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out in very good humor to look at the lions "and other savages" of Jebilee. And first the theatre. This majestic old Roman edifice will probably continue to stand thousands of years, dimly shadowing forth the wealth, magnificence and gaiety of the good people of Jebilee in days of yore. It is a semicircle whose radius is 150 feet, outer circumference 450 feet, which agrees well with my measurement, although I could not complete the measurement on account of some huts erected against the wall. The portico, the orchestra, the scene, etc. are all gone, but the cavea is nearly perfect with its concentric ranks of seats divided by their praecinctiones, cunei, etc. quite distinguishable. Beneath the seats are the dens for lions and beasts of savage name. They are very spacious, and in good preservation. Several parts of the cavea are occupied by mean Arab huts, and the place of the scena is a sheepfold for half the town. All the columns and other architectural ornaments have been carried off.

Jebilee has a small harbor, once defended at the entrance by very many piers, the stones eleven feet long by six wide. Above these stood a temple I suppose. More than forty granite columns have tumbled into the sea. The rock in place is petrified coral, the only example of the kind I have found on the coast of Syria.

Started for Ladakîa about seven o'clock, having around us a crowd of the daily pensioners upon the bounty of sultan Ibrahim-assembled for their breakfast―a noisy, filthy, lazy rabble. Such an institution as this, is a nurse of idleness, pauperism and vice, especially in a country like Syria, where the climate, the religion, and the habits of the people tend to create a recklessness of the future, and a disgust of steady industry. Nor is there any necessity. Whoever will work has a wide field and plenty of unoccupied land before him.

In half an

From Jebilee to Ladakîa is a ride of five or six hours-the distance not far from twenty miles-a desert without a village. hour is Nahr Rumeileh. In another hour N. er-Roos, where is a broken bridge, and below it a very large artificial mound covered with the rubbish of a very ancient town. It was once fortified with a wall, and a ditch at least 100 feet wide. The circumference is somewhat more than a mile, and the present elevation may be fifty feet. We rode to the next river in fifty-nine minutes-called Mudîyuke. It once had a bridge; the banks are marshy, and it is celebrated as the scene of many robberies. To N. Snubar is thirty minutes. This river has forsaken its former channel-a good bridge now stands useless over the original bed of the stream. From this to N. Kebeer is a good hour, and the same distance thence to Ladakîa. The bridge over N. Kebeer was broken down last winter, and travellers find much

difficulty in crossing during the rainy reason. The whole route from Jebilee to Ladakîa is over a level plain, with the sea at no great distance to the left.

Ladakîa was built, or at least repaired, enlarged, and named by Seleucus Nicator. I obtained a large silver coin, with his name on it. There are many traces of Phenician work about this place, and the superiority of its harbor over all others on the Syrian coast, for purposes of ancient shipping, must have caused a city to spring up around it in the remotest times. The name and history of the original city, have perished together;-not so the tombs of its inhabitants. These are found on the north and west of the present town-rooms, crypts, and sarcophagi-almost without number hewn in the solid rock, of all shapes and sizes, from the small baby nich eighteen inches long, to spacious apartments with side niches long enough and large enough for the last repose of a whole generation of Anakims. A peep into one will give an idea of the rest. A descending passage twentytwo feet long, cut down through the solid rock, conducts you by eleven good steps to a low door, and into a room 19 feet square. Each side of this room has four large niches dug into the rock at right angles to the side, and each capable of containing two bodies. The height of the vault is six feet, but the rooms are partially filled with the accumulated rubbish of ages. No bones are found in any of them. They were empty relics of antiquity during the first century of the Christian era; and how much earlier I know not. Their prodigious number, and the great expense of making them, speak with certainty of a numerous and wealthy people. These sepulchres resemble those found in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, and in many places along the Phenician coast. One of the largest is called Mar Tukleh; and there is a tradition that this celebrated young lady and saint, in one of her flights, concealed herself in this tomb, where she received the visits of the devout, and united with them in their secret worship. There is a well of water in this tomb, and on the festival of her ladyship, prayers and masses are performed there with great solemnity. It is nothing strange that the primitive Christians assembled in such tombs as these for worship when persecution raged. They are large, dry,

and hidden from view.

The harbor is at the extreme west point of the cape or headland of Ladakîa. It is a circular basin of water capable of containing some twenty brigs and other small craft, and might be greatly enlarged. It was protected by a wall on the sea-side, and the narrow entrance is commanded by a strong tower. Granite columns have been plentifully used in constructing these defences, which proves them to be,

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not the work of the original inhabitants of the place, but probably Roman. I need not speak of the city itself, of the columns found in many places, nor of the triumphal arch. These things are described by all travellers.

Ladakîa, with a Greek population of not more than 1000, has five Greek churches, an Armenian church with but one worshipper, and a Latin chapel with a few Catholic families. The Moslems number 4000, and have many handsome mosques. The Christians of all sects are pleasant and sociable, and the wealthier families have a strong leaning to Frank habits. Ladakîa has now but little trade. Not half the magazines at the Mîneh are used; the remainder are gradually falling to ruin. Nor do I see reason to expect that this process of decay will be arrested. Scandaroon has diverted the Aleppo trade, and the surrounding country is becoming more and more impoverished and depopulated. Tobacco is the main article of export, and that is falling off. The following table of the yearly exports was given me by the British consular agent, himself a principal merchant.

hours to Bahlulîah,

Nov. 3rd. Started for Aleppo, and rode 5 the head of the district of the same name. At the end of the first hour, passed a small village called Skûbîn, from which to Jendîyeh is an hour and a half. Thence to the ford of Nahr Kebeer one hour, near Damat. The next village is Restîn, from whence to Bahlulîyeh is half an hour. The road led over white marl plains and low hills, through which bluish green serpentine occasionally obtrudes. There are also localities of jasper and silicious shale. As we approach Bahlulîah the rock is limestone; and below the village are large beds of gypsum of the kind called selenite; the crystals are large, pure and transparent as glass. In the bed of N. Kebeer, along whose banks we rode for an hour, is an infinite quantity of trap boulders in rich variety, porous lava, vesicular, amygdaloid, globular basalt, compact greenstone, etc.; also geodes of each, spar chalcedony, quartz-chert, and

often all combined in a single specimen. The marl abounds in fossils extremely well preserved.

It is melancholy to ride a day through such a lovely country, without meeting a human being, or coming to a tree large enough to shelter one from the burning sun. I asked the sheikh of Bahlulîah why they did not plant orchards, cultivate their fields, and multiply their flocks on these beautiful hills. "Why should I plant a tree? said he; I shall not be allowed to eat the fruit of it. If I repair my old house, or build a new one, heavier exactions will surely fall upon me. To enlarge my fields, or increase my flock, would have the same effect. We grow only so much grain as we can conceal in wells and cisterns. How much tax we are to pay, and when a fresh demand is to be made, we never know. You see my village full of horsemen quartered upon us; it is always so. To-day it is, Give money; to-morrow it is barley; next day wheat; then tobacco, or butter, or honey, or-Allah knows what. Then some one has been robbed, somewhere or other, yesterday or some other day, or never, by some body or no body-it matters not-the horsemen come, and take whatever they can get. Now we have nothing left, they beat us, our wives and our children. Some of the people flee, the rest of us have horsemen quartered upon us until we bring back the runaways. Some, driven to desperation, really turn robbers in the wild jurd, which again adds to our sufferings. Why should we work for such a government? The curse of Allah rest upon their fathers! We can bear this no longer. In reality many are fleeing north to the plains of Adona, and the mountains of Sinjar."

At Bahlulîah I was taken sick; and as the fever did not yield to what medical skill we had at command, I was obliged to abandon the journey to Aleppo for the present. We returned to Ladakîa, and from thence by sea to Beirût. Subsequently I completed the tour to Aleppo and returned through the country by Jeble el-Aala, el-Baru, Apamea, Ribla, Humel, Baalbek, to Abieh in Lebanon. This was an interesting and somewhat untrodden route, which will be described in a future article. And if time and health permit, I may prepare a paper on the Ansairiyeh, Ismailiyeh, and other tribes which inhabit these districts, from materials collected during these tours.

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ARTICLE III.

DE WETTE'S COMMENTARY ON ROMANS 5: 12—19.

Translated by M. Stuart, Professor at Andover.

Introductory Remarks.

[Ir may be proper to state some reasons, why a portion of Commentary by De Wette on Rom. 5: 12-19 has been translated, and is here inserted.

Every one conversant with theology or exegesis knows what importance has been attached to the passage of Scripture in question. It is appealed to beyond all others, as peculiarly exhibiting the condition of fallen man, and the connection of his depravity and guilt with the fall of the first human pair. The doctrine of original sin, or (as the Germans call it) inherited sin (Erbsünde), has been regarded, by a large portion of evangelical theologians, as having its most ample and solid basis in the passage before us. Of course, their opponents have made every possible effort to show, that the passage has been misunderstood and misinterpreted by them. The contest has been going on, in respect to this subject, ever since the days of Augustine and Pelagius, and even from a period still more remote. It would form a library of no small extent, were all that has been written on this subject embodied and published. Nor can we well wonder at this. The subject is one of the deepest interest. Men of sober

thought and reflection will be prone to ask: What is our present native condition as moral and accountable beings? If corrupt and depraved, how has this been brought about, inasmuch as we naturally expect everything which comes from the hands of the Creator to be good? Can sin, or a sinful state or condition, be propagated? How far are we accountable for a state or condition, which we did not contribute in any way originally to form or introduce? How far are we, or can we reasonably be, accountable for the acts of others? These and many more of the like questions must give a high degree of interest to Rom. 5: 12-19; for it is here, either directly or consequentially, that material is found by the mass of theologians who are of the stricter cast, for the solution of such questions. Hence the animated attacks upon what is called the orthodox exposition of this passage, and the equally animated defences of that exposition.