a hero in the midst of stirring scenes, was numb
within him.

"Let us go, brethren; let us to Golgotha."

They passed through excited crowds of people going south,
like themselves. All the country north of the city seemed
aroused and in motion.

Hearing that the procession with the condemned might be met with
somewhere near the great white towers left by Herod, the three
friends rode thither, passing round southeast of Akra. In the
valley below the Pool of Hezekiah, passage-way against the multitude
became impossible, and they were compelled to dismount, and take
shelter behind the corner of a house and wait.

The waiting was as if they were on a river bank, watching a flood
go by, for such the people seemed.

There are certain chapters in the First Book of this story which
were written to give the reader an idea of the composition of the
Jewish nationality as it was in the time of Christ. They were also
written in anticipation of this hour and scene; so that he who has
read them with attention can now see all Ben-Hur saw of the going
to the crucifixion--a rare and wonderful sight!

Half an hour--an hour--the flood surged by Ben-Hur and his companions,
within arm's reach, incessant, undiminished. At the end of that time
he could have said, "I have seen all the castes of Jerusalem, all the
sects of Judea, all the tribes of Israel, and all the nationalities
of earth represented by them." The Libyan Jew went by, and the Jew
of Egypt, and the Jew from the Rhine; in short, Jews from all East
countries and all West countries, and all islands within commercial
connection; they went by on foot, on horseback, on camels, in litters
and chariots, and with an infinite variety of costumes, yet with the
same marvellous similitude of features which to-day particularizes
the children of Israel, tried as they have been by climates and
modes of life; they went by speaking all known tongues, for by that
means only were they distinguishable group from group; they went by
in haste--eager, anxious, crowding--all to behold one poor Nazarene
die, a felon between felons.

These were the many, but they were not all.

Borne along with the stream were thousands not Jews--thousands
hating and despising them--Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Syrians,
Africans, Egyptians, Easterns. So that, studying the mass,
it seemed the whole world was to be represented, and, in that
sense, present at the crucifixion.

The going was singularly quiet. A hoof-str