offering, through
their rocky glens, the gleams of a distant and richer land!

The moon has sunk behind the Mount of Olives, and the stars in the
darker sky shine doubly bright over the sacred city. The all-pervading
stillness is broken by a breeze that seems to have travelled over the
plain of Sharon from the sea. It wails among the tombs, and sighs among
the cypress groves. The palm-tree trembles as it passes, as if it were
a spirit of woe. Is it the breeze that has travelled over the plain of
Sharon from the sea?

Or is it the haunting voice of prophets mourning over the city that
they could not save? Their spirits surely would linger on the land
where their Creator had deigned to dwell, and over whose impending fate
Omnipotence had shed human tears. From this Mount! Who can but believe
that, at the midnight hour, from the summit of the Ascension, the great
departed of Israel assemble to gaze upon the battlements of their mystic
city? There might be counted heroes and sages, who need shrink from
no rivalry with the brightest and the wisest of other lands; but the
lawgiver of the time of the Pharaohs, whose laws are still obeyed; the
monarch, whose reign has ceased for three thousand years, but whose
wisdom is a proverb in all nations of the earth; the teacher, whose
doctrines have modelled civilised Europe; the greatest of legislators,
the greatest of administrators, and the greatest of reformers; what
race, extinct or living, can produce three such men as these?

The last light is extinguished in the village of Bethany. The wailing
breeze has become a moaning wind; a white film spreads over the purple
sky; the stars are veiled, the stars are hid; all becomes as dark as
the waters of Kedron and the valley of Jehosha-phat. The tower of David
merges into obscurity; no longer glitter the minarets of the mosque
of Omar; Bethesda's angelic waters, the gate of Stephen, the street
of sacred sorrow, the hill of Salem, and the heights of Scopas can no
longer be discerned. Alone in the increasing darkness, while the very
line of the walls gradually eludes the eye, the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre is a beacon light.

And why is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre a beacon light? Why, when
is it already past the noon of darkness, when every soul slumbers in
Jerusalem, and not a sound disturbs the deep repose, except the howl
of the wild dog crying to the wilder wind; why is the cupola of the
sanctuary illumined, though the hou