ng the cypress groves. The palm-tree trembles as
it passes, as if it were a spirit of wo. Is it the breeze that has
traveled over the plain of Sharon from the sea?

Or is it the haunting voices of prophets mourning over the city that
they could not save? Their spirits surely would linger on the land
where their Creator had deigned to dwell, and over whose impending
fate Omnipotence had shed human tears. From this Mount! Who can but
believe that, at the midnight hour, from the summit of the Ascension,
the great departed of Israel assembled to gaze upon the battlements of
their mystic city! There might be counted heroes and sages, who need
shrink from no rivalry with the brightest and the wisest of other
lands; but the lawgiver of the time of the Pharaohs, whose laws are
still obeyed; the monarch, whose reign has ceased for three thousand
years, but whose wisdom is a proverb in all nations of the earth; the
teacher, whose doctrines have modeled civilized Europe--the greatest
of legislators, the greatest of administrators, and the greatest of
reformers--what race, extinct or living, can produce three such men
as these!

The last light is extinguished in the village of Bethany. The wailing
breeze has become a moaning wind; a white film spreads over the purple
sky; the stars are veiled, the stars are hid; all becomes as dark as
the waters of Kedron and valley of Jehoshaphat. The tower of David
merges into obscurity; no longer glitter the minarets of the mosque of
Omar; Bethesda's angelic waters, the gate of Stephen, the street of
sacred sorrow, the hill of Salem, and the heights of Scopas can no
longer be discerned. Alone in the increasing darkness, while the very
line of the walls gradually eludes the eye, the church of the Holy
Sepulcher is a beacon-light.

And why is the church of the Holy Sepulcher a beacon-light? Why, when
it is already past the noon of darkness, when every soul slumbers in
Jerusalem, and not a sound disturbs the deep repose except the howl of
the wild dog crying to the wilder wind--why is the cupola of the
sanctuary illumined, tho the hour has long since been numbered, when
pilgrims there kneel and monks pray?

An armed Turkish guard are bivouacked in the court of the church;
within the church itself, two brethren of the convent of Terra Santa
keep holy watch and ward; while, at the tomb beneath, there kneels a
solitary youth, who prostrated himself at sunset, and who will there
pass unmoved the w