It may be added, that the effect of all this is heightened by an extraordinary contrast; for on quitting the crypt, where you have met with the riches, the arts, the religion of civilized nations, you find yourself in a profound solitude, amidst wretched Arab huts, among half naked savages and faithless Mussulmans. This place is, nevertheless, the same where so many miracles were displayed; but this sacred land dares no longer express its joy, and locks within its bosom the recollections of its glory.

From the grotto of the Nativity we went to the subterraneous chapel, where tradition places the sepulchre of the Innocents: "Herod sent forth and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremie the prophet, saying: In Rama was there a voice heard," &c.

The chapel of the Innocents conducted us to the grotto of St. Jerome. Here you find the sepulchre of this father of the church, that of Eusebius, and the tombs of St. Paula and St. Eustochium.

In this grotto St. Jerome spent the greater part of his life. From this retirement he beheld the fall of the Roman empire, and here he received those fugitive patricians, who, after they had possessed the palaces of the earth, deemed themselves happy to share the cell of a cenobite. The peace of the saint and the troubles of the world produce a wonderful effect in the letters of the learned commentator on the Scriptures.'

• We returned to our convent, and I surveyed the country from the top of a terrace. Bethlehem is built on a hill which overlooks a long valley, running from east to west. The southern hill is covered with olive-trees, thinly scattered over a reddish soil bestrewed with stones; that on the north side has fig-trees on the same kind of soil. Here and there you perceive some ruins; among others, the remains of a tower called the Tower of St. Paula. I went back into the monastery, which owes part of its wealth to Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, and successor to Godfrey of Bouillon: it is an absolute fortress, and its walls are so thick that it would be capable of sustaining a siege against the Turks.

The escort of Arabs having arrived, I prepared for my expedi tion to the Red Sea. Whilst breakfasting with the religious who formed a circle round me, they informed me that there was in the convent a father who was a native of France. He was sent for: he came with downcast looks, both his hands in his sleeves, and walking with a solemn pace: he saluted me coldly and in few words. Never did I hear in a foreign country the sound of a French voice without emotion. I asked him some questions, and he informed me that his name was Father Clement; that he was a native of the vicinity of Mayenne; that being in a monastery in Bretagne, he had been trans ported with about a hundred other priests like himself, to Spain, where he had been hospitably received in a convent of his order, and afterwards sent by his superiors as a missionary to the Holy Land. I asked him if he should not like to revisit his country, and if he had any letters to send to his family. His answer was, word for word, as follows: "Who is there that still remembers me in France? How

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should

should I know whether any of my brothers and sisters be yet living? I hope to obtain, through,the merits of my Saviour, the strength to die here without troubling any body, and without thinking of a country which I have forgotten."

Father Clement was obliged to retire; my presence had revived in his heart sentiments which he was striving to extinguish. Such is the destiny of man. A Frenchman is, at this day, mourning the loss of his country on the same shores, the remembrance of which formerly inspired the most sublime of songs on the love of country. But those sons of Aaron, who hung their harps on the willows of Babylon, did not all return to the city of David; those daughters of Judea, who on the banks of the Euphrates exclaimed:

'O shores of Jordan! plains belov'd of Heav'n!

those companions of Esther, were not all destined to revisit Emmaus and Bethel: the remains of many of them were left behind in the land of their captivity.

At ten in the morning, we mounted our horses and set out from Bethlehem. Six Bethlehemite Arabs on foot, armed with daggers and long matchlocks formed our escort: three of them marched before and three behind. We had added to our cavalry an ass, which carried water and provisions. We pursued the way that leads to the monastery of St, Saba, whence we were afterwards to descend to the Dead Sea and to return by the Jordan,

We first followed the valley of Bethlehem, which, as I have observed, stretches away to the cast. We passed a ridge of hills, where you see, on the right, a vineyard recently planted, a circumstance too rare in this country for me not to remark it. We arrived at a grot called the Grotto of the Shepherds. The Arabs still give it the ap pellation of Dta el Natour, the Village of the Shepherds. It is said that Abraham here fed his flocks, and that on this spot the shepherds of Judea were informed by the angel of the birth of the Saviour.'

Perhaps it is this grotto of the shepherds, not the marble. manger of St. Helena's church, which was the real place of the nativity of Jesus. The nature of the land facilitates and invites the scooping of caverns; now if the stable of the inn or caravanseray at Bethlehem was a grotto of this description, it would accord equally with the evangelical narrative, with the very early account of James in the Protevangelium, and with the testimony of Justin Martyr. Some place, which served as a stable, and which might with equal propriety be termed a grotto, can alone be accommodated to the several statements..

In the pilgrimage through Jerusalem, M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND quotes from Massillon many eloquent passages concerning the events which the several stations recall to mind. Little new light, however, is thrown on these incidents by any geographical notices which are here collected: indeed, the book is too learnedly constructed to allow of the reader being always certain whether the writer describes from eye-sight or from authority.

authority. The assertions of erudition and the completions of inference mingle with the notices of actual observation. Concerning the sepulchres of the kings, however, we find some

new matter:

The monuments of Grecian and Roman Jerusalem are very numerous; they form a class perfectly new and very remarkable in the arts. I shall begin with the tombs in the valley of Jehoshaphat and in the valley of Siloe.

Having passed the bridge over the brook Cedron, you come to the sepulchre of Absalom at the foot of the Mount of Offence. It is a square mass, measuring eight feet each way; composed of a single rock hewn from the neighbouring hill, from which it stands only fifteen feet detached. The ornaments of this sepulchre consist of twentyfour semi-columns of the Doric order, not fluted, six on each front of the monument. These columns form an integral part of the block, having been cut out of the same mass with it. On the capital is the frieze, with the triglyph, and above the frieze rises a socle, which supports a triangular pyramid too lofty for the total height of the tomb. The pyramid is not of the same piece as the rest of the mo

nument.

The sepulchre of Zachariah very nearly resembles that just de scribed. It is hewn out of the rock in the same manner, and terminates in a point, bending a little back, like the Phrygian cap, or a Chinese monument. The sepulchre of Jehoshaphat is a grot, the door of which, in a very good style, is its principal ornament. Lastly, the sepulchre in which St. James the Apostle concealed himself has a handsome portico. The four columns which compose it do not rest upon the ground, but are placed at a certain height in the rock, in the same manner as the colonnade of the Louvre rises from the first story of that palace.

Tradition, as the reader may see, assigns names to these tombs. Arcurfe, in Adamannus (De Locis Sanctis, lib. i. c. 10.); Villalpandus (Antique Jerusalem Descriptio); Adrichomius (Sententia de Loco Sepulchri Absalon); Quaresmius (tom. ii. c. 4, 5.), and several others, have treated of these names, and exhausted historical criticism on the subject. But though tradition were not in this instance contradicted by facts, the architecture of these monuments would prove that their origin cannot date so far back as the earliest period of Jewish antiquity.

If I were required to fix precisely the age in which these mausoleums were erected, I should place it about the time of the alliance between the Jews and the Lacedæmonians, under the first Maccabees. The Doric order was still prevalent in Greece; the Corinthian did not supplant it till half a century later, when the Romans began to overrun the Peloponnese and Asia *.

* Thus we find at this latter period a Corinthian portico in the Temple rebuilt by Herod, columns with Greek and Latin inscriptions, gates of Corinthian copper, &c.-Joseph. (book vi. c. 14.)

But in naturalizing at Jerusalem the architecture of Corinth and Athens, the Jews intermixed with it the forms of their peculiar style. The tombs in the valley of Jehoshaphat, and particularly those of which I shall presently speak, display a manifest alliance of the Egyptian and Grecian taste. From this alliance resulted a heterogeneous kind of monuments, forming, as it were, the link between the Pyramids and the Parthenon; monuments in which you discover a sombre, bold and gigantic genius, and a pleasing, sober, and well-regulated imagination. A beautiful illustration of this truth will be seen in the Sepulchres of the Kings.

Leaving Jerusalem by the Gate of Ephraim, and proceeding for about half a mile along the level surface of a reddish rock, with a few olive-trees growing upon it, you arrive in the middle of a field at an excavation which bears a great resemblance to the neglected works of an old quarry. A broad road conducts you by an easy descent to the further end of this excavation, which you enter by an arcade. You then find yourself in an uncovered hall cut out of the rock. This hall is thirty feet long by twenty broad, and the sides of the rock may be about twelve or fifteen feet in height,

In the centre of the south wall you perceive a large square door, of the Doric order, sunk to the depth of several feet in the rock. A frieze, rather whimsical, but exquisitely delicate, is sculptured above the door: it consists, first, of a triglyph, then comes a metope adorned with a simple ring, and afterwards a bunch of grapes between two crowns and two palm branches. The triglyph is represented, and the line was doubtless carried in the same manner along the rock; but it is now effaced. At the distance of eighteen inches from this frieze runs a wreath of foliage intermixed with pine-apples and another fruit which I could not make out, but which resembles a small Egyptian lemon. This last decoration followed parallel to the frieze, and afterwards descended perpendicularly down both sides of the door.

In the recess, and in the angle to the left of this great portico, opens a passage in which people formerly walked erect, but where you are now obliged to crawl on your hands and knees. Like that in the great pyramid, it leads, by a very steep descent, to a square chamber, hewn out of the rock. Holes six feet long and three broad are made in the walls, or rather in the sides of this chamber, for the reception of coffins. Three arched doors conduct from this first chamber into seven other sepulchral apartments of different dimensions, all excavated out of the solid rock; but it is a difficult matter to seize their plan, especially by the light of torches. Qne of these grots, which is lower than the others, having a descent of six steps, seems to have contained the principal coffins. These were generally ranged in the following manner: the most distinguished personage was deposited at the farther end of the grot, facing the entrance, in the niche or case 'prepared for the purpose; and in either side of the door a small vault was reserved for the less illustrious dead, who thus seemed to guard those kings who had no further occasion for their services. The

Thus under Francis I. the Greek architecture, blended with

the Gothic style, produced some exquisite works,'

coflys

coffins, of which only fragments are to be seen, were of stone and ornamented with elegant arabesques.

Nothing is so much admired in these tombs as the doors of the sepulchral chambers. These, as well as the hinges and pivots on which they turned, were of the same stone as the grot. Almost all travellers have imagined that they were cut out of the rock itself, but this is evidently impossible, as Father Nau has clearly demonstrated. Thevenot assures us "that upon scraping away the dust a little, you may perceive the joinings of the stones, placed there after the doors with their pivots were fixed in the holes." Though I scraped away the dust, I could perceive none of these marks at the lower part of the only door that remains standing; all the others being broken in pieces and thrown into the grots.

"On entering these palaces of death, I was tempted to take them for baths of Roman architecture, such as those of the Sibyl's Cave, near Lake Avernus. I here allude only to the general effect, in order to make myself understood; for I well knew the purpose to which they had been appropriated. Arculfe (apud Adaman.), who has described them with great accuracy, saw bones in the coffins. Several centuries afterwards, Villamant found in them remains of the same kind, that are now sought in vain. Three pyramids, one of which still existed in the time of Villalpandus, marked externally the situation of this subterraneous monument. I know not what to think of Zuellard and Appart, who describe exterior buildings and vesti bules.

One question occurs concerning these tombs denominated the Sepulchres of the Kings-what kings are meant? From several passages of Scripture, we find that the tombs of the kings of Judah were in the city of Jerusalem: "And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city, even in Jerusalem.” * David had his sepulchre on Mount Sion: besides, traces of the Greek chisel are discernible in the ornaments of the Sepulchres of the Kings.

Josephus, to whom we must have recourse, mentions three cele brated mausoleums. The first was the tomb of the Maccabees, erected by their brother Simon. "It was," says Josephus, in his Jewish Antiquities, "of white and polished marble, so lofty that it could be seen at a very great distance. All around are vaults in the form of porticoes; each of the columns which support them is of a single stone and in commemoration of these seven persons he added seven pyramids of very great height and wonderful beauty,"

The first book of the Maccabees gives nearly the same particulars concerning this tomb; adding that it was built at Modin, and "might be seen of all that sail on the sea." Modin was a town situated near Diospolis, on a hill of the tribe of Judah. In the time of Eusebius, and even in that of St. Jerome, the monument of the Maccabees was still in existence. The Sepulchres of the Kings at the gate of Jerusalem,

*The author seems to have been particularly unfortunate in his choice of this passage for the purpose of supporting the preceding assertion; since it is immediately added: "but they brought him not into une sepulchres of the kings of Israel,"-T.

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