and again, that "Pompey himself filled up the ditch that was on the north side of the temple, and the entire valley also; adding, that it was indeed a hard thing to fill up that valley, by reason of its immense depth." But Strabo is more particular, for he says that it was 60 feet deep, and 250 feet broad."

e

The above is all that appears necessary of the general history of Jerusalem, and if we enter the gates, and endeavour to describe the city from Scripture, we shall have much fewer intimations of its streets and buildings than we would imagine. We know, indeed, that there were four different eminences on which the city stood, but we read of few public buildings except Millo, the armoury, the court of the prison, and the governor's house, and a few only of the names of the streets have survived the lapse of time. Thus we have the east street mentioned in 2 Chron. xxix. 4. xxxii. 6; the street of the house of God in Ezra x. 9; the street of the watergate, and the street of the gate of Ephraim in Neh. viii. 16; and the baker's street in Jer. xxxvii. 21. Josephus gives us some additional notices, which have been arranged by Lamy and D'Anville, but I shall content myself with referring to their works."

As to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, on the 10th day of the month Abib, A. D. 70, it hath become proverbial. I shall, therefore, only remark concerning the numbers which were then sold or destroyed; that those who were carried away captive, during the whole

* War, i. 7.

b Lib. xxi. p. 763. lib. vi. 11, 12.

See Tacitus's Account of Jerusalem in his Historiar. 1 Kings ix, 24. d Cant. iv. 4. e Jer. xxxii. 2.

f Matt. xxvii. 2. 8 Bernardus Lamy, Lib. iv. cap. 1-7, treats largely of the city of Jerusalem, its gates, towers, circuit, public and private buildings; and D'Anville, in his Dissertation on the extent of ancient Jerusalem, its temple, and the Hebrew measures of length, detects a number of Lamy's errors.

war, were computed at 97,000, and those who perished during the siege at 1,100,000 ;" and Archbishop Usher, from Lypsius, out of Josephus, states, that the whole multitude of Jews that were destroyed during the whole war, in all the countries of and bordering on Judea, was no fewer than 1,337,490.

There are now few remains of the city either as it was in the days of our Saviour, or as it was afterwards rebuilt by Adrian, scarcely one stone being left upon another that hath not been thrown down. Dr. Shaw tells us, that "Its very situation is greatly altered, for mount Zion, the highest part of the old Jerusalem, is now excluded, while the places adjoining to mount Calvary, where Christ suffered without the gate, are now almost in its centre." This new Jerusalem, then, as, it may be called, when compared with the old, is a modern city, and when Maundrell measured it, he found it to be two English miles and a half in circumference. Dr. Clarke visited it in July 1801, and gave the following description: "We had not been prepared," says he, "for the grandeur of the spectacle which the city alone exhibited. Instead of a wretched and ruined town, by some described as the desolated remnant of Jerusalem, we beheld, as it were, a flourishing and stately metropolis, presenting a magnificent assemblage of domes, towers, palaces, churches, and monasteries, all of which, glittering in the sun's rays, shone with inconceivable splendor. As we drew nearer, our whole attention was engrossed by its noble and interesting appearance. The lofty hills, whereby it is surrounded, give to the city itself an appearance of elevation inferior to that which it really possesses."-Chateaubriand visited it five years after in A. D. 1806, and his account, though equally true, is less

Joseph, War, vi, 9.

enthusiastic.

"On foot," says he, "if you keep close to the walls, it takes scarcely an hour to make the circuit of Jerusalem. The walls form an oblong square, the four sides facing the four winds, and the longest running from west to east, two points of the compass to the south. They are flanked with square towers, and may be, on the platform of the bastions, about 30 feet thick, and 120 feet high, having no other ditches than the valleys surrounding the city. When seen from the mount of Olives, on the other side of the valley of Jehoshaphat, Jerusalem presents an inclined plane, descending from west to east. An embattled wall, fortified with towers and a Gothic castle, encompasses the city all round, excluding, however, part of Mount Zion, which it formerly enclosed. In the western quarter, and in the centre of the city towards Calvary, the houses stand very close; but in the eastern part, along the brook Cedron, you perceive vacant spaces, among the rest that which surrounds the mosque erected on the ruins of the temple, and the nearly deserted spot, where once stood the castle of Antonia, and the second palace of Herod. "The houses of Jerusalem," he adds, " are heavy square masses, very low, without chimnies or windows: they have flat terraces, or domes on the top, and look like prisons or sepulchres. The whole would appear to the eye one uninterrupted level, did not the steeples of the churches, the minarets of the mosques, the summits of a few cypresses, and the clumps of nopals, break the uniformity of the plan.” I shall only add, what Captain Light says of this celebrated city when he visited it, A. D. 1814. "Jerusalem," says he, "known to the natives of Syria only by the name of El Kodts, a contraction for Medinat-el-Kadess, that is, the sacred city, stands on the

west side of a valley, of which the east is the mount of Olives. It contains within its walls several of the hills on which the ancient city was supposed to have stood; but these are only perceptible by the ascent and descent of the streets. The town, viewed from the Mount of Olives, appears lying on the inclined plane of the side of the valley, on which it stands, having all its principal buildings exposed to sight, in an oblong inclosure by walls. The streets are narrow, and without pavement: the houses are seen to more advantage from the hills about the town; whence the cupolas give even an air of grandeur to them. The population is said to be twelve thousand, of which the largest portion is Musselmen; but of the sects, the greatest is that of the Jews, and the rest are composed of Christians of the east, belonging either to the Armenian, Greek, Latin, or Coptish sects."a

SECT. III.

Jewish Atmosphere, and its Phenomena.

Day and night antipodes; dews abundant; rain; snow; frost; hail; land and sea breezes; tornadoes; water-spouts; hurricanes; sand wind; hot wind of the desert; Samoom or Samiel; coup du soleil; the Serab, or visionary lake of the desert; thunder; lightning; aurora borealis, the reason why never mentioned by the ancients. The winds in Judea: east wind; the Euroclydon; : the west wind; the north and south winds.

THE atmosphere of every country is composed of nearly the same materials, being all those parts of the original chaotic mass which were rendered volatile and permanently elastic by means of heat, and which are mixed with all those exhalations that are constantly arising from animals and vegetables. In a chemical

point of view, it is composed of twenty-one parts bulk of oxygen, or the basis of pure air, and seventy-nine of azote or foul air very nearly; but it is very different in weight in different elevations, and even in the same elevation at different times, from the addition or loss of those vapours, which are constantly ascending from or returning to, the earth's surface. Hence the variations which are visible every day in the barometer. But besides the general laws which regulate all climates, every individual country has its atmosphere affected by local circumstances. Thus, the geographical situation of Judea has a peculiar effect on the column of air which is suspended over it. Casting a bird's-eye glance over that district from west to east, we have three leading varieties: first, a gradual rise from the Mediterranean to the top of the mountains; secondly, a gradual descent from the top of the mountains to the river Jordan; and thirdly, another ascent from the river Jordan to the top of the mountains of Gilead. It is easy to see that, from the situation and degree of latitude, the district nearest the sea will have its otherwise natural temperature cooled by its vicinity to that element, which is nearly the same summer and winter, or 48° of Fahrenheit; and that the deep vale of Jordan will be warm like an oven; while the ridges of mountains on either side will often feel exceedingly cold: for cold is both relative and real : relative, when a person with open pores ascends from a warm to a cold elevation; and real, because the air is there chill from its increasing rarity, and the want of reflection of the sun's rays from an extended, solid, and heated surface. Hence we are told, that the cold is great on Mount Sinai, Lebanon, Antilibanus, and the other high mountains, while the valleys below have excessive heat; and that the persons visiting, or residing