death king Adonizedek, and the four kings of Hebron, Jerimol, Lachis, and Eglon. The Jebusites still retained possession of the upper town, or citadel of Jebus, and kept it till they were driven out by David, eight hundred and twenty-four years after their entrance into the city of Melchisedec.

David made additions to the fortress of Jebus, and gave it his own name. He erected also on mount Sion a palace and a tabernacle for the reception of the ark of the covenant.

Solomon enlarged the holy city. He built the first temple, the grandeur of which is described in Scripture, and by Josephus the historian, and for which Solomon himself composed such beautiful hymns.

Five years after Solomon's death, Sesac, king of Egypt, attacked Rehoboam, and took and plundered Jerusalem.

It was pillaged one hundred and fifty years afterward by Joash, king of Israel.

Conquered once more by the Assyrians, Manasseh, king of Judah, was carried away captive to Babylon. At last, during the reign of Zedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar razed the city to its very foundations, burned the temple, and transported the Jews to Babylon. "Sion was ploughed like a field," says Jeremiah; and St. Jerom, to describe the solitude of this desolated city, says that not a single bird was to be seen flying about it.

The first temple was destroyed four hundred and seventy years, six months and ten days after its foundation by Solomon, in the year of the world 3513, about six hundred years before Christ. Four hundred and seventy-seven years had elapsed from the time of David to Zedekiah, and the city had been governed by seventeen kings.

After the seventy years' captivity, Zerubbabel began to rebuild the temple and the city. This work, after an interruption of some years, was successively prosecuted and completed by Esdras and Nehemiah. Alexander visited Jerusalem in the year of the world 3583, and offered sacrifices in the temple.

Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, made himself master of Jerusalem: but it was treated with great kindness by Ptolemy Philadelphus, who made some magnificent presents to the temple.

Antiochus the Great retook Jerusalem from the Egyptian monarchs, and afterward ceded it to Ptolemy Evergetes. Antiochus Epiphanes again plundered the city and erected in the temple a statue to the Olympian Jupiter.

The Maccabees restored liberty to their country and defended it against the kings of Asia.

In an unlucky dispute for the crown between Aristobulus and Hircanus, they had recourse to the Romans, who, by the death of Mithridates, had become masters of the East. Pompey hastened to Jerusalem, and being admitted into the city, he besieged and took the temple. Crassus abstained not from plundering this august monument, which the victorious Pompey had respected.

Hircanus, under the protection of Cæsar, had obtained the supreme authority. Antigonus, the son of Aristobulus, who had been poisoned by Pompey's partisans, made war upon his uncle Hircanus, and applied to the Parthians for assistance. The latter invaded Judea, entered Jerusalem, and carried away Hircanus into captivity.

Herod the Great, the son of Antipater, a distinguished officer of the court of Hircanus, seated himself, by the favour of the Romans, upon the throne of Judea. Antigonus, thrown by the fortune of war

into Herod's hands, was sent to Antony. The last descendant of the Maccabees, the rightful sovereign of Jerusalem, was bound to a stake, scourged with rods, and put to death by the command of a Roman citizen.

Herod, now left in undisputed possession of Jeru salem, filled it with splendid edifices, of which I shall speak in another place. It was during the reign of this prince that Christ came into the world.

Archelaus, son of Herod and Mariamne, succeeded his father, while Herod Antipas, another son of Herod the Great, became tetrarch of Galilee and Peræa. It was the latter who ordered St. John Baptist to be beheaded, and sent Christ to Pilate. This Herod the tetrarch was exiled to Lyons by Caligula.

Agrippa, a grandson of Herod the Great, obtained the kingdom of Judea; but his brother Herod, king of Calcis, possessed all the power over the temple, the sacred treasures and the priesthood.

On the death of Agrippa, Judea was reduced into a Roman province. The Jews having revolted against their masters, Titus besieged and took Jerusalem. During this siege, two hundred thousand Jews perished by famine. From the 14th of April to the 1st of July in the year 71 of the Christian era, one hundred and fifteen thousand one hundred and eighty dead bodies were carried out of Jerusalem by one single gate. They ate the leather of their shoes and shields; and were at length reduced to such extremity as to feed upon hay and filth which they picked up in the common sewers: a mother devoured her child. The besieged swallowed their gold; the Roman soldier, who perceived the action, put to death the prisoners, and then sought the treasure concealed in the bowels of those unfortunates. Eleven hundred thousand Jews perished in the city of Jerusalem, and two hundred thirty-eight thousand four hundred and sixty in the rest of Judea. In this calculation I comprehend neither the women and children, nor the aged destroyed by famine, seditions and the flames. Lastly, there were ninety-nine thousand two hundred prisoners of war, some of whom were doomed to labour at the public works, and others reserved for the triumph of Titus; they appeared in the amphitheatres of Europe and Asia, and killed one another for the amusement of the populace of the Roman empire. Such as had not attained the age of seventeen years were put up to auction with the women; and thirty of them were sold for a denarius. The blood of the just Jesus was sold for thirty pieces of silver at Jerusalem, and the people had cried: "His blood be upon ourselves and upon our children!" God heard this wish of the Jews, and for the last time he granted their prayer: after which he turned away his face from the Land of Promise, and chose for himself another people.

The temple was burned thirty-eight years after the death of Christ, so that many of those who had

heard the prediction of our Saviour, might also have witnessed its fulfilment.

The remnant of the Jewish nation having again rebelled, Adrian completed the destruction of what Titus had left standing in ancient Jerusalem. On the ruins of the city of David he erected another town, to which he gave the name of Elia Capitolina: he forbade the Jews to enter it upon pain of death, and caused the figure of a hog, in sculpture, to be placed upon the gate leading to Bethlehem. St. Gregory Nazianzen nevertheless relates that the Jews were permitted to enter Ælia once a year to give vent to their sorrows; and St. Jerom adds, that they were forced to purchase, at an exorbitant price, the right of shedding tears over the ashes of their country.

Five hundred and eighty-five thousand Jews, according to the account of Dio, perished by the sword in this war under Adrian. Prodigious numbers of slaves, of either sex, were sold at the fairs of Gaza and Membre; and fifty castles, and nine hundred and eighty-five villages, were destroyed.

Adrian built the new city precisely on the spot which it occupies at this day; and by a particular providence, as Doubdan observes, he included mount Calvary within the walls. At the time of Dioclesian's persecution, the very name of Jerusalem was so totally forgotten, that a martyr having said, in reply to the question of a Roman governor, that he was a native of Jerusalem, the latter imagined it to be some factious town, secretly erected by the Christians. Toward the conclusion of the seventh century, the city still retained the name of Elia, as may be seen from the account of the travels of Arculfe, given by Adamannus, or that of the venerable Bede.

Some commotions appear to have taken place in Judea under the emperors Antonius, Septimus Severus, and Caracalla. Jerusalem, transformed in her old age into a pagan city, at length acknowledged the God whom she had rejected. Constantine and his mother overthrew the idols erected upon the sepulchre of our Saviour, and consecrated the sacred scenes by the edifices that are seen still upon them.

In vain did Julian, thirty-seven years afterward, assemble the Jews at Jerusalem for the purpose of rebuilding the temple. The men employed in this undertaking worked with hods, pickaxes, and shovels of silver; while the women carried away the earth in the skirts of their best garments: but globes of fire issuing from the half excavated foundations, dispersed the labourers, and prevented the accomplishment of the design.

We find a revolt of the Jews under Justinian, in the year of Christ 501. It was also during the reign of this emperor that the church of Jerusalem was elevated to the patriarchal dignity.

Still destined to struggle with idolatry, and to vanquish false religions, Jerusalem was taken by Cos

roes, king of the Persians, in the year of Christ 613. The Jews scattered over Judea purchased of that prince ninety thousand Christian prisoners, whom they put to death.

Heraclius defeated Cosroes in 627, recovered the true cross which the Persian monarch had taken away, and carried it back to Jerusalem.

Nine years afterward the calif Omar, the third in succession from Mahomet, took Jerusalem, after a siege of four months; and Palestine as well as Egypt, passed under the yoke of the conqueror.

Omar was assassinated at Jerusalem in 643. The establishment of several califats in Arabia and Syria, the fall of the dynasty of the Ommiades, and the elevation of that of the Abassides, involved Judea in troubles and calamities for more than two hundred years.

Ahmed, a Turk, who from being governor had made himself sovereign of Egypt, conquered Jerusalem in 868; but his son having been defeated by the califs of Bagdad, the Holy City again returned under their dominion in the year 905 of our era.

Mahomet Ikschid, another Turk, having in his turn seized the sovereignty of Egypt, carried his arms abroad, and subdued Jerusalem in the year of Christ 936.

The Fatamites, issuing from the sands of Cyrene, expelled the Ikschidites from Egypt in 968, and conquered several towns in Palestine.

Another Turk, named Ortok, favoured by the Seljucides of Aleppo, made himself master of Jerusalem in 984, and his children reigned there after his death. Mostali, calif of Egypt, drove the Ortokides out of Jerusalem.

Hakem or Haquen the successor of Aziz, the second Fatimite calif, persecuted the Christians at Jerusalem about the year 996, as I have already related in the account of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and died in 1021.

Meleschah, a Seljucide Turk, took the Holy City, in 1076, and ravaged the whole country. The Ortokides who had been expelled from Jerusalem by the calif Mostali, returned thither, and maintained possession of the city against Redouan, prince of Aleppo. They were again driven out in 1076 by the Fatimites, who were masters of the place when the Crusaders appeared on the frontiers of Palestine.

The writers of the eighteenth century have taken pains to represent the crusades in an odious light. I was one of the first to protest against this ignorance or injustice. The crusades were not mad expeditions, as some writers have affected to call them, either in their principle or in their results. The Christians were not the aggressors. If the subjects of Omar, setting out from Jerusalem, and making the circuit of Africa invaded Sicily, Spain, nay, even France, where they

In the Genie du Christianisme.

Those

were exterminated by Charles Martel, why should not the subjects of Philip I. quitting France, make the circuit of Asia, to take vengeance on the descendants of Omar in Jerusalem itself? It was certainly a grand spectacle exhibited by these two armies of Europe and Asia, marching in opposite directions round the Mediterranean, and proceeding under the banner of their respective religions, to attack Mahomet and Christ in the midst of their votaries. who perceive in the crusades nothing but a mob of armed pilgrims running to rescue a tomb in Palestine, must take a very limited view of history. The point in question was not merely the deliverance of that sacred tomb, but likewise to decide which of the two should predominate in the world, a religion hostile to civilization, systematically favourable to ignorance, despotism, and slavery, or a religion which has revived among the moderns the spirit of learned antiquity, and abolished servitude. Whoever reads the address of pope Urban II. to the council of Clermont, must be convinced that the leaders in these military enterprises had not the petty views which have been ascribed to them, and that they aspired to save the world from a new inundation of barbarians. The spirit of Islamism is persecution and conquest; the Gospel, on the contrary, inculcates only toleration and peace. Accordingly the Christians endured for seven hundred and sixty-four years all the oppressions which the fanaticism of the Saracens impelled them to exercise. They merely endeavoured to interest Charlemagne in their favour; for neither the conquest of Spain, the invasion of France, the pillage of Greece and the two Sicilies, nor the entire subjugation of Africa, could for near eight centuries rouse the Christians to arms. If at last the shrieks of numberless victims slaughtered in the East; if the progress of the barbarians, who had already reached the gates of Constantinople, awakened Christendom, and impelled it to rise in its own defence, who can say that the cause of the holy wars was unjust? Contemplate Greece, if you would know the fate of a people subjected to the musselman yoke. Would those, who at this day so loudly exult in the progress of knowledge, wish to live under a religion which burned the Alexandrian library, and which makes a merit of trampling mankind under foot, and holding literature and the arts in sovereign contempt.

The crusades, by weakening the Mahometan hordes in the very centre of Asia, prevented our falling a prey to the Turks and Arabs: they did more, they saved us from our own revolutions; they suspended, by the peace of God, our intestine wars; and opened an outlet to that excess of population, which sooner or later occasions the ruin of states.

With regard to the other results of the crusades, people begin to admit that these military enterprises were favourable to the progress of science and civilization. Robertson has admirably discussed this sub