Damascus makes but a poor show, with its squalid houses, and glaring clayed roofs.  We always wanted to invest in real estate there in Abraham Street or Noah Place, or some of its well-established thoroughfares, but are discouraged since we have had these views of the old town.  Baalbec does better.  See the great stones built into the wall there,—­the biggest 64 x 13 x 13!  What do you think of that?—­a single stone bigger than both your parlors thrown into one, and this one of three almost alike, built into a wall as if just because they happened to be lying round, handy!  So, then, we pass on to Bethlehem, looking like a fortress more than a town, all stone and very little window,—­to Nazareth, with its brick oven-like houses, its tall minaret, its cypresses, and the black-mouthed, open tombs, with masses of cactus growing at their edge,—­to Jerusalem,—­to the Jordan, every drop of whose waters seems to carry a baptismal blessing,—­to the Dead Sea,—­and to the Cedars of Lebanon.  Almost everything may have changed in these hallowed places, except the face of the stream and the lake, and the outlines of hill and valley.  But as we look across the city to the Mount of Olives, we know that these lines which run in graceful curves along the horizon are the same that He looked upon as he turned his eyes sadly over Jerusalem.  We know that these long declivities, beyond Nazareth, were pictured in the eyes of Mary’s growing boy just as they are now in ours sitting here by our own firesides.

This is no toy, which thus carries us into the very presence of all that is most inspiring to the soul in the scenes which the world’s heroes and martyrs, and more than heroes, more than martyrs, have hallowed and solemnized by looking upon.  It is no toy:  it is a divine gift, placed in our hands nominally by science, really by that inspiration which is revealing the Almighty through the lips of the humble students of Nature.  Look through it once more before laying it down, but not at any earthly sight.  In these views, taken through the telescopes of De la Rue of London and of Mr. Rutherford of New York, and that of the Cambridge Observatory by Mr. Whipple of Boston, we see the “spotty globe” of the moon with all its mountains and chasms, its mysterious craters and groove-like valleys.  This magnificent stereograph by Mr. Whipple was taken, the first picture February 7th, the second April 6th.  In this way the change of position gives the solid effect of the ordinary stereoscopic views, and the sphere rounds itself out so perfectly to the eye that it seems as if we could grasp it like an orange.