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As we came back from our excursions day after day, I would trace them out on a map, and try to put in order what we had seen, so as to reconstruct the holy city. Our hotel- the Mediterranean-furnished a good point of observation. As it stood on Mount Zion-think of a hotel on Mount Zion !—it looked down upon Mount Moriah, and into the Temple area, and indeed commanded a view of a large part of the city and of the surrounding country. From the upper story, which was open at one end like a veranda, I could toss a biscuit into the Pool of Hezekiah, which that wise Hebrew king constructed in the heart of the city to supply it with water, as Solomon had constructed the larger Pools which bear his name beyond Bethlehem. A little farther away is a vast enclosure which belongs to the Knights of St. John, and tells of the short century— only eighty-eight years-when the Crusaders were masters of Jerusalem. Turning to the east, one could take in at the same moment the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Christian pilgrims were kneeling at their sacred shrines, and the Mosque of Omar, where devout Moslems were bowing, with their faces towards Mecca. Indeed this outlook commands a wider sweep, not only to the Mount of Olives, but far away to the mountains of Moab on the other side of the Dead Sea.

But we have a nearer object to attract the eye, and touch the imagination. In front of the hotel is an open place, on one side of which stands the Tower of Davidone of the oldest and best-preserved monuments in Jerusalem. It is a massive structure, with walls of great strength and height, as if designed to be at once a watch-tower to overlook the city, and a castle for refuge and defence. It is still called the Citadel, and is garrisoned by soldiers. Though built by Herod, it bears the name of the Hebrew King, from an old tradition that David's Palace stood on

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this very spot. Here was an association to kindle our musings, as we sat on the balcony of our room in the evening, and looked up to the gray old walls. The Passover is always at the time of the full moon, which was now flooding the holy city, and giving a strange, almost ghostly, appearance to its melancholy ruins. As I sat there in the moonlight, there was something in the scene "so sad and fair"-in the clouds that flew across the sky, and the night wind that moaned around the ancient Tower, and died away along the city walls-that set my fancies in motion. Like Bunyan, "I dreamed a dream." Scenes of the past rose before me like visions of the night, and floated away over the Judean hills. Kings and prophets seemed to rise out of their sepulchres; and of all the Hebrew kings, he who reigned in yonder palace drew most near. Here he gave laws to his people, and perhaps as a warrior gave commands to his armies. From this royal house, it may be, he fled at the conspiracy of Absalom, and here returned, victorious but desolate. Here-perhaps on such a night as this-he looked out of the windows of his palace and sang "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork." "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him?" Here perhaps he breathed his last, and when dying gave to Solomon a charge which might serve for all kings that should ever reign on the earth: "My son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind. . . . If thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off forever."

Such associations might be multiplied to any extent. If any should question the site of the Palace of David, none

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will dispute that the Tower was built by Herod, and that if its upper part has been destroyed and rebuilt, at least the massive foundation-stones, to a height of some forty feet, were laid by the King who rebuilt the Temple, and whose pride was in rearing towers and palaces. It was standing when Christ walked these streets: he saw it a thousand times. It is quite probable that he passed it the last night that he spent on earth, on his way to the Conaculum, which is farther west on Mount Zion, where he kept the Passover with his disciples. The Paschal moon was shining then, as it is shining now, and perhaps he paused before this Tower to look up to it for the last time. The very next day a Roman soldier standing on its top, and looking down on a scene that was going on just without the city walls, might have been a spectator of the Crucifixion. He would have felt creeping over him a shuddering horror at the mysterious darkening of the earth and sky, and felt the massive foundations under him reeling with the shock of the earthquake, when the rocks were rent and the graves were opened. In the destruction of Jerusalem this Tower was spared by Titus, and stood almost alone amid the mighty ruin; and so it has remained, sometimes dismantled and broken, yet reconstructed; and still it stands, and may stand until it sees our Lord coming again in the clouds of Heaven.

With such memories revived by walks about Jerusalem, and meditations in it, how can any one feel that a visit to it in any wise robs it of its charm? Nay, rather that which was a dream is made a reality; by familiarizing one's eyes with sacred localities, sacred events are recalled; the life of our Divine Master becomes more real as we visit the city where he lived and died; as we pass over the very paths once trodden by his blessed feet; as we go to the Mount of Olives, where he so often knelt and prayed; as

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coming from Bethany, we pause at the spot where, “when he was come near, he beheld the city and wept over it." These are helps, not hindrances, to our faith; they make the New Testament, in many portions of it, a new book to us. This it is to tread the streets of Jerusalem, until one comes to find pleasure in her stones, because out of these stones he can reconstruct the ancient city, from which came Religion, flowing, like Siloam, out of the heart of the rock, and, like that, making glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. Here we trace to its source much that enters into modern history and modern civilization. A city that has such mighty memories is not dead, but living; her very woes touch the hearts and the imaginations of men; and thus she has a power over the world even in her ruins.

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CHAPTER II.

JERUSALEM IN HOLY WEEK-THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCH-JEWS AND MOSLEMS.

For the greater part of the year Jerusalem is pronounced by most travellers "insufferably dull." Coming from the life and gayety of European capitals, they are oppressed by the utter stagnation of a city where there is no business or commercial life; where there is not a single place of amusement, not a theatre, nor even a club; where the mail comes but once a week, and there is not even a newspaper, except a little sheet in Hebrew-a language with which they are not supposed to be familiar.

But once in the year the sleepy old town awakes from its long hibernation, as strangers from afar, from beyond the seas, come riding over the hills, and throng in at the Jaffa Gate. The Holy Week brings some ten thousand pilgrims, the greater part of whom find lodging in the numerous convents, while Englishmen and Americans seek more comfortable quarters in the hotels. When we were at the Jordan, at the place of the Baptism, we met an English party, and to our inquiry if there were any strangers in Jerusalem, a bold Briton answered in language more emphatic than elegant, that "it was ram-jammed full!"