rested, as he stood, with a lily in
his hand, announcing the miraculous conception. The shrine, of white
marble and gold, gleaming in the light of golden lamps, stands under a
rough arch of the natural rock, from the side of which hangs a heavy
fragment of a granite pillar, suspended, as the devout believe, by divine
power. Fra Joachim informed me that, when the Moslems attempted to
obliterate all tokens of the holy place, this pillar was preserved by a
miracle, that the locality might not be lost to the Christians. At the
same time, he said, the angels of God carried away the wooden house which
stood at the entrance of the grotto; and, after letting it drop in
Marseilles, while they rested, picked it up again and set it down in
Loretto, where it still remains. As he said this, there was such entire,
absolute belief in the good monk's eyes, and such happiness in that
belief, that not for ten times the gold on the shrine would I have
expressed a doubt of the story. He then bade me kneel, that I might see
the spot where the angel stood, and devoutly repeated a paternoster while
I contemplated the pure plate of snowy marble, surrounded with vases of
fragrant flowers, between which hung cressets of gold, wherein perfumed
oils were burning. All the decorations of the place conveyed the idea of
transcendent purity and sweetness; and, for the first time in Palestine, I
wished for perfect faith in the spot. Behind the shrine, there are two or
three chambers in the rock, which served as habitations for the family of
the Virgin.

A young Christian Nazarene afterwards conducted me to the House of Joseph,
the Carpenter, which is now inclosed in a little chapel. It is merely a
fragment of wall, undoubtedly as old as the time of Christ, and I felt
willing to consider it a genuine relic. There was an honest roughness
about the large stones, inclosing a small room called the carpenter's
shop, which I could not find it in my heart to doubt. Besides, in a quiet
country town like Nazareth, which has never knows such vicissitudes as
Jerusalem, much more dependence can be placed on popular tradition. For
the same reason, I looked with reverence on the Table of Christ, also
inclosed within a chapel. This is a large, natural rock, about nine feet
by twelve, nearly square, and quite flat on the top. It is said that it
once served as a table for Christ and his Disciples. The building called
the School of Christ, where he went with other children