cent is lifted above the spot where, on
that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared the
Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode
at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their ships,
was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its
borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin;
Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have
vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round about them
where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice and ate
the miraculous bread sleep in the hush of a solitude that is
inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.

Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise?
Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?

It would be easy to quote pages here--a pictorial sequence from
Gibraltar to Athens, from Athens to Egypt, a radiant panoramic march.
In time he would write technically better. He would avoid solecism, he
would become a greater master of vocabulary and phrase, but in all the
years ahead he would never match the lambent bloom and spontaneity of
those fresh, first impressions of Mediterranean lands and seas. No need
to mention the humor, the burlesque, the fearless, unrestrained ridicule
of old masters and of sacred relics, so called. These we have kept
familiar with much repetition. Only, the humor had grown more subtle,
more restrained; the burlesque had become impersonal and harmless, the
ridicule so frank and good-natured, that even the old masters themselves
might have enjoyed it, while the most devoted churchman, unless blinded
by bigotry, would find in it satisfaction, rather than sacrilege.

The final letter was written for the New York Herald after the arrival,
and was altogether unlike those that preceded it. Gaily satirical and
personal--inclusively so--it might better have been left unwritten,
for it would seem to have given needless offense to a number of goodly
people, whose chief sin was the sedateness of years. However, it is all
past now, and those who were old then, and perhaps queer and pious and
stingy, do not mind any more, and those who were young and frivolous
have all grown old too, and most of them have set out on the still
farther voyage. Somewhere, it may be, they gather, now; and then, and
lightly, tenderly recall their old-time journeying.

LXIII. IN WA