Beaufort, Emily Anne: Egyptian sepulchres and Syrian shrines: including some stay in the Lebanon, at Palmyra and in Western Turkey ; in 2 vol. (Band 2) (London, 1862)

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CHAP. XX.

ANCIENT JERUSALEM.

" The perfection of beauty —
The joy of the whole earth ! "

" ; Ciudad de las tristezas ! "

JERUSALEM, with its mixture of Past and Present,
is not by any means to be realised to the mind's eye
by a rapid description, nor can it be understood at a
glance: weeks, and even months, are absolutely re-
quired to take in the details which make up the whole
—and these must be weighed and balanced, examined
and considered, unless the traveller desires only to
follow some one particular crotchet, or subsides pas-
sively under the dictates of some one particular theory ;
if he chooses to think for himself, or to compare the
thousand-and-one opinions of those who have gone
before him, he will soon find himself launched into
a maze — a labyrinth—a confusion confused — from
which he will at last turn away in despair, almost with
a feeling that as they cannot all be right they must all
be wrong. The most satisfactory method for a scholar
would be to come here with only the Bible and Jose-
phus in his hand, and to study the ground with these
guides only; but even then the results would pro-
bably be far from satisfactory until a generation or
two has passed away, during which the building of
one and another house, the clearing of this or that