e
of Rome: for all Europe has heard of Zion and of Calvary, while the
Arab and the Assyrian, and the tribes and nations beyond, are as
ignorant of the Capitoline and Aventine mounts as they are of the
Malvern or the Chiltern hills.

[Footnote 12: From "Tancred."]

The broad steep of Zion crowned with the tower of David; nearer
still, Mount Moriah, with the gorgeous temple of the God of Abraham,
but, built, alas! by the child of Hagar, and not by Sarah's chosen
one; close to its cedars and its cypresses, its lofty spires and airy
arches, the moonlight falls upon Bethesda's pool; further on, entered
by the gate of St. Stephen, the eye, tho 'tis the noon of night,
traces with ease the Street of Grief, a long winding ascent to a vast
cupolaed pile that now covers Calvary--called the Street of Grief,
because there the most illustrious of the human, as well as of the
Hebrew race, the descendant of King David, and the divine son of the
most favored of women, twice sank under that burden of suffering and
shame which is now throughout all Christendom the emblem of triumph
and of honor; passing over groups and masses of houses built of stone,
with terraced roofs, or surmounted with small domes, we reach the hill
of Salem, where Melchisedek built his mystic citadel; and still
remains the hill of Scopas, where Titus gazed upon Jerusalem on the
eve of his final assault. Titus destroyed the temple. The religion of
Judea has in turn subverted the fanes which were raised to his father
and to himself in their imperial capital; and the God of Abraham, of
Isaac, and of Jacob is now worshiped before every altar in Rome.

Jerusalem by moonlight! 'Tis a fine spectacle, apart from all its
indissoluble associations of awe and beauty. The mitigating hour
softens the austerity of a mountain landscape magnificent in outline,
however harsh and severe in detail; and, while it retains all its
sublimity, removes much of the savage sternness of the strange and
unrivaled scene. A fortified city, almost surrounded by ravines, and
rising in the center of chains of far-spreading hills, occasionally
offering, through their rocky glens, the gleams of a distant and
richer land!

The moon has sunk behind the Mount of Olives, and the stars in the
darker sky shine doubly bright over the sacred city. The
all-prevailing stillness is broken by a breeze, that seems to have
traveled over the plain of Sharon from the sea. It wails among the
tombs, and sighs amo