regard as the princeliest ever seen on earth; and they call up pictures of a pageant that is familiar to all imaginations—­camels laden with spices and treasure—­beautiful slaves, presents for Solomon’s harem—­a long cavalcade of richly caparisoned beasts and warriors—­and Sheba’s Queen in the van of this vision of “Oriental magnificence.”  These elegant fragments bear a richer interest than the solemn vastness of the stones the Jews kiss in the Place of Wailing can ever have for the heedless sinner.

Down in the hollow ground, underneath the olives and the orange-trees that flourish in the court of the great Mosque, is a wilderness of pillars—­remains of the ancient Temple; they supported it.  There are ponderous archways down there, also, over which the destroying “plough” of prophecy passed harmless.  It is pleasant to know we are disappointed, in that we never dreamed we might see portions of the actual Temple of Solomon, and yet experience no shadow of suspicion that they were a monkish humbug and a fraud.

We are surfeited with sights.  Nothing has any fascination for us, now, but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  We have been there every day, and have not grown tired of it; but we are weary of every thing else.  The sights are too many.  They swarm about you at every step; no single foot of ground in all Jerusalem or within its neighborhood seems to be without a stirring and important history of its own.  It is a very relief to steal a walk of a hundred yards without a guide along to talk unceasingly about every stone you step upon and drag you back ages and ages to the day when it achieved celebrity.

It seems hardly real when I find myself leaning for a moment on a ruined wall and looking listlessly down into the historic pool of Bethesda.  I did not think such things could be so crowded together as to diminish their interest.  But in serious truth, we have been drifting about, for several days, using our eyes and our ears more from a sense of duty than any higher and worthier reason.  And too often we have been glad when it was time to go home and be distressed no more about illustrious localities.

Our pilgrims compress too much into one day.  One can gorge sights to repletion as well as sweetmeats.  Since we breakfasted, this morning, we have seen enough to have furnished us food for a year’s reflection if we could have seen the various objects in comfort and looked upon them deliberately.  We visited the pool of Hezekiah, where David saw Uriah’s wife coming from the bath and fell in love with her.

We went out of the city by the Jaffa gate, and of course were told many things about its Tower of Hippicus.

We rode across the Valley of Hinnom, between two of the Pools of Gihon, and by an aqueduct built by Solomon, which still conveys water to the city.  We ascended the Hill of Evil Counsel, where Judas received his thirty pieces of silver, and we also lingered a moment under the tree a venerable tradition says he hanged himself on.