Scripture it is called Bethesda. Here the lambs destined for sacrifice were washed; and it was on the brink of this pool that Christ said to the paralytic man" Rise, take up thy bed and walk." Such is now all that remains of the Jerusalem of David and Solomon.

The monuments of Grecian and Roman Jerusalem are more 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 twenty-four 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 monument.

The sepulchre of Zachariah very nearly resembles that just described. 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 Jehosha

phat 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. Arculfe, in Adamannus (De Locis Sanctis, lib. i.c. 10); Villalpandus (Antiquæ 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 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 brass, &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 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.

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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

*Thus under Francis I. the Greek architecture, blended with the Gothic style, produced some exquisite works.

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. One 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 per

sonage 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 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