does not notice this circumstance) that a large number of the partisans of Eleazar fled, when the Temple was perfidiously seized by John of Gischala, and were allowed to withdraw on capitulation. It was from these, that after the siege the great leader Simon, the son of Gioras, suddenly arose, clad in purple and white, to the astonishment of the Roman soldiery. But we do not remember that any earlier or later writer has noticed one singular circumstance connected with this descent and reappearance of Simon, which is thus described by Mr. Milman:

Many days after, towards the end of October, when Titus had left the city, as some of the Roman soldiers were reposing amid the ruins of the Temple, they were surprised by the sudden apparition of a man in white raiment and with a robe of purple, who seemed to rise from the earth in silent and imposing dignity. At first they stood awe-struck and motionless; at length they ventured to approach him; they encircled him, and demanded his name. He answered "Simon, the son of Gioras; call hither your general." Terentius Rufus was speedily summoned, and to him the brave though cruel defender of Jerusalem surrendered himself. On the loss of the city, Simon had leaped down into one of the vaults, with a party of miners, hewers of stone, and ironworkers. For some distance they had followed the natural windings of the cavern, and then attempted to dig their way out beyond the walls; but their provisions, however carefully husbanded, failed, and Simon determined on the bold measure of attempting to overawe the Romans by his sudden and spectral appearance.'-Hist. of the Jews, vol. iii. p. 67, 2nd edit.

Now the subterranean passage into which Simon withdrew must have been in the Upper City, as the Temple and the whole of the hill of Moriah had for some time been in the possession of the Romans. Simon, therefore, must have made his way under the Tyropoon, and under or through the foundation walls of the Temple, into those crypts which probably extend under a great part of Mount Moriah. There is no calculating, therefore, what subterranean discoveries may be hereafter made. The crypts, as they are now known actually to exist, have been hastily visited by some few travellers, and mentioned in terms of vague wonder and curiosity by Christian and Mahometan writers, and rumours have always prevailed of their vast extent. Dr. Robinson inserts the report of Mr. Catherwood descriptive of the part which he visited, accompanied with a ground-plan. Mr. Catherwood is the same accomplished English Architect and draughtsman, whom we meet again as the companion of Mr. Stephens among the ancient cities of Central America :

From information and plans kindly communicated to me by Mr. Catherwood, who with his companions examined and measured these subterranean structures without hindrance in 1833, it appears that these

vaults,

raults, so far as they are now accessible to strangers, were originally formed by some fifteen rows of square pillars, measuring about five feet on a side, built of large bevelled stones, and extending from the southern wall northwards to an unknown extent. The intervals between the rows are usually, though not entirely, regular; and the pillars of some of the ranges are of a somewhat larger size. In each row the pillars are connected together by semicircular arches; and then the vault, resting upon every two rows, is formed by a lower arch, consisting of a smaller segment of a circle. The circumstance mentioned by Richardson, that the pillars have a much older appearance than the arches which they support, was not noticed by the three artists. From the entrance at the S.E. corner of the Haram for about 120 feet westward, these ranges of vaults extend northwards nearly 200 feet, where they are shut up by a wall of more modern date. For about 150 feet further west the vaults are closed up in like manner at less than 100 feet from the southern wall; and to judge from the wells and openings above ground, it would seem as if they had been thus walled up in order that the northern portion of them might be converted into cisterns. Beyond this part, towards the west, they again extend still further north. They are here terminated on the west, before reaching el-Aksa,* by a like wall filling up the intervals of one of the rows of pillars. How much further they originally extended westward is unknown, not improbably quite to the western wall of the enclosure, where are now said to be immense cisterns.

'The ground in these vaults rises rapidly towards the north, the southernmost columns with the double arches being about thirty-five feet in height, while those in the northern parts are little more than ten feet high. The surface of the ground is everywhere covered with small heaps of stones, the memorials of innumerable pilgrims who have here paid their devotions. It is a singular circumstance that the roots of the large olive-trees growing upon the area of the Haram above have in many places forced their way down through the arches, and still descending have again taken root in the soil at the bottom of the vaults.'-vol. i. pp. 448-50.

So far as to some of the more remarkable Jewish antiquities illustrated by these Researches '—their result, as to the Christian antiquities, is not, we regret to say, so favourable, for though we ourselves have long been persuaded that the legends concerning the Holy Places are for every reason, geographical as well as historical, utterly untenable, we were prepared to surrender our enforced, but neither cherished nor pleasing convictions at the slightest show of authority, and would gladly have been relieved from the unpleasant burden of our disbelief. Dr. Robinson appears to have been impressed with the same feelings, and to have entered

* The distance from the S.E. corner of the Haram to the eastern wall of el-Aksa, according to Mr. Catherwood's plans, is about 475 feet; while from the same corner to the western side of the vaults now open to visitors is only about 320 feet.'

Jerusalem

Jerusalem with an earnest desire, at any small sacrifice of probability, to believe that in the church of the Holy Sepulchre we might kneel on the actual spot in which the Son of Man reposed and rose again. The monkish tradition, we fear there is no better authority, has not been content with fixing the scene of the Lord's sepulchre, but has conveniently arranged around it, at very little distance, all the other places sanctified by the sad incidents of his last hours.

The place of our Lord's crucifixion, as we are expressly informed, was without the gate of the ancient city, and yet nigh to the city. The sepulchre, we are likewise told, was nigh at hand, in a garden, in the place where Jesus was crucified. It is not therefore without some feeling of wonder that a stranger, unacquainted with the circumstances, on arriving in Jerusalem at the present day, is pointed to the place of crucifixion and the sepulchre in the midst of the modern city, and both beneath one roof. This latter fact, however unexpected, might occasion less surprise, for the sepulchre was nigh to Calvary. But beneath the same roof are further shown the stone on which the body of our Lord was anointed for burial, the fissure in the rock, the holes in which the crosses stood, the spot where the true cross was found by Helena, and various other places said to have been connected with the history of the crucifixion, most of which it must have been difficult to identify even after the lapse of only three centuries, and particularly so at the present day, after the desolations and numerous changes which the whole place has undergone.'-vol. ii. pp. 64, 65.

The glaring objection as to the locality of the present church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the difficulty of so drawing the line of the ancient walls as to exclude this site from the city, has not for the first time in this critical, as it is so often anathematized, this sceptical and rationalizing age, awakened suspicion and mistrust. Even the most devout were occasionally disturbed, and among the early pilgrims, at least the earliest writers, are heard murmurs of doubt and uncertainty. These murmurs deepen as we approach more modern times; and they are strongest among those who have actually visited the spot. The doubts, in fact, have rather forced themselves on believers than grown slowly up out of a sceptical turn of mind. In modern times this point has been more strongly questioned by Roman Catholic than by Protestant writers. One argument appears to us absolutely insuperable. To exclude the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the ancient city, that is the part between the western wall and the hill of the Temple, must be narrowed to less than a quarter of a mile, the measured distance from the Temple Mount to the Church-less, as Dr. Robinson observes, than some of the squares in London and New York; and this is in a quarter of the city which we have every reason to believe was very populous. And at this precise

spot

spot the walls must be drawn in in an extraordinary curve, in no way required, or indeed permitted by the conformation of the land; and we must admit no suburbs beyond-although, doubtless, at this flourishing period of the city its suburbs must have extended, where not prevented by the precipitous ravines, to some distance from the actual walls. Against such inexplicable difficulties the historical evidence must be clear and decisive; the tradition early, consistent, unbroken, and probable. Dr. Robinson has done M. Châteaubriand the honour of selecting him as the champion of the traditionary opinion. In general we should think a cause not very fairly treated which should be judged on the statement of a writer for effect, one especially whose inaccuracies are perhaps unrivalled in his own class. In this case, however, though Châteaubriand has incorporated some of the greatest improbabilities in his statement, we do not think that he has overlooked any circumstance which might strengthen his argument.

'Châteaubriand has furnished us with the clearest and most plausible statement of the historic testimonies and probabilities, which may be supposed to have had an influence in determining the spot; and from him later writers have drawn their chief arguments. I give an epitome of his remarks. The first Christian church, he says, at Jerusalem, was gathered immediately after the resurrection and ascension of our Lord, and soon became very numerous. All its members must have had a knowledge of the sacred places. They doubtless also consecrated buildings for their worship, and would naturally erect them on sites rendered memorable by miracles. Not improbably the Holy Sepulchre itself was already honoured in this manner. At any rate there was a regular succession of Jewish Christian bishops, from the Apostle James down to the time of Adrian, who could not but have preserved the Christian traditions; and although during the siege by Titus the church withdrew to Pella, yet they soon returned and established themselves among the ruins. In the course of a few months' absence they could not have forgotten the position of their sanctuaries, which, moreover, being generally without the walls, had probably not suffered greatly from the siege. And that the sacred places were generally known in the age of Adrian, is proved incontestably by the fact that in rebuilding Jerusalem that emperor set up a statue of Venus upon Calvary, and one of Jupiter over the Holy Sepulchre. Thus the folly of idolatry, by its imprudent profanation, only made more public "the foolishness of the cross." From that time onward till the reign of Constantine there was again a regular succession of bishops of Gentile origin; and the sacred places could not of course have been forgotten.'-vol. ii. pp. 70, 71.,

Dr. Robinson, we think, has done full justice to Châteaubriand's statement. He acknowledges that it made a deep impression on his own mind, though this impression was again weakened and in part done away, when he afterwards goes on to

6

admit the alleged miracles which are said to have accompanied the finding of the cross.' Of all the miracles of Christian history of the same date these are the strangest and most incoherent—a fit foundation for the wild superstitions which grew out of the worship of the Cross, restored it, after it had been lost, to wondering Europe, and multiplied it till almost every celebrated church in Europe could boast of one of the numberless fragments, which put together, it has been said, would make a man-of-war. All testimony after this period, that of Helena and of Constantine, is of course entirely irrelevant, as no one doubts that the church of the Holy Sepulchre stands on the site of that built by Constantine. Dr. Robinson has been dispassionate, almost to tenderness, in his treatment of this poetic statement. Some of the objections he has put well; others, we think, are even more forcible than they have appeared to him. Every one must admit that the early Christians (the earliest) must have had a knowledge of the places where the Lord was crucified and buried,'-but of any peculiar sanctity attached to these places there is not, as our author rightly observes, the slightest vestige in the writings of the New Testament, neither in the Gospels, nor the writings of the Apostles. On the contrary, the whole tenor of our Lord's teaching, and that of Paul's, and indeed every part of the New Testament, was directed to draw off the minds of men from an attachment to particular times and places, and to lead the true worshippers to worship God, not merely at Jerusalem or in Mount Gerizim, but everywhere, "in spirit and in truth." Still, however, the human heart is strong, and, resisting in this as well as in many weightier matters the influence of pure and spiritual Christianity, it would refuse to detach its reverence from places thus sanctified by the presence, by the sufferings, by the resurrection of the Redeemer-it would cling in fond reminiscence to the spot, and in peaceful times point out to succeeding generations those hallowed scenes. But the next step in the tradition is a bold one-that they had any separate consecrated buildings which could be called by the name of churches in the apostolic times, or much later, we scarcely supposed would have been asserted by Roman Catholic or Protestant. Tillemont and Moyle only dispute about a short reign or two in the Roman empire, as to the date of the first, properly called, churches. But that these premature churches should be built at or close to Jerusalem itself-in the midst of the jealous and hostile Jews-that they should be built to reproach, as it were, the party which was dominant in the city till its destruction by the Romans, with their national crime in rejecting the Messiah, and putting to death the Lord of life'-that the church of the Holy Sepulchre should be permitted to confront, as it were, the Temple