Tristram. Porter, and Burton. But to our own day has been reserved the #. LIg the first systematic scientific researches, and these have been prosecuted 1-fang zeal by the Palestine Exploration Committee, with the aid of a band of Vive Tolled with enthusiasm and heroic resolution.

For

- L. Conuer Gray tells us that one city literally lies heaped upon another. 1 1000 no fewer than twenty-seven sieges-from Jebusites and Israelites, Egyptians 2=rians, Greeks and Romans, Mohammedans and Christians. The last and twenty* i took place in 1244, at the hands of the wild Kharezmian hordes, who plundered er and slaughtered the priests and monks. The explorers have thus had to do, not with ery but with many. The Jerusalem of to-day may be considered the eighth, for even time of David there was a city there. The second was the city of Solomon, iron L.C. 1000 to E.C. 57, a space of 400 years; the third that of Nehemiah, which ased for some 300 years; then came the magnificent city of Herod; then that Roman eny winch grew up on the ruin Titus had made; it again was followed by the Mohammedian city; and that in its turn by a Christian city; and now, for 600 years, the modern city has stood on the ruins of those that preceded it.

Rubbish and brie cover every foot of the ground save where the rock crops up at mervais. The rubbish is the wreck of all these cities piled one above the other. examine it we have to determine at every step, among the ruins of which city we are standing -Solomon, Nehemiah, Herod, Hadrian, Constantine, Omar, Godfrey, Saladin, Suleiman. Lach: ruin in turn represents a city.

In tracking the footsteps of the explorers let us go back to the Mosque El-Aksa, and descend, through a small arcade, to look at the artificial substructions of the Temple area. On our way we pause at a small mosque or oratory, where we are shown a large stone sarcophagus called the Cradle of Christ. In this mosque it is alleged Hebrew women used to await their confinement; here the aged Simeon took up the infant Saviour in his arms; here the Virgin tarried for a few days after the presentation in the Temple; and here she found her son with the Jewish doctors, hearing and answering questions. From here we descend to the magnificent vaults known as Solomon's Stables, brought to light by the workers of the Exploration Fund. They are vaulted avenues supported by immense pillars of massive stones placed singly one above the other. Perhaps twenty such avenues have been exposed, and each may have a dozen or fifteen of these mammoti pillars: at all events, they present a most imposing appearance, and it is impossible to see them without asking these artificial substructions, merely built for the purpose of extening the Ten put superstructure For I**

L. were so grand, what must have been the grandeur of the
Temple area was doubtless supported by piers and arches

sin ́ur le tue and now almost universally admitted that these are a re-construction.
Que of the Ter 112
fund to be an old lintel; others consisted of weather-worn
from the walk and a further proof that these are not the veritable works of
times a found a the perfect manner in which the vaulting joins in with the

Name of the ma“ ipotuit €1/avat os have been made on the outside of the Temple we sal in me fast jul sites of great interest; and it is to these,

rather than to the former, that we shall direct our attention, referring those who wish to know the scientific details of the work of the explorers to the numerous books which have in the past few years been published on the subject.*

Let us make our way to the Bab-el-Mughâribeh, or Gate of the Western Africans— called in Scripture the Dung Gate (Neh. iii. 13, 14)—then, passing through a jungle of cactus, reach the south-west wall of the Harâm, where some enormous blocks of stone, used in the construction of the plateau, may be seen. One stone seventy-five feet above the foundation is thirty-eight feet four inches long, three and a half high, and seven feet wide. Close by is the celebrated spring of the arch known as Robinson's Arch, which connected the Temple with the city of Zion by spanning the Tyropoon valley. The fragment consists of immense stones projecting from the wall, measuring from twenty to twenty-four feet each in length. The distance from here to the hill-side of Zion is three hundred and fifty feet, and that must have been the length of the ancient bridge.

It is in the Tyropoon valley, which cleaves the heart of Jerusalem, and along the southern front of the hill Moriah, where the site of the Temple is now occupied by the Mosque of Omar, that important excavations have in recent years been carried on. Shafts and galleries have been driven through the mass of rubbish which covers the base of the Temple rock, and have revealed the enormous depth to which it has accumulated. Through the debris the cyclopean walls supporting the Temple have been traced to a depth varying from sixty to ninety feet, and the wall itself has been shown to have reached at this point to a height of from one hundred and seventy to one hundred and eighty feet-a curious justification of a passage of Josephus, in which he describes the dizziness with which the spectator looked down into the valley beneath. The whole rock must have been honeycombed with aqueducts, cisterns, channels, and passages; thirty feet beneath the vaults, which had been known to exist at its south-eastern corner, a passage has been found leading into the solid substance of the wall, and indicating probably large substructions, where it is not unreasonable to look for discoveries of no little interest. Of the two great viaducts, which moored, as it were, the sacred rock of Moriah to the western and eastern hills of Zion and Olivet, the one most interesting to us, as the road by which Christ entered the Temple, has indeed wholly disappeared; but a single colossal abutment of the bridge which spanned the Tyropoon-the road by which the kings passed from Zion to Moriah-remains, and the researches of Captain Warren have proved it to have been one hundred and fifty feet in height. If this be-as Captain Warren supposes-the "ascent to the house of the Lord" which Solomon showed to the Queen of Sheba, we can hardly wonder that, on seeing it, "there was no spirit left in her."

The excavations disclosed, at a distance of sixty feet under the present surface of the soil, fragments of voussoirs, or bevelled stones, lying where they fell when, by some means or other unknown, the bridge was destroyed. The place in which they now lie scattered in confusion once formed the level of a street running under the arch, like the street in Edinburgh under the North Bridge, or that in London under the Holborn Viaduct. The excavations also laid open a vast conduit running under this ancient street, Especially to "The Recovery of Jerusalem," and "Underground Jerusalem." By Chas. Warren, Capt. R.E, F.G.S., &c.

referred the time of Herod, there is convincing proof that the present Haram was, in te une é or Lrd. induded within the circuit of the city wall.

.. i ower mont below Moriah, Captain Warren recognises the site of Solomon's Daler-ie Tas vich King Manasseh com passed about, and raised up to a very great ate tuam in List but much upon the wall" This wall, not many years * ever now seventy feet in height, having conjoined with it a great

1 soetang 1 see at last the mighty front of the Temple rock, as the Twelve weer tæer marveled at the great stones which were still fresh from the chisel of

Imperam as the discoveries have been under the auspices of the Palestine Exploration fter are probably few who will entirely endorse the claims put forth by Captain says, concerning the Temple: "We have been able to point out the ving Herd and the work of Solomon, and if it were necessary we could identify auto vas and alterations of the Roman Emperors. We can follow the description of aepius and the Talmudic accounts, and find everything fall into its place with the ease lety czy to be obtained from correct identifications. We can stand on the spot Tuen te sacrifices were made, where the high priest stood once a year before the ark of 12 DETT-RI, where St. Simeon received our Lord, where the Sanhedrim listened to His

stone where the money-changers' tables were overturned, where the lame man was Take Thok. Vhere St. Paul was carried up the steps to the Antonia, where St. James te Just so before he was cast down. All this information is the result of our ej stone, and though all do not agree with me in my indications, yet I find more C Fendi year."

bef we quitting the walls of the Temple we must refer to one spot familiar to every me from the countless pictures and other illustrations of it to be met with everywhere.

spot is the Jews' Wailing-place, under the western wall of the Haram, their only bemagt in their own city. It is a little narrow court, close by the miserable hovels of the Mirebins, or Moslems from the north-west of Africa. But in this court rises the celebrated wall, fifty-two yards long and fifty-six in height, of massive stones-one being sixteen feet and one thirteen in length-all that is left to the Jews of their marvellous Temple. It is one of the most affecting sights in that city of strange memories to see the ancient people" standing there, psalter in hand, wailing out words which have a singular significance in that place. The place is sacred with the tears of many generatoons, for even so far back as the time of Jerome we find him making an affecting allus to the mourners who, in his day, paid the Roman soldiers for allowing them to go and weep over the ruins of their Temple. And many a time since then have those old vals echoed back this passionate ery: "Zion is a wilderness, Jerasalem a desolation. Our y and our beautiful house where our fathers praised Thee is burned up with fire, and pleasant things are laid waste! O God, the heathen are come into Thine inherit2% Tay Holy Temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps. How long, Le Wilt Thou be angry for ever?"

On Fridays, and on great Jewish festivals, it is a painful sight to see the groups of