The favoured family whom Jesus loved;

To whose warm, humble welcome, 'twas his wont,
Tracking the path but now I passed along,
Oft to retire from foes, and wavering friends.
"T was here his verdict full acquittal gave,
And high approval, of the glowing zeal
Which for "the better part," forbore to share
A sister's weak anxieties. 'Twas here
He wept, in tender sympathy with woes,
By his command so soon to be absorbed

In grateful joy. Here, by his power divine,

Bade death release its prey, the untrammelled soul
Return to earth, and gave a living proof

And pledge, of future immortality.
And when his work all ended, he prepared
To reascend his throne, this way he led
His sorrowing followers for a last farewell.

It seems a humble village, few its homes,
And few and poor its dwellers; cottage roofs,
Except one simple turret, are they all;

Yet save the neighbouring city, it were hard,
If Palestine were searched, to find a spot
On which the Christian traveller should muse
With fonder interest, than Bethany."

We return to the Mount of Olives, and thence descend to the village, as it is called, of "Selwan," or Siloam. Few travellers take the trouble to climb into this wild nest of Arabs, and thence look down upon the valley of Jehoshaphat, yet it is perhaps the most bold and impressive scene about the city. Lamartine says

"There is another scene without Jerusalem, which I would seek to engrave upon my memory, but I have neither pencil nor colours. It is the Valley of Jehoshaphat: valley celebrated in the traditions of three religions, where the Jews, Christians, and Mahomedans agree in placing the terrible scene of the supreme judgment: valley, which has already seen upon its borders the greatest scene of the evangelic drama—the tears, the groans, and the death of Christ: valley, where all the prophets have passed in their turn, in uttering a cry of sadness and horror, which seems to resound there still : valley, which must hear one day the noise of the torrent of souls rolling before God, and appearing of themselves for the award of their fatal judgment.

Our sketch may assist the reader in realizing this scene. In the foreground are tombs hewn in the rocky sides of the valley, one above another, among which whole families of Arabs have made their dwellings, some niching their plaster huts against their sides, others creeping into the tombs themselves. The cries of infancy are heard to issue from the resting-place of old age; and where the bodies of the nobles of Judah were borne to their last home, with "burnings" and all the pomp of funeral ceremony, the flocks of sheep and goats, which wander over the valley, are driven for nightly shelter. Beneath this hold of "dwellers in the tombs," the dry bed of the Kidron is seen, overhung by the steep precipice, surmounted by the angle of the temple wall, of which the remarkable ancient ma* 12 on the Map.

sonry is here very conspicuous. From the roof of the cloister above it was "a fearful depth," according to Josephus, down which the eye could not look without producing dizziness. This slope of Moriah is grey and bare, a few tufts of herbage scarce find root in its loose ashy soil, and towards its base, a few flat tombs are niched upon any practicable spot, hanging like the very image of oblivion, just above the bed of the Kidron, to be swept away from their precarious hold by its wintry

torrent.

All along the glen of the Kidron, are seen the innumerable monuments of the successive generations of the sons of Abraham, and to lay their bones here is still the object for which the Jews are willing to live in poverty and contempt; for here they believe that God shall plead for Israel, and judge the nations that have afflicted her, when it shall please him to turn again the captivity of Zion.

"For then will he gather all nations, and will bring them down into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations.

"Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision, for the day of the Lord is near.

"The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their light.

"But Judah shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation."