ead of the close white handkerchief which served it for covering,
made the survey at leisure.

The same has been done often since by a great variety of persons,
under circumstances surpassingly singular--by the son of Vespasian,
by the Islamite, by the Crusader, conquerors all of them; by many
a pilgrim from the great New World, which waited discovery nearly
fifteen hundred years after the time of our story; but of the
multitude probably not one has taken that view with sensations
more keenly poignant, more sadly sweet, more proudly bitter,
than Ben-Hur. He was stirred by recollections of his countrymen,
their triumphs and vicissitudes, their history the history of God.
The city was of their building, at once a lasting testimony of their
crimes and devotion, their weakness and genius, their religion and
their irreligion. Though he had seen Rome to familiarity, he was
gratified. The sight filled a measure of pride which would have
made him drunk with vainglory but for the thought, princely as
the property was, it did not any longer belong to his countrymen;
the worship in the Temple was by permission of strangers; the hill
where David dwelt was a marbled cheat--an office in which the chosen
of the Lord were wrung and wrung for taxes, and scourged for very
deathlessness of faith. These, however, were pleasures and griefs
of patriotism common to every Jew of the period; in addition,
Ben-Hur brought with him a personal history which would not out
of mind for other consideration whatever, which the spectacle
served only to freshen and vivify.

A country of hills changes but little; where the hills are of rock,
it changes not at all. The scene Ben-Hur beheld is the same now,
except as respects the city. The failure is in the handiwork of
man alone.

The sun dealt more kindly by the west side of Olivet than by the
east, and men were certainly more loving towards it. The vines
with which it was partially clad, and the sprinkling of trees,
chiefly figs and old wild olives, were comparatively green. Down to
the dry bed of the Cedron the verdure extended, a refreshment to
the vision; there Olivet ceased and Moriah began--a wall of bluff
boldness, white as snow, founded by Solomon, completed by Herod. Up,
up the wall the eye climbed course by course of the ponderous rocks
composing it--up to Solomon's Porch, which was as the pedestal of
the monument, the hill being the plinth. Lingering there a moment,
the eye resumed its clim