performs a great part in the city; and a considerable annual
stipend is given by the Emperor towards the maintenance of the
great establishment in Jerusalem. The Great Chapel of the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre is by far the richest, in point of furniture,
of all the places of worship under that roof. We were in Russia,
when we came to visit our friends here; under the protection of the
Father of the Church and the Imperial Eagle! This butcher and
tyrant, who sits on his throne only through the crime of those who
held it before him--every step in whose pedigree is stained by some
horrible mark of murder, parricide, adultery--this padded and
whiskered pontiff--who rules in his jack-boots over a system of
spies and soldiers, of deceit, ignorance, dissoluteness, and brute
force, such as surely the history of the world never told of
before--has a tender interest in the welfare of his spiritual
children: in the Eastern Church ranks after Divinity, and is
worshipped by millions of men. A pious exemplar of Christianity
truly! and of the condition to which its union with politics has
brought it! Think of the rank to which he pretends, and gravely
believes that he possesses, no doubt!--think of those who assumed
the same ultra-sacred character before him!--and then of the Bible
and the Founder of the Religion, of which the Emperor assumes to be
the chief priest and defender!
We had some Poles of our party; but these poor fellows went to the
Latin convent, declining to worship after the Emperor's fashion.
The next night after our arrival, two of them passed in the
Sepulchre. There we saw them, more than once on subsequent visits,
kneeling in the Latin Church before the pictures, or marching
solemnly with candles in processions, or lying flat on the stones,
or passionately kissing the spots which their traditions have
consecrated as the authentic places of the Saviour's sufferings.
More honest or more civilised, or from opposition, the Latin
fathers have long given up and disowned the disgusting mummery of
the Eastern Fire--which lie the Greeks continue annually to tell.
Their travellers' house and convent, though large and commodious,
are of a much poorer and shabbier condition than those of the
Greeks. Both make believe not to take money; but the traveller is
expected to pay in each. The Latin fathers enlarge their means by
a little harmless trade in beads and crosses, and mother-of-pearl
shells, on which figures of saints are engraved; and which they
purchase from the manufacturers, and vend at a small profit. The
English, until of late, used to be quartered in these sham inns;
but last year two or three Maltese took houses for the reception of
tourists, who can now be accommodated with cleanly and comfortable
board, at a rate not too heavy for most pockets.
To one of these we went very gladly; giving our horses the bridle
at the door, which went off of their own will to their stables,
through the dark inextricable labyrinths of streets, archways, and
alleys, which we had threaded after leaving the main street from
the Jaffa Gate. There, there was still some life. Numbers of
persons were collected at their doors, or smoking before the dingy
coffee-houses, where singing and story-telling were going on; but
out of this great street everything was silent, and no sign of a
light from the windows of the low houses which we passed.
We ascended from a lower floor up to a terrace, on which were
several little domed chambers, or pavilions. From this terrace,
whence we looked in the morning, a great part of the city spread
before us:- white domes upon domes, and terraces of the same
character as our own. Here and there, from among these whitewashed
mounds round about, a minaret rose, or a rare date-tree; but the
chief part of the vegetation near was that odious tree the prickly
pear,--one huge green wart growing out of another, armed with
spikes, as inhospitable as the aloe, without shelter or beauty. To
the right the Mosque of Omar rose; the rising sun behind it.
Yonder steep tortuous lane before us, flanked by ruined walls on
either side, has borne, time out of mind, the title of Via
Dolorosa; and tradition has fixed the spots where the Saviour
rested, bearing his cross to Calvary. But of the mountain, rising
immediately in front of us, a few grey olive-trees speckling the
yellow side here and there, there can be no question. That is the
Mount of Olives. Bethany lies beyond it. The most sacred eyes
that ever looked on this world have gazed on those ridges: it was
there He used to walk and teach. With shame and humility one looks
towards the spot where that inexpressible Love and Benevolence
lived and breathed; where the great yearning heart of the Saviour
interceded for all our race; and whence the bigots and traitors of
his day led Him away to kill Him!
That company of Jews whom we had brought with us from
Constantinople, and who had cursed every delay on the route, not
from impatience to view the Holy City, but from rage at being
obliged to purchase dear provisions for their maintenance on ship-
board, made what bargains they best could at Jaffa, and journeyed
to the Valley of Jehoshaphat at the cheapest rate. We saw the tall
form of the old Polish Patriarch, venerable in filth, stalking
among the stinking ruins of the Jewish quarter. The sly old Rabbi,
in the greasy folding hat, who would not pay to shelter his
children from the storm off Beyrout, greeted us in the bazaars; the
younger Rabbis were furbished up with some smartness. We met them
on Sunday at the kind of promenade by the walls of the Bethlehem
Gate; they were in company of some red-bearded co-religionists,
smartly attired in Eastern raiment; but their voice was the voice
of the Jews of Berlin, and of course as we passed they were talking
about so many hundert thaler. You may track one of the people, and
be sure to hear mention of that silver calf that they worship.
The English mission has been very unsuccessful with these
religionists. I don't believe the Episcopal apparatus--the
chaplains, and the colleges, and the beadles--have succeeded in
converting a dozen of them; and a sort of martyrdom is in store for
the luckless Hebrews at Jerusalem who shall secede from their
faith. Their old community spurn them with horror; and I heard of
the case of one unfortunate man, whose wife, in spite of her
husband's change of creed, being resolved, like a true woman, to
cleave to him, was spirited away from him in his absence; was kept
in privacy in the city, in spite of all exertions of the mission,
of the consul and the bishop, and the chaplains and the beadles;
was passed away from Jerusalem to Beyrout, and thence to
Constantinople; and from Constantinople was whisked off into the
Russian territories, where she still pines after her husband. May
that unhappy convert find consolation away from her. I could not
help thinking, as my informant, an exc
ellent and accomplished
gentleman of the mission, told me the story, that the Jews had done
only what the Christians do under the same circumstances. The
woman was the daughter of a most learned Rabbi, as I gathered.
Suppose the daughter of the Rabbi of Exeter, or Canterbury, were to
marry a man who turned Jew, would not her Right Reverend Father be
justified in taking her out of the power of a person likely to hurl
her soul to perdition? These poor converts should surely be sent
away to England out of the way of persecution. We could not but
feel a pity for them, as they sat there on their benches in the
church conspicuous; and thought of the scorn and contumely which
attended them without, as they passed, in their European dresses
and shaven beards, among their grisly, scowling, long-robed
countrymen.
As elsewhere in the towns I have seen, the Ghetto of Jerusalem is
pre-eminent in filth. The people are gathered round about the
dung-gate of the city. Of a Friday you may hear their wailings and
lamentations for the lost glories of their city. I think the
Valley of Jehoshaphat is the most ghastly sight I have seen in the
world. From all quarters they come hither to bury their dead.
When his time is come yonder hoary old miser, with whom we made our
voyage, will lay his carcase to rest here. To do that, and to claw
together money, has been the purpose of that strange long life.
We brought with us one of the gentlemen of the mission, a Hebrew
convert, the Rev. Mr. E-; and lest I should be supposed to speak
with disrespect above of any of the converts of the Hebrew faith,
let me mention this gentleman as the only one whom I had the
fortune to meet on terms of intimacy. I never saw a man whose
outward conduct was more touching, whose sincerity was more
evident, and whose religious feeling seemed more deep, real, and
reasonable.
Only a few feet off, the walls of the Anglican Church of Jerusalem
rise up from their foundations on a picturesque open spot, in front
of the Bethlehem Gate. The English Bishop has his church hard by:
and near it is the house where the Christians of our denomination
assemble and worship.
There seem to be polyglot services here. I saw books of prayer, or
Scripture, in Hebrew, Greek, and German: in which latter language
Dr. Alexander preaches every Sunday. A gentleman who sat near me
at church used all these books indifferently; reading the first
lesson from the Hebrew book, and the second from the Greek. Here
we all assembled on the Sunday after our arrival: it was affecting
to hear the music and language of our country sounding in this
distant place; to have the decent and manly ceremonial of our
service; the prayers delivered in that noble language. Even that
stout anti-prelatist, the American consul, who has left his house
and fortune in America in order to witness the coming of the
Millennium, who believes it to be so near that he has brought a
dove with him from his native land (which bird he solemnly informed
us was to survive the expected Advent), was affected by the good
old words and service. He swayed about and moaned in his place at
various passages; during the sermon he gave especial marks of
sympathy and approbation. I never heard the service more
excellently and impressively read than by the Bishop's chaplain,
Mr. Veitch. But it was the music that was most touching I
thought,--the sweet old songs of home.
There was a considerable company assembled: near a hundred people
I should think. Our party made a large addition to the usual
congregation. The Bishop's family is proverbially numerous: the
consul, and the gentlemen of the mission, have wives, and children,
and English establishments. These, and the strangers, occupied
places down the room, to the right and left of the desk and
communion-table. The converts, and the members of the college, in
rather a scanty number, faced the officiating clergyman; before
whom the silver maces of the janissaries were set up, as they set
up the beadles' maces in England.
I made many walks round the city to Olivet and Bethany, to the
tombs of the kings, and the fountains sacred in story. These are
green and fresh, but all the rest of the landscape seemed to me to
be FRIGHTFUL. Parched mountains, with a grey bleak olive-tree
trembling here and there; savage ravines and valleys, paved with
tombstones--a landscape unspeakably ghastly and desolate, meet the
eye wherever you wander round about the city. The place seems
quite adapted to the events which are recorded in the Hebrew
histories. It and they, as it seems to me, can never be regarded
without terror. Fear and blood, crime and punishment, follow from
page to page in frightful succession. There is not a spot at which
you look, but some violent deed has been done there: some massacre
has been committed, some victim has been murdered, some idol has
been worshipped with bloody and dreadful rites. Not far from hence
is the place where the Jewish conqueror fought for the possession
of Jerusalem. "The sun stood still, and hasted not to go down
about a whole day;" so that the Jews might have daylight to destroy
the Amorites, whose iniquities were full, and whose land they were
about to occupy. The fugitive heathen king, and his allies, were
discovered in their hiding-place, and hanged: "and the children of
Judah smote Jerusalem with the edge of the sword, and set the city
on fire; and they left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all
that breathed."
I went out at the Zion Gate, and looked at the so-called tomb of
David. I had been reading all the morning in the Psalms, and his
history in Samuel and Kings. "Bring thou down Shimei's hoar head
to the grave with blood," are the last words of the dying monarch
as recorded by the history. What they call the tomb is now a
crumbling old mosque; from which Jew and Christian are excluded
alike. As I saw it, blazing in the sunshine, with the purple sky
behind it, the glare only served to mark the surrounding desolation
more clearly. The lonely walls and towers of the city rose hard
by. Dreary mountains, and declivities of naked stones, were round
about: they are burrowed with holes in which Christian hermits
lived and died. You see one green place far down in the valley:
it is called En Rogel. Adonijah feasted there, who was killed by
his brother Solomon, for asking for Abishag for wife. The Valley
of Hinnom skirts the hill: the dismal ravine was a fruitful garden
once. Ahaz, and the idolatrous kings, sacrificed to idols under
the green trees there, and "caused their children to pass through
the fire." On the mountain opposite, Solomon, with the thousand
women of his harem, worshipped the gods of all their nations,
"Ashtoreth," and "Milcom, and Molech, the abomination of the
Ammonites." An enormous charnel-house stands on the hill where the
bodies of dead pilgrims used to be throw
n; and common belief has
fixed upon this spot as the Aceldama, which Judas purchased with
the price of his treason. Thus you go on from one gloomy place to
another, each seared with its bloody tradition. Yonder is the
Temple, and you think of Titus's soldiery storming its flaming
porches, and entering the city, in the savage defence of which two
million human souls perished. It was on Mount Zion that Godfrey
and Tancred had their camp: when the Crusaders entered the mosque,
they rode knee-deep in the blood of its defenders, and of the women
and children who had fled thither for refuge: it was the victory
of Joshua over again. Then, after three days of butchery, they
purified the desecrated mosque and went to prayer. In the centre
of this history of crime rises up the Great Murder of all . . .
I need say no more about this gloomy landscape. After a man has
seen it once, he never forgets it--the recollection of it seems to
me to follow him like a remorse, as it were to implicate him in the
awful deed which was done there. Oh! with what unspeakable shame
and terror should one think of that crime, and prostrate himself
before the image of that Divine Blessed Sufferer!
Of course the first visit of the traveller is to the famous Church
of the Sepulchre.
In the archway, leading from the street to the court and church,
there is a little bazaar of Bethlehemites, who must interfere
considerably with the commerce of the Latin fathers. These men
bawl to you from their stalls, and hold up for your purchase their
devotional baubles,--bushels of rosaries and scented beads, and
carved mother-of-pearl shells, and rude stone salt-cellars and
figures. Now that inns are established--envoys of these pedlars
attend them on the arrival of strangers, squat all day on the
terraces before your door, and patiently entreat you to buy of
their goods. Some worthies there are who drive a good trade by
tattooing pilgrims with the five crosses, the arms of Jerusalem;
under which the name of the city is punctured in Hebrew, with the
auspicious year of the Hadji's visit. Several of our fellow-
travellers submitted to this queer operation, and will carry to
their grave this relic of their journey. Some of them had engaged
as servant a man at Beyrout, who had served as a lad on board an
English ship in the Mediterranean. Above his tattooage of the five
crosses, the fellow had a picture of two hearts united, and the
pathetic motto, "Betsy my dear." He had parted with Betsy my dear
five years before at Malta. He had known a little English there,
but had forgotten it. Betsy my dear was forgotten too. Only her
name remained engraved with a vain simulacrum of constancy on the
faithless rogue's skin: on which was now printed another token of
equally effectual devotion. The beads and the tattooing, however,
seem essential ceremonies attendant on the Christian pilgrim's
visit; for many hundreds of years, doubtless, the palmers have
carried off with them these simple reminiscences of the sacred
city. That symbol has been engraven upon the arms of how many
Princes, Knights, and Crusaders! Don't you see a moral as
applicable to them as to the swindling Beyrout horseboy? I have
brought you back that cheap and wholesome apologue, in lieu of any
of the Bethlehemite shells and beads.
After passing through the porch of the pedlars, you come to the
courtyard in front of the noble old towers of the Church of the
Sepulchre, with pointed arches and Gothic traceries, rude, but rich
and picturesque in design. Here crowds are waiting in the sun,
until it shall please the Turkish guardians of the church-door to
open. A swarm of beggars sit here permanently: old tattered hags
with long veils, ragged children, blind old bearded beggars, who
raise up a chorus of prayers for money, holding out their wooden
bowls, or clattering with their sticks on the stones, or pulling
your coat-skirts and moaning and whining; yonder sit a group of
coal-black Coptish pilgrims, with robes and turbans of dark blue,