eyond
the region of passports.

George Bertram had promised himself that the moment in which he first
saw Jerusalem should be one of intense mental interest; and when,
riding away from the orange gardens at Jaffa, he had endeavoured to
urge his Arab steed into that enduring gallop which was to carry him
up to the city of the sepulchre, his heart was ready to melt into
ecstatic pathos as soon as that gallop should have been achieved.
But the time for ecstatic pathos had altogether passed away before
he rode in at that portal. He was then swearing vehemently at his
floundering jade, and giving up to all the fiends of Tartarus the
accursed saddle which had been specially contrived with the view of
lacerating the nether Christian man.

"Where on earth is this d---- hotel?" said he, when he and his
dragoman and portmanteau had been floundering for about five minutes
down a steep, narrow, ill-paved lane, with a half-formed gully in
the middle, very slippery with orange-peel and old vegetables, and
crowded with the turbans of all the Eastern races. "Do you call this
a street?" After all his sentiment, all his emotions, all his pious
resolves, it was thus that our hero entered Jerusalem! But what piety
can withstand the wear and tear of twelve hours in a Turkish saddle?

"Is this a street?" said he. It was the main street in Jerusalem. The
first, or among the first in grandeur of those sacred ways which he
had intended hardly to venture to pass with shoes on his feet. His
horse turning a corner as he followed the dragoman again slipped and
almost fell. Whereupon Bertram again cursed. But then he was not
only tired and sore, but very hungry also. Our finer emotions should
always be encouraged with a stomach moderately full.

At last they stopped at a door in a wall, which the dragoman
pronounced to be the entrance of Z----'s hotel. In fact they had not
yet been full ten minutes within the town; but the streets certainly
were not well paved. In five minutes more, George was in his room,
strewing sofas and chairs with the contents of his portmanteau, and
inquiring with much energy what was the hour fixed for the table
d'hote. He found, with much inward satisfaction, that he had just
twenty minutes to prepare himself. At Jerusalem, as elsewhere, these
after all are the traveller's first main questions. When is the table
d'hote? Where is the cathedral? At what hour does the train start
to-morrow morning? It will be some years y