GIFT OF JANE K.SATHER

THE

LETTERS OF PETER LOMBARD

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THE LETTERS OF

PETER LOMBARD

(CANON BENHAM)

EDITED BY

ELLEN DUDLEY BAXTER

WITH A PREFACE BY

THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERB1

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

191 2

'£~ c

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THE LETTERS OF

PETER LOMBARD

(CANON BENHAM)

EDITED BY

ELLEN DUDLEY BAXTER

WITH A PREFACE BY

THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

191 2

"Da i

6*B

Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, brunswick street, stamford street, s.e.,

AND BUNCAV, SUFFOLK.

Copyright.

First Edition, 191 1. Reprinted% 191a.

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PREFACE

I ESTEEM it a privilege to give to this book a word of introduction and benediction. For more than thirty years I reckoned William Benham among my close personal friends. In one sense we were all his pupils, for we were continually learning from him, and that in different and very unconventional ways. He had, as everybody who came into contact with him found, a curiously wide range of miscellaneous knowledge, and I have always ascribed to the discipline of his early years of Elementary School work at West Meon and at Chelsea the power he possessed of imparting that knowledge in a simple and yet an original way. His four successive parishes — Adding- ton, Margate, Marden, and St. Edmund's — are totally different in character and congregation, but in each of them he " held " his people, and became in his own peculiar way the personal friend and confidant of men, women, and children who had little else in common.

All the while his pen was never idle, and there was a freshness of its own in what he wrote, whether it was exegetical, biographical, archaeological, or personal. For several years he helped me in com- piling from an almost unlimited mass of letters and papers the Biography of Archbishop Tait, and I can never forget the generous and good-humoured loyalty with which he used time after time to accept my decision upon the questions of inclusion or omission which vex a biographer's soul, even when, as some- times happened, the decision meant to him the fruit- lessness of hours or even days of harassing work.

His books and miscellaneous writings speak for themselves. No one could call him an exact scholar, but there was a tireless freshness and energy, and

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iv PREFACE

sometimes a real originality of thought in what he wrote, and these, for the average reader to whom he appealed, are more valuable gifts by far.

But his originality as a teacher and preacher was, I had almost said, the least of his gifts. His depth of simple Evangelical piety, disguised in ordinary social life by his somewhat brusque humour and his out- spoken criticism of men and things, made itself felt at once when he was in touch with sorrow and sick- ness and sin. As one who has known long illnesses, I can testify to the value I learned to set upon his quiet and earnest talk at such times, and no one, I think, who received the Holy Communion at his hands in a sick room will forget the inexpressible solemnity and pathos of his simple ministration.

" Noscitur a sociis" is a familiar saying, and similarly it may be said that we are entitled to esti- mate a man's true value by the appreciation in which he is held by men and women whose opinion in such matters " counts." It is a striking tribute to William Benham's worth that he was a trusted friend of men so widely different as Archbishop Tait, Bishop Creighton, Alexander Macmillan, Sir Frederick Maurice, Bishop Potter of New York, and, in a more general way, of Dean Stanley, Bishop Lightfoot, Lady Wake, and many more whose appreciation was worth having. People might or might not agree with him in opinion. They could hardly fail, if they knew him well, to respect and even love him as a man. If the alertness and versatility of his mind evoked our ceaseless interest, the tender aflectionate- ness of his spirit and the sterling character of his Christian life gave him a yet deeper hold upon what was best and most responsive in our hearts.

Randall Cantuar.

Lambkth, August 4/A, 191 1

CONTENTS

PAGE

Memoir vii

1889. Wantage. Chalfont S. Giles 1

1890. The Meon Valley. Waltham Abbey ... n 1892. Byzantine Fonts. From the East .... 27 1894. Bury St. Edmunds. S. Mark's College . . 175

1896. Sir Christopher Wren. Lambeth Palace . 192

1897. Charterhouse. St. Albans 222

1898. History of London 235

1902. Coronation RourE 247

In Memoriam 271

MEMOIR

My father, William Benham, was born in the little village of Westmeon, Hampshire, on January 15, 183 1. His parents were in humble circumstances, and had neither the means nor the opportunity of doing anything for the education of their only child beyond sending him to the village school. In these days when scholarships are given away by the hundred it is com- paratively easy for a boy of exceptional ability or ambition to rise to the University, and so to qualify for any profession to which he may be suited, but there were no such royal roads to learning in those days, and if young Benham had any consciousness of the power that was in him, the chance of finding any scope for that power must have seemed most remote. The story of those early days is best told in his own words published in the " Treasury " some years ago.

" Being an only child and so made much of by the

viii MEMOIR

old folks at home " [his parents had married late in life]," I was a good deal shut up in myself. I used to read my grandfather's old books and some that I borrowed from the slender store of our cottage neighbours. I remember even now with a thrill of ecstasy how I read and re-read two thus borrowed, 'The Pilgrim's Progress/ and 'The Old English Baron.' They are both favourites with me still. But oh! How shall I tell it — I found in an old cupboard an ancient black-letter copy of Sir John Mandeville's travels with rough cuts, and devoured it. But when I told my mother of the wonders it disclosed she looked into it for herself, which she had never done before, and, promptly pronouncing it a pack of lies, she tore it up and threw it into the fire. I wonder what a book collector of to-day would have given for that book ! The Rector of our parish, Dr. Henry Vincent Baylcy, was a man of profound classical learning. Porson declared him the best Greek scholar of his day. I have known two distinguished Bishops who were his pupils — Christopher Wordsworth of Lincoln, and his brother Charles of St. Andrews.

" Our old Rector was a pluralist, holding an arch- deaconry, a canonry of Westminster and two livings. When he came to reside here he built a handsome

MEMOIR ix

rectory house and made great improvements in the church. For example, there had been no vestry ; his predecessor put on his surplice before the people and exchanged it in like manner for the black gown at sermon time. But, what was yet more important, Dr. Bayley built schools for boys, girls and infants. The reader will see at once how much this means. The Rector's school prospered. Neither master nor mistress was well educated. The mistress in course of time married in the village, and in after years I was really startled to find out how little she knew. The master was the son of a gentleman's butler, but was industrious and painstaking and really worked hard, I am sure, to improve himself. He bought Chambers's 'Information for the People,' Bishop Davey's little ■ History of England,' (S.P.C.K.), and Guy's ' Geography ' and as times went he did not make a bad schoolmaster. To him, then, I was sent, if I am not mistaken, just about the time of Queen Victoria's accession ; and with him I remained six full years. All this while I was pursuing my lonely career, as I may call it, reading at home and keeping much to myself. The Bible was our only reading book at school, and so I have always known the text of that thoroughly. Besides the books I have named, friends lent me Goldsmith's Histories of England,

x MEMOIR

Greece and Rome. Somebody gave me a book on Ants; and I got my mother's biggest pie-dish, filled it with earth and settled a colony of Ants therein, surrounding them with water that they should not escape. I settled them under a hawthorn tree in the garden, got for them materials such as the book described, and spent many an hour watching them day by day. And the result of all this was that I got beyond my schoolmaster in all branches of knowledge, and he knew it, and without confessing his ignorance he many a time pumped me where he found himself at fault. And then one day my small triumphs were yet increased when the Rector brought Dr. Wordsworth, the Head Master of Harrow, and his father the ex-Master of Trinity, to the school, and proceeded to examine us. And I was able to tell him not only the names of the provinces of ancient Greece, but the islands of the Archipelago with their situations. It was an additional recommendation to them that Wordsworth had just then published his book on ancient Greece. I believe they were all taken by surprise. But this was not the end. The old Rector was rapidly becoming blind, and on April 1 3, 1843 0s it any wonder that I should be particular as to the day ?) he sent for me to read to him. I went daily from that time onwards. Sometimes it was the Lessons and

MEMOIR xi

Psalms for the day, sometimes the newspaper. I was especially charged to look out for anything about Dr. Pusey, or Mr. Newman. For the old Rector was a bosom friend of Hugh James Rose, and was one of the party at the meeting at Hadleigh Rectory in 1833 which was one of the signal events of the Tract Move- ment. He afterwards backed out of it. I must break off for another incident that bore fruit. This was the time of church restoration and the revival of Gothic architecture, the time which saw the formation of the Camden and the Ecclesiological Societies. I need not here repeat what everybody now knows, that the new architects had to learn their business and made many mistakes in the course of their education. Our old church had been cruelly handled in the 18th century' and it was not strange that Dr. Bayley did not recog- nise the curious archaeological interest that underlay the deeds of vandalism. So he commissioned a young architect just then coming into note, Mr George Gilbert Scott, to design a new church. It was done and agreed to by the parishioners and on August 9, 1843, the old Rector laid the foundation stone. He was now quite blind and his hand had to be guided. There is no passage in my life which I can to-day see more vividly than I see that in the book of my memory. All this time I was daily by

xii MEMOIR

his bedside or in his study, reading to him or being instructed by him in curious old lore.

" But a new curiosity was now awakened within me. There had been a Latin inscription on the foundation stone. Here it is; I can remember every word of it:—

4 Antiquo Dei jam ruente templo, huncce primum aedis novae lapidem posuit H. V. Bayley D.D. Rector cum J. Hicks et W. Moody, aedituis.'

" I pored over that deeply and a few days later mustered up courage to ask the doctor what it meant. He bade me sit down while he dictated the translation, and I can remember, as if it were only yesterday, how he hesitated over the rendering of ruente, whether it should be ' becoming ruinous/ or 'falling into decay.' He chose the latter. And what came of this ? On August 20 following he bade me go to his study table and find a book in the rack, Blomfield's Greek Testament, and there and then he taught me the letters. I was to turn to the Gospel of St. John and then he told me each letter, %Ev apyi), etc. As soon as I could spell it out he taught me how to translate by the help of the English, by what is called the Hamiltonian System. The result was that by the end of the year I could translate my Greek Testament very fairly. Charles Wordsworth, who was then a

MEMOIR xiii

master at Winchester, rode over one day and heard me read. On another occasion I read to Hallam, the historian, and Chief Justice Tindal, and some other friends of the dear old man, who had come down to visit him."

My father cherished the memory of Westmeon and its associations all his life, and the Rector, in the obituary notice that appeared in the parish Magazine last August, says,

" I well remember receiving a Christmas card from him shortly after I became Rector, in which he quoted some familiar lines of the Latin poet, Horace, to the effect that Westmeon had a closer hold on his heart than any other corner of the earth, and that if it were possible he would fain end his days there."

Archdeacon Bayley died in 1844, leaving instruc- tions that the education of the pupil in whom he had taken such interest should be carried on, and accordingly he was entered as one of the first students at S. Mark's College, Chelsea, recently opened by the National Society, under the head mastership of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, son of the poet. His con- nexion with S. Mark's lasted for many years, as after being away for some time teaching in a school, acting as private tutor to Sir John Sebright, and attending lectures at King's College (where he came under the

xiv MEMOIR

influence of Mr. F. D. Maurice) he returned in 1857 as one of the tutors. His title for Orders was obtained from S. Mark's, and there he preached his first sermon. The contemporaries of his student days have all passed away, but there are several men doing work for the Church in all parts of the world who recall his influence and his teaching when they were his pupils. The following notes are by two of them.

My earliest recollections of Canon Benham are con- nected with a course of lectures on the Old Testament delivered at S. Mark's College in the sixties. He was one of a group of Lecturers under the Principal, Derwent Coleridge, who in a remarkable degree im- pressed their individualities upon their pupils.

Canon Benham's lectures were carefully written out and slowly and even solemnly delivered, as though from the very heart of his subject, and gave one the impression, which I have never forgotten, of an almost aweful reverence for God in History. He made many of us feel, I think, that as all life is an unfolding of the One, Eternal Life, so typal lives and typal national histories are but the underlining of the revealed will of God in His providential government of the world.

In private talks he was constantly referring one to the ' clear strong thoughts ' of Maurice, Trench and Robertson of Brighton, and later reading, thought and experience have made me very grateful to him for this healthy corrective to writings and views of a different school of thought. Yet he was always

MEMOIR xv

generous and sympathetic to the manysidedness of truth and its various outward forms of expression, and whatever success may have blessed my own ministerial work amongst men of differing qualities, characters and experience, has I think been largely due to the influence of the Canon's broad and generous outlook on truth and his delightfully human and humorous sympathies.

As I look back over an unbroken guidance and friendship of forty years, I feel I must often have been a trial to him, but he never shewed impatience, and on more than one disciplinary occasion I can remember a depth of spiritual discernment and sympathy that made his formal lectures and sermons very real and made one feel at the time, and realise afterwards, that he was no mere paper lecturer or formal priest, but was one who had bought his freedom at a great price, one who had faced and fought himself, and was teaching from experience.

" You must read for Holy Orders " said he one day to me. I answered " I do not feel that I have any vocation." " Then wait till you have," said he at once, " but read and pray as if you had."

Years after I remembered his words when the call, which delighted him, came to me. He at once offered me his Curacy at Margate where he was Vicar, but I had decided to accept the call of the first Day of Intercession for Missions in 1873, and went to South Africa. Throughout the whole of my 33 years' work and life his friendship never failed, and I was always sure of a warm welcome from my old tutor and Mrs. Benham at Finsbury Square.

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On one of my three holidays he gave me a week of Sermons for my diocese of Mashonaland at S. Edmund's, Lombard Street, with excellent monetary results, and on my enforced retirement through ill- health (now happily restored), shewed the deepest interest as of old in our anxieties.

As I stood by his grave in Addington Churchyard I thought of a remark he had solemnly made to me some forty years before as we walked into Church, " I always feel when going into Church as if I was going to judgment."

Underneath his gay and humorous exterior, and an almost brusque contempt for shams, there was a childlike reverence for holy things, a manly awe and a holy fear which made one feel that here was one who, whilst bowing down before the Majesty of Truth, knew likewise the sweet personal friendliness of the Love of God and man.

William Gaul, Bishop. Formerly Bishop of Mashonaland.

By the death of Canon Benham St. Mark's has been deprived of one of the most distinguished of her sons. William Benham commenced at an early age his connexion with the College when it was quite a new institution of only four years old, and completed his training in 1847.

He spent a portion of the next ten years in Westminster as an assistant in the Blue Coat School, then a thriving institution under Dr. Waters, and formed friendships which proved lifelong.

When we first met him he was a young clergyman,

MEMOIR xvii

one of our tutors, who had begun his duties and been ordained in 1857, and admitted to Priest's orders in 1858. The Jubilee of this latter event we were three years ago, by the initiative and hospitality of the present Principal, enabled to celebrate at the College.

We soon discovered that in Mr. Benham we had a lecturer in Divinity and in English literature of no ordinary powers or methods ; that besides teaching and preaching to us he had duties at Queen's College, and was in touch with the Rev. F. D. Maurice, to whom some of us had the honour of being introduced. He used to tell how on one occasion when he had suddenly been called upon to take a service and preach for the Professor, he had heard on leaving the church one gentleman remark, " I thought Maurice was an older man ; " the other answering, " Well, it wasn't much of a sermon." One of my few surviving fellow-students writes, " I have always been interested in the rapid progress of the little man who used to traverse the passages and corridors of the dear old College, despising all sham, and down on all cringing and insincerity. How many times have I thanked God for having drawn me for two years' study under such a noble band of tutors, where character was the thing aimed at ! " Mr. Benham was always approach- able and sympathetic, won the confidence of the men and remained their friend when professional ties had been severed.

Some of his work he had had to lay aside of late years, but his keen love of music found him at the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace last year

b

wiji MEMOIR

enjoying to the full the massive choruses of " Israel in Egypt " ; while his love for Archaeology induced him to come last spring with the St. Paul's Ecclesio- logical Society to St. Margaret's, Westminster, and patiently listen to an old pupil's endeavours to tell the history and associations of that church, and to instruct him once again by informing him of an event recorded in the church's registers of which he had been ignorant. Written in characteristic fashion the note that followed the visit told how Mrs. Benham and he had enjoyed their jaunt that afternoon." E. H. FEDARB,

Emery Hill's Hospital,

Rochester Row.

He was ordained Priest in 1858, and fifty years later, 1908, the students of S. Mark's, past and present, presented him with a beautiful silver bowl with this inscription — " Presented to Canon Benham by old friends at S. Mark's on the Jubilee of his Priesthood, 1 858- 1908."

The next few years were spent in London where he was engaged in literary rather than in parochial work. I Ie was for most of this time tutor at S. Mark's, editorial secretary to the S.P.C.K., and Sunday reader at S. Lawrence Jewry, during the Rectorship of Dr. Cowie, afterwards Dean of Manchester. His first parish was at Addington, the country residence in those days of the Archbishops of Canterbury. The

MEMOIR xix

family tradition is that Miss Rosamund Longley was staying at Nun Appleton, Yorkshire, with Sir William and Lady Georgina Milner, when my father was acting as locum tenens there for his summer holiday. She was so much struck by his powers as a preacher that on her return to London she persuaded her father, Archbishop Longley, to go and hear him, with the result that shortly after, when, in 1867, Addington was made a separate parish instead of being an offshoot of Shirley, he made my father the first Vicar. Addington was near enough to London for him to keep various appointments he had, notably that of Professor of Modern History at Queen's College, Harley Street, to which he had been appointed as successor to Mr. F. D. Maurice in 1866. As Vicar of Addington he attended Archbishop Longley in his last illness and was present at his death.

He found life at Addington very interesting, and enjoyed the opportunity for his literary work, which was more abundant at that time than for many years after. He edited the " Globe " edition of Cowper's works, wrote the " Companion to the Lectionary," and was responsible for several Commentaries published by the S.P.C.K. Just before he left Addington Arch- bishop Tait gave him the Lambeth degree of B.D., and made him one of the Six Preachers of Canterbury,

b 2

xx MEMOIR

and this office he held until 1888, when Archbishop Benson made him instead an Honorary Canon of the same Cathedral. His life was shadowed there by the death of my mother, but on the whole it was a peaceful, happy time.

In 1873 Archbishop Tait appointed him Vicar of Margate, and thereby the whole tenor of his life was changed. The fine old Norman Church was badly in need of restoration, and in many ways there was ample scope for his energies and powers. He was much beloved by his parishioners, and this showed itself in various ways. For instance, there was an election- for the first School Board, and without any canvassing or special effort on his part he was returned at the head of the poll, and acted as Chairman for many years. The former Vicar, Canon Bateman,had started a Church Institute in the town, and this under my father quickly became the centre of all sorts of literary and parochial interests. He gave courses of lectures during the winter which were always well attended by all classes and schools of thought. lavish visiting in its ordinary sense he was not fond of. I remember well the look of pathetic appeal he once gave me when he was called upon, by some old woman we were visiting together, to taste the medi- cine which had been sent her by the doctor for some

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trifling ailment. But where there was sorrow or suffering or anything in the way of distress of mind he was always ready to go, and invariably brought comfort and relief. It was the sheer force of his sym- pathy and intense humanity that made him so universally beloved. The letters that poured in by the hundred after his death all testified to the affection in which he was held by all who knew him. Several were from men and women who had been boys and girls at school at Margate when he was Vicar there, some of whom he never knew personally. But they all spoke of the lessons they had learnt from him, and how they had all loved him. Speaking of the letters we had — there was one that touched us very much. It was from a poor man who sells penny toys from a little tray outside the Bank of England. "We poor hawkers," it said, " will miss his cheery kind face, and we always called him our chaplain." We wished he could have known of this title, for it would have been one after his own heart.

While at Margate he edited the Memoirs of Arch- bishop Tait's wife and son, which were published under the title of " Catherine and Craufurd Tait."

In 1880 Archbishop Tait gave him the living of Marden, in Kent, but we only stayed there two and a half years. In 1882 the Archbishop came to

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Marden to consecrate a new Churchyard. No men- tion of any change was made, but a few months later when he became entitled to present to the living of S. Edmund the King and Martyr, Lombard Street, he wrote by his chaplain, the Rev. Randall Davidson, now Archbishop of Canterbury, and offered it to my father. The letter said that though there was not much actual parish work at S. Edmund's, "there was plenty of work for God for him to do in London," and that they hoped he would come and try to do it. How he carried out their hopes I leave it to others to tell.

" Clergy in the City for the most part see little of one another, and even less of one another's work. This is due in part to the fact that many of them have their residences elsewhere ; and in part, no doubt, to the isolating effects of the conditions of our London life. Often and often we meet people who tell us that their next-door neighbours are as unknown to them as if they were living a hundred miles away ; and next door parishes as a rule have just as little to do with each other. All the more noticeable and admirable is it when any one amongst us sets him- self, with the necessary heartiness and the necessary tact, to break through the barriers of separation and insists upon establishing a footing of comradeship. This was what Canon Benham succeeded in doing in a very remarkable way. He was delightfully un-

MEMOIR xxiii

conventional, sensible and sincere. It might be said without exaggeration that everybody knew him. He was to be found everywhere, and always the same ; always cordial and cheerful, with a good story, and, when it was wanted, plenty of shrewd and wholesome advice. At Sion College, in Ruridecanal chapters and Diocesan Conferences, at innumerable social functions, indeed on most public occasions he was in evidence, and he seemed to carry with him an atmosphere of good fellowship. How he managed to do it all, and yet contrive to be an indefatigable student and writer, was a constant marvel to his friends. It could only be accounted for by his possessing an extraordinary mental alertness combined with disciplined habits of literary labour far beyond those of common men.

" But not even the possession of these character- istics is enough to explain the force and range of his influence. You could not have dealings with him without being made aware that there was a point which was the centre of all his multifarious interests. His nature was deeply religious, and it is only the simple truth to say that his City Church was his pride and his joy. He gave to it his best, and strove hard to make it a centre of intellectual and spiritual power. Under his leadership it acquired a distinct character of its own. It grew to be valued as a quiet home of devotion, while it was also notable as a preaching station and greatly resorted to for its courses of sermons and lectures. And this went on for nearly thirty years. Let no one imagine that to be a small feat or a slight service. It is not an easy

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thing to maintain the life either of a little country parish, or of one of the fifty parochial areas into which the square mile of the City of London is divided. Those who have had experience of both will probably hesitate to say which is the more difficult task. If Canon Benham had only shown us what can be done under conditions that have driven not a few men to despair, he would have richly merited our respect and our gratitude. He certainly has given strength to the belief that a City Church can be made to justify its existence, and for many a day to come there will be those who will look back with pleasure and thank- fulness to all that was achieved at St. Edmund's, Lombard Street, when he was its genial and much gifted Rector."

ARTHUR W. ROBINSON,

Vicar of Allhallows, Barkings

and R.D. of the East City.

What he was as a friend is told in the following lines by Mrs. Margoliouth :

" Canon Benham's life was very full of friendships ; his feeling for and sympathy with young people, especially in any religious difficulty, was strong, warm and constant ; and once a friend always a friend ! He was not so much patient with, as really interested in, any puzzles or perplexities, moral or intellectual. I f one chanced to mention a book he had not at his fingers' ends one generally found he had looked it up directly after and had some enlightening remark

MEMOIR xxv

upon it. Then it never occurred to him that any guide, himself least of all, had the key to all locks, he would go on from the special problem proposed to others, such as ' those pigs ' and why the legion went into them. I remember his expression so well as he stopped on the garden walk like a setter point- ing. He would always talk anything over and give most affectionate consideration to troubles that many might have despised, and knowing and even saying that all thoughtful young people must go through ' moral measles ' did not in the least lessen his kind- ness for each case. Practical advice was always ready. ' Do the right thing.' ' Hoc age.' He knew that difficulties of thought and of non-vision clear away before action. I was interested to see in the last sermon he preached, just the essence of this teaching, only mellowed and clearer, and more gently and persuasively put than thirty years earlier.

" Indeed he hardly offered guidance, he showed how to find out the way. The very titles of his sermons, announced outside St. Edmund's, especially for the Thursday mid-day service, were very attractive, such as ' Shirking,' ' Levity/ ' Jesting,' and showed his knowledge of young lives.

u He had a way of saying words of the Bible which made them come alive and made the meaning plainer than any comment. I shall never forget one of his ' Six Preacher ' sermons at Canterbury, when a lovable girl had just died and he, all unknowing that her mother (' Sibylla Holland ') was listening, but out of his sympathy, added to his sermon a very few words of his own and then ■ they went and told

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Jesus.' I do not know if he often rebuked, but in another Cathedral sermon he turned to two men at the other end of the Choir, who were talking and giggling, and reproved them for unseemly behaviour ; it was without raising his voice and seemed a perfectly natural part of the sermon. He was always very ready and I have known him go out to preach with five written sermons in his pocket and then preach a sixth straight out of his head.

" His sermons were quite accessible and he had not the usual real or supposed feeling for them as his private thoughts. He taught me his simple abbrevia- tions, and I soon took to helping myself to any sermons lying about in his study or found in his bag on his visits to Canterbury. That capacious bag, widened and flattened with many monthly magazines or other papers, used to gape widely, generously offering its contents. His pockets were apt to be of the same build and were generally seized on by douaniers on his foreign tours, the hopes they excited being promptly disappointed.

" He was a delightful and stimulating companion abroad as in England, from his ready interest and feeling, not only for history and architecture but for everything and everyone, and he liked to add to his party, so a sister of Mrs. Benham's, a friend of one of his daughters, or someone picked up for kindness, was usually to be found included. He had a special love for Kent, and was constant to the delightful long days planned by the Kent Archaeological Society. Then naturally he loved the City with its crowded memories, and he was always ready to ' tell ' about

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churches and those connected with them, whether buried or living. I remember one visit particularly to St. Saviour's, Southwark, before that splendid church was selected to serve as the Cathedral of South London. He told me much and gave me the ' Confessio Amantis ' in memory of our seeing the ef^<yy of Gower resting on his three volumes. It was September 12th, 1889, tne ^ast day of the great Dock Strike ; as we returned over London Bridge we saw part of the tired, straggling procession.

" But better than special visits I enjoyed the ordinary going about with him in the City, which in his company turned into a familiar meeting place, with cordial greeting from and to his many police- men and bootblack friends. Going into some shop his companion would be introduced to the partner, perhaps some tall, young Oxford man, with the remark, ' He's quite respectable ' ! And everywhere the human interest predominated.

" St. Edmund's was the centre of fellowship. If the Rector expected a friend, he would be seen looking for him from his reading desk, and this did not in the least detract from the reverence which he impressed on the services and taught to his dearly-loved choir boys and diffused among us all. If any one came in late or had to go out early, no head was turned to notice. After service there were cordial greetings and a stroll between services if it were a Thursday, or a walk up to the hospitable Rectory on a Sunday, for as Mrs. Benham used to say, it was a family party.

" Ex uno disce omnes — what Canon Benham was to

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me, he was to many : one of the kindest, most warm- hearted, readiest of friends. We love him too well to mourn for his entering into fresher, fuller life."

J. P. M. March, 191 1. Oxford.

Whilst Rector of S. Edmund's the absence of parochial calls gave him leisure, and he soon was elected on to Committees of every sort and kind- What he did as Chairman of the Poor Clergy Relief Corporation can best be told by Canon Rhodes Bristowe, the present chairman.

"Love of the Brethren was one of his great characteristics ; and this was shown forth to its fullest extent in his keen interests in the work of the Poor Clergy Relief Corporation, of which he was, for many years, the Chairman. He took infinite pains to sift thoroughly every case which was brought before the Committee at its fortnightly meeting, and spared neither pains nor labour in ascertaining any special circumstances, and in devising the best method of affording the needed help. His annual appeals in the public press were calculated to arrest attention and to produce support, and in his sermons in aid of the work of the Corporation he always put the matter forcibly before his hearers. In reading out to the Committee the particulars which applicants had sent in, he would wittily seize on some amusing remark and bubble over with merriment : and not seldom, when the story told was sad and pathetic, his voice,

MEMOIR xxix

broken with emotion, showed how deeply he sympathised with the sorrows of the Clergy and their widows and orphans.

" In times of difficulty his sagacity and conspicuous straightforwardness have stood the Corporation in good stead, and have helped to ensure public confidence in its objects and methods."

He was also made a member of the Council of Queen's College, Harley Street, and thus renewed his connexion with that Foundation in which he always took the greatest interest, having been associated with it in its early days. He also attended very regularly the Meetings of the Standing Committee of the S.P.G. At the very last meeting of that Society held before his death he made an impassioned and characteristic plea for the sympathy of all its members with the Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in June, 1910.

As regards literary work his first years in London were occupied in helping the present Archbishop of Canterbury to write the life of Archbishop Tait, and in more recent years he wrote various books, chiefly connected with the history of London, e.g., " Mediaeval London," "Old St. Paul's," and "The Tower of London."

The end came with merciful suddenness on July 30, 19 10. He was at the Archbishop's garden

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party at Lambeth on July 13. I had only returned that morning from Ober-Ammergau and was shocked to see him looking, as I thought, very ill, and he complained that evening of not feeling well. For the next fortnight he was ailing, but not alarmingly so, till Thursday, July 28, when he was seized with heart failure. From that time there was no hope, and he died peacefully in the afternoon of July 30, half an hour after a last visit by his kind friends the Archbishop and Mrs. Davidson, during which he was perfectly conscious.

The first part of the service on Thursday, August 4,' was held at S. Edmund's, when an address was given by Bishop Gaul. It was just the beginning of the summer holiday, and many who would other- wise have been there had left town, but even so the little Church was quite full. Old parishioners from Margate and friends of even longer standing were there, and representatives of all kinds of religious bodies and societies, including one specially sent by the Chief Rabbi. He was buried at Addington, in accordance with his own wish, the same afternoon, and there the service was taken by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The choir consisted mainly of men widely scattered now whose homes had been at Addington in the days when he was Vicar there.

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I have already mentioned some of the letters we received, but I must just add one word about the chorus of appreciation that reached us from America, chiefly through the papers, though from private friends as well. His unconventional manner and habit of thought seemed particularly to appeal to the American mind, and he was always proud of the many friends he had on the other side of the Atlantic. In 1898 he was given the degree of D.D. by Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut.

The papers that follow appeared, as most people know, week after week for over twenty years in The Church Times under the head of " Varia " and signed " Peter Lombard," and many of his old readers have expressed the wish that they should be reprinted. This has been rendered possible by the courtesy of the proprietors of The Church Times^ which I hereby gratefully acknowledge. The difficulty has been to make a selection from the mass of material to hand, but we felt that there could not be a better record of the information he possessed on all sorts of subjects, notably on local history and archaeology, whilst the genuine loving kindness of the man shines in every line.

ELLEN DUDLEY BAXTER.

THE LETTERS OF PETER LOMBARD

1889

May ^rd. Thirty-eight years have passed since I last saw the tower of Wantage church. My readers will, I think, easily understand the emotion with which I looked upon it again. It is one of the most beautiful churches in England, indeed it would be almost impossible to match those magnificent pillars that sustain the central tower. When I was here before, however, much of the beauty was obscured by galleries and high pews ; they have all gone, and the noble proportions of the building are manifest at a glance. It was a pleasure, too, to hear the chimes playing " Angel's Hymn " with the old false note to which I had of yore got so accus- tomed that for a year or two afterwards I rather resented the proper one. And to the beauty of the external fabric let us add the greater joy that for

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forty years this has been perhaps the best worked parish in England, and the Church is strong and flourishing because self-devotion and zeal for the souls of men has been the animating principle.

Quite new since I was here before is the beautiful Home of the Sisterhood, overlooking the town. It was founded in 1854, and it would be difficult to find a more superb pile of buildings anywhere. As for Mr. Pearson's gem of a chapel, I hope my readers will some day find an opportunity of going to see it. Then passing the outskirts of the town we come to " King Alfred's Well," a clear and bright spring, but I fear that the evidence that King Alfred ever had anything to do with it is not forthcoming. The site of his birthplace is not very far from the well ; they have built a pretty cottage hospital on it during the last few years. The birthplace of another great Churchman remains as it was in his time; Bishop Butler was born in the house called the Priory at* the corner of the churchyard. I was shown the room. The house is now the residence of the curates. The school where he was first taught has been pulled down ; it was in the churchyard, but a fine Norman doorway was removed to the Grammar School, founded in memory of King Alfred on the thousandth

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anniversary of his birth, at the south end of the town. There is a portrait of the great Bishop in the vestry.

All around Wantage are objects to charm the antiquary. Take East Hendred. The church looks as if the architect of Wantage Church had presided here also. Driving into the village we overtook a very clerical looking personage in broad brimmed hat and black gaiters. He was the Roman Catholic priest of the village. The chapel which he serves has existed certainly since 1291, and it is said that here, and at two others like it in England, the Mass has never ceased to be said. Dutch William's soldiers rifled and profaned it, but the service has gone on. And the family of Eyston are known to have dwelt here as long as the chapel has been here. They are buried in the church, where their monuments are many, all with the pious "R.I. P." Chicheley was once Rector here. The village has a general eccle- siastical air about it. I saw several cottages with signs of tracery in the windows and doors. One John Paternoster held land here in the days of Edward I. on the tenure of daily saying a pater noster for the king's soul.

His son-in-law and heir has given a fine statue of

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King Alfred to deck the market-place of Wantage. I have heard, I know not with what truth, that the artist, Count Gleichen, has cleverly made the face that of the donor.

And there are other attractive spots all round, too numerous to mention ; the " White Horse," cut in the hill by Uffington, in which " Tom Brown " revived a general interest by his pretty book about the cleaning of it, the sites connected with Amy Robsart and the other characters in Kenilworth ; Pusey, where they preserve the curious horn which is said to have been given by King Cnut to Pecote, and where there is an odd cruciform church built some 130 years ago; Stanford-in-the-Vale, with its fine long decorated church, where good Christopher Wordsworth ministered for some years before he was appointed Bishop of Lincoln.

October 18M. The doctor bade me go out of town for a week, so I said at breakfast, " I see there is a new line just opened, which brings us within easy distance of a little village I have long wished to see, Chalfont St. Giles, where Milton once lived." The village is three miles and a half from the station, but our

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landlord had chartered a funny shandrydan for us, which, like everything else, was very cheap and comfortable, and we had a lovely drive out. The whole country is richly wooded ; in fact, you go through woods nearly the whole drive, and the trees at this time of the year are in their perfection, so far as beauty goes. The autumn foliage of the New Forest itself is not more exquisite than this. The beeches and horse-chestnuts are like burnished gold, the maples and cherry trees bright vermilion, and then mingled into a rich mass were crimson, and madder, and Vandyke-brown, and the silver-grey of the willows, and the dark firs and holly. My two companions were constantly crying out in admiration. I have lingered on the description, because some readers may be looking out for a pretty place which will offer a pleasant variety after town, and will not cost too much. Of course every day now tends to strip off the colours, but it must be delightful in spring and summer too, and therefore I counsel everybody to " make a note of " Chalfont for future use.

The village is down in a valley, quite surrounded by steepish hills. The main portion of it is on a green, with a big pond, and there are many pic-

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turesque old houses with chequered beams and pretty gables, and antique bits of carving. Just off this green is the village church, and it is well worthy of a long visit. There is no very rich tracery, but it is in capital order, and has interesting features and asso- ciations. A square embattled tower with a very tall staff, walls of flint and blocks of chalk, lead roof, nave with two aisles, and a very long chancel, the nave being 51 feet and the chancel 40 feet. A little portion is Norman, and there is an Early English piscina, but the greater portion is Flowing Decorated. Some good, and some poor, painted glass. Old frescoes of the 14th century remain on the walls, a very curious one among them of Salome with the Baptist's head. But the brasses will gladden the hearts of all rubbers. Most of them have been taken out of the matrices (which lie empty on the floor at different parts), and are fixed into the wall. There is a beautiful one of a priest without name, fully robed, of the date, as I judge, of 1 500 or thereabouts. Two or three lie on altar tombs. One of them is to the Fleetwood family, and the tomb itself is a beautiful work of art of the 16th century. A former vicar, in misdirected zeal, gave orders for the removal of it, as he found it in the way, and the destruction began. But a descendant of the family fortunately interfered

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and made him replace it. One tomb, unhappily, was already smashed up hopelessly, that to the Clayton family. Parts of it, however, were preserved by the old clerk, and he showed them to me. The slab containing the inscription lies flat in the chancel, and has a coat-of-arms splendidly carved upon it. Others that I noticed bear the names of Gardyner, RadclyfTe, Salter, Bredham. A skilled connoisseur might make more of them than I could, by means of the coats-of- arms, which in several cases remain where the in- scriptions have gone. There is also a memorial to some of the Hare family. Bishop Francis Hare of Chichester had an ancestral house here known as the Vache. He was the great-grandfather of Julius and Augustus Hare, the joint authors of the " Guesses at Truth." When the Hares afterwards became pos- sessed of Hurstmonceaux, that became the family burial place. They sold the Vache to Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser, who was the earliest patron and friend of Captain Cook, and who, on the great navi- gator's death, set up a curious monument to him in his grounds, which is one of the lions of Chalfont. Queen Emma came here to see it. One epitaph in the churchyard seems worth noting. Timothy Lovett, who died in 1728, is said to have been a soldier. His head-stone is decorated with death's head and cross-

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bones, scythe, spade, hourglass and so on, and the following verse is appended :

Italy and Spain, Germany and France Have been on earth my weary dance. So that I own the grave my greatest friend, That to my travels all has put an end.

But the most interesting relic in Chalfont is Milton's residence. A great number of Quakers in his days were living in the village and neighbourhood, among them Penn and Ellwood. When the plague broke out in London in 1665, Milton wrote from his house in Bunhill Fields to his friend Ellwood to request him to find him a cottage at Chalfont. Ellwood procured that which has thus become a place of pilgrimage to lovers of literature. It is said on a notice which I read on the mantelpiece to be " the only residence of Milton now known to exist." One of his many residences I remember well, that in York Street, Westminster. It is not many years since it was pulled down. It is by no means im- possible that the house in which he died in Bunhill Fields may be still standing, but certainty is lacking. Horton, in Bucks, where he wrote UAllegro, &c, I have never visited, and know not if any tradition of his place of abode remains there. The Chalfont cottage is picturesque, with thick timber beams

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among the brickwork, and a bright collection of flowers in front, dahlias, china asters, Michaelmas daisies, &c, all in rich bloom. The poet's modest study is on the right of the doorway, and the " living room " on the left. These are the only rooms apparently shown. In this study, on a visit from Ellwood, Milton called for the MS. of Paradise Lost, which he put into the Quaker's hands for his opinion. And here also, on a suggestion of Ellwood's to deal with Paradise Found he began the com- panion poem. In a glass case are a first edition of Paradise Regained, given by a learned antiquary, and a Latin book with the poet's monogram carefully but simply written on the title-page. These are the only genuine relics of Milton in the room. There is another Latin book, a folio, inscribed on the fly-leaf in a dashing hand, "John Milton, 1679," which the janitress informed me was his autograph. On my telling her that it was not so, that Milton died in 1674, and that I was acquainted with his writing, having read Lycidas in his own hand at Trinity College, Cambridge, she regarded me much as I conceive the chairman of the Protestant Alliance would a ritualist if he were to endeavour to explain the Prayer Book to him. She merely repeated that it was known to be his. In the same case are some

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small cannon balls which have been found in the churchyard, fired, it is said, in wantonness by Cromwell's soldiers against the church, on their coming hither after the battle of Aylesbury.

Things have changed since the notorious pluralist, Pretyman, came here once a year or so to his cure of souls, and when he appeared the people used to walk out of church. So the clerk told me, a remarkably intelligent old fellow of 79. And this hideous abom- ination lasted for 42 years. Pretyman was the cleric who complained that what with his enforced atten- dance at, Lincoln, at Winchester, at Wheathamstead, at Harpenden, at Chalfont, and at Nettleham, he found it very difficult to get his three months' holiday. He left a legacy behind him here of bitter hostility to the Church, which remains even to this present, though by the blessing of God it is now melting away.

The old clerk showed me from one of the drawers in the vestry the rusty clapper of a bell. It is that of the Sanctus bell, from which this clapper was removed when it was converted into the striking bell of the church clock. It is curious, however, to learn that in this parish the practice of ringing the Sanctus is still in a manner kept up. A bell is rung, not in the correct place, but as soon as the Holy Sacrament is finished.

1890

February 2%th. Our railway destination is Petersfield. Note the name. There are a hundred of these " — fields" in East Hants and Sussex. The affix means a clearing, and points back to the clearings which were made in the great Andred forest more than a thousand years ago. I have often speculated whether Petersfield must not have been the place where Nicholas Nickleby met Mr. Crummies, and made his engagement with him. I know well the house at Portsmouth where Dickens was born ; I also know that in which Nickleby and Smike took up their abode. The author has painted it to the life, and has succeeded by his art in making one fact as real as the other. It is a healthful mental exercise to see localities which a great author has peopled with the creatures of his imagination, and to compare your preconceived ideas with the realities.

But Petersfield looks prosaic enough to-day. A

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brand new hotel, never dreamt of by Manager Crummies, blocks up the view of the town. If you ever go there, reader, and can find an hour to spare, go down into the old town — it is ten minutes' walk — look at the old-fashioned inn, and the market-place, with its antique gables, and the statue of Dutch William, with its pompous Latin inscription. It is the popular tradition here that the sculptor, on having it pointed out to him that he had fashioned the eques- trian without stirrups, went home and destroyed himself in despair and remorse. It may comfort people, I hope, to know that the same fiction is told of half-a-dozen statues in England, and that it is a fiction. George IV., it will be remembered, is repre- sented at Charing Cross in the same Billy Button fashion. One likes to put the two monarchs in juxta- position, and is comforted to think that the one nearest our own time is the more respectable of the two. But this is by the way. The most interesting object in Petersfield is the church. I do not like to attempt the description of it from memory, and I did not visit it on this occasion. But I believe, if the reader will visit it, he will find the chancel arch and its surroundings one of the most beautiful pieces of work in England, of exquisite carving, and, as I believe, unique in its architectural peculiarities.

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We drive away westwards, surrounded by spurs of the beautiful South Downs ; there on the left is massive Butser Hill, and underneath it the secluded village of Catherington, where Charles Kean and his wife lie buried. On our right is Stonar Hill, from the top of which you get a view as fine as England anywhere can show, and that is saying much. Spread out before you are the ranges both of the North and South Downs, the valley of West Sussex, Bramshot Heath, the houses of many artists, scattered villages with towers and spires, chequered hills and valleys. Here is a steep hill, clothed with woods to the very top. At a fox hunt some thirty years ago, Reynard ran straight up it, and it may be imagined how the horse- men were bothered. They might as well have at- tempted to ford the Straits of Dover as get up there.

Moving on up hill and down dale, we come to the hamlet of Langrish, a place of primrose dells, and ferny hollows, and noble oaks. Twenty-five years ago there was a good squire here who gave himself to improve the cottages of the peasantry and look after their water supply, and build them a church. It is a simple affair, by Mr. Ewan Christian, but it is beauti- fully proportioned and well situated beside a wood, and makes a charming object in the landscape.

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Again we move over the hills, and watch an occa- sional hare frisking over the downs, and presently look down upon a spread-out valley surrounded by uplands. Here is the source of a stream which flows away to Southampton Water making its way through the South Downs. It is called the Meon, which means, as I believe, " Flinty." The source of it is called the Oxenbourne, which speaks for itself. But this Meon river has a very interesting history con- nected with it, carrying us back to the days of the Heptarchy. The West Saxons established their kingdom first at Southampton, then at Winchester, and a povverful kingdom it was. The South Saxons founded theirs in Sussex. But between them was a colony all along the bank of the Meon river, who were known as the Meonwaras, or " Men of Meon." They were Jutes, kinsmen of the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight, and for many years they remained independent of both Saxon kingdoms.

March ftk. The Meon river, which rises above Oxenbourne and flows into Southampton water, becomes a con- siderable little stream before it reaches the end, clear and deep, and a capital trout stream. There are three or four villages named after it, of which at

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present I shall name only two, East Meon and West Meon. From the former let me start now. Oxen- bourne is within the parish of East Meon, which has one of the finest parish churches in the country, built by Bishop Walkelin, the famous architect of Win- chester Cathedral, and added to and altered, like the Cathedral, by subsequent builders. It is cruciform, with a heavy Norman tower at the intersection, surmounted by a lead-covered spire of, I think, Edward III.'s time. There is also a rich Norman west door, and above it a Perpendicular window. Some forty years ago was published a volume by Mr. Gresley, entitled Church Clavering. To this volume is given a frontispiece representing East Meon church, for no reason except that evidently some good artist who was called on to illustrate the book had made a sketch of it, and now utilised it. It is exact in every line as the church was then, but it was restored about twenty years ago, and not over well. One or two characteristic features were obliterated, but anybody who has Church Clavering will still recognise the church without the least difficulty.

One act of vandalism was the removal of a Sanctus bell, which until then hung outside the Norman tower. Readers no doubt are aware that such a bell

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was rung in the Middle Ages at the moment when the Holy Sacrifice was pleaded at the altar, and so those who were unable to attend knew what part of the service was reached, and were able to join their prayer with that of their brethren. When the church was repaired I suppose the contractor said that as the bell was never used it might as well be removed ; the vicar saw no objection, and so it was carried off". I myself mentioned it to the architect, who said he would have it restored, but he probably forgot. It has never been done. The late vicar, who came some years after the alteration, endeavoured to trace the bell to put it back, but could not find what had become of it.

The font of this church, too, is very interesting, evidently by the same hand which carved that in Winchester Cathedral. There are two others like it in the county. A model of this one is in the South Kensington Museum. It has a remarkably large and massive basin of black marble, square-sided, and adorned with rude sculptures, all, so far as I remember, from the early chapters of Genesis. (Winchester has the story of St. Nicholas of Myra on it.) The most learned of Hampshire antiquaries, Mr. F. J. Baigent,

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has found evidence that these fonts were presented by Bishop Henry of Blois, " in some ways the greatest of Winchester Bishops," as Dean Kitchin calls him, the founder of the beautiful Hospital of St. Cross. But there is another curiosity in this church of which no satisfactory explanation seems at present to be forth- coming. In the south transept is a stone on the floor inscribed with the words " Amens plenty." What does it mean ? O that some reader of this might hit upon it ! The only guess that has ever appeared possible to me is that it refers to a skirmish in the Civil Wars which took place here, and of which I hope to say more hereafter, and that this is a contemptuous epitaph by a Roundhead on the Cavaliers who were killed and buried here. It does not run very easy, but I am not prepared with anything better. East Meon, before the Conquest, belonged to the king, afterwards to the Bishop. The little bridge over the Meon, which leads into the village, is called " Knus- berry Arch" (more of it anon), and an old local antiquary used to assert that the name meant Knut's borough, and that the great Danish king lived here. May be or not ; the Bishop had a country house here, and the remains of it are still seen opposite the church gate. It is in a woeful condition, but here

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is the great guest chamber, with its arched roof and beautiful corbels, pitiable to look upon. One is a king's head, I think Edward II., another is the Bishop.

March 14///. Two miles from East Meon lies Westbury House, a building of about 180 years old, surrounded with splendid woods. The present building stands on ancient foundations ; no wonder ; for Westbury is named in Domesday. It is partly in East Meon, partly in West Meon parish. In the Conqueror's time it belonged to Hugh de Port, who was one of the greatest landowners in Hants, I think the greatest. He had another estate about three miles further down the Meon river, called Warnford, and the two are in several respects alike. In each case the river flows along in front of the house, and by the banks of it is a small church. That at Westbury is in ruins, and that at Warnford is little better, though it is still used as the parish church. More of Warnford hereafter. But I have made these few notes on Westbury ruin. It is a rectangular building, about 40 feet by 22. The east and west gables remain, and the side walls are as high as the roof plates. It is built of flint with stone facings. On the south side is

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a two-light window almost complete, narrow lancets, with a somewhat sharply pointed hood over them, the moulding plain but good. Another window, blocked up, is apparently of the same character, and between them is a round-headed door. The tracery of the east window is so destroyed that I could not make it out, but it looked geometrical, at least I thought I could discern signs of a quatrefoil. On the north are also two windows, with very large splays. On the west gable are two small rectangular windows of excellent workmanship, and above these a two-light window, apparently Perpendicular, but I could not be sure because of the overhanging ivy. Inside is the round bowl of the font, and close to it the upper portion of a richly covered monumental slab, consisting of a canopy cusped, and a head and neck. The rest is clean gone.

Since the Reformation this chapel has thus stood desolate. It is mentioned in the Visitation of that time as a chapelry of East Meon, and I here subjoin the inventories of East Meon church and this chapelry, as well as of another chapel " in the field " belonging to East Meon, which those who know it better than I do may recognise. Perhaps it was at Oxenbourne, but I have never seen any remains of it. But these

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inventories were made in 1554, and they prove conclusively that the vestments and other church ornaments were in use until then. The object was to abolish the form of service as carried on in the first and second years of King Edward, as that of the Elizabethan rubric was to restore that. These invent- ories therefore are of great historical value.

Eastmeon.

A suit of vestments of blew silk.

Another suit of blew satin of Bridge.

Another suit of blew and white silk.

An old vestment of white fustian.

2 hearse cloths, whereof one silk

2 pairs of candlesticks of latten.

2 pairs of iron candlesticks.

A shovell, a bar of iron, and a pick axe.

2 altar cloths, six surplices.

3 copes, one of redd velvet, the other of greene velvet, the 3rd white damask.

A pair of organs, 2 barres of iron.

A cope of cloth of gold that was taken away by one Nicholas Langridge which remaineth in his hands.

Our Lady Chapelle in the Field.

Goods and other ornaments belonging to the said Chapelle.

One vestment of yellow old fustian. A chalice of silver with a paten. 2 small belles in the steeple.

The Chapelle of Westbury.

Goods and other ornaments belonging to the said Chapelle.

A vestment of redd silk. A chalice with a |>.iten. One hanging bell.

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There it is, bad spelling and all. It may be well to note that " Bridge " means Bruges in the Netherlands, that the " hearse " was the bier, the " latten " was fine brass beaten out into plates. The expression " pair of organs" is curious. It was applied by our fathers simply to what we call an organ. We still use the same form of expression when we talk of a pair of bellows. The " vestment," I need not say, was the chasuble.

But I have one word more about Westbury. It was here, and not at Westbury in Wilts, as some histories have it, that the meeting of Henry I. and Robert of Normandy took place. The one came from Odiham, the other from Gosport. They were about as likely to meet at Sheffield as all down in Wilts. Westbury is only a short mile from the Gosport-road.

March 21. Yet a mile further westward from Westbury, and we are at West Meon, the furthest point of my pilgrim- age into the Meon country for the present. A very pretty village and not without historical interest. Fifty years ago there used to be an old church here, heavy and uncouth to look upon. It was partly Norman, partly, I believe, Saxon, and, withal, a good

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deal of it was modern churchwarden, but in the hands of a skilful architect it might have been restored instead of being pulled down. That church had, according to tradition been founded by St. Wilfred of York during his banishment into Sussex. He had come up the Meon country and converted the people from heathenism, and two churches further down the valley unquestionably owe their foundation to him.

The old church had some relics which have quite disappeared. The font has, after a good many ad- ventures, been turned into a piscina in a London church.1 There are two latin inscriptions of great length on the south wall. I wish some one had copied them. They are quite gone. There was a stone on the chancel floor to the memory of Elizabeth, wife of Dr. Abraham Alleyne, rector of this parish, who died in 1685. That was taken to form a basis for the churchyard gates, and the inscription is now all but trodden out. I could make out the " Elizabethan " the last time I saw it. Abraham Alleyne was an interesting man. Some day I may have more to say about him. A few marble tablets

1 Since this was written, the Font has been restored to its original use, and stands in S. Anne's, Brondesbury, with an inscription saying that it was presented to that church by Canon Benham.— Editor.

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have been removed to the walls of the tower of the new church. Ages hence no one will know that they do not tell strict truth when two of them begin " In a vault beneath this seat." One of these is to Stephen Unwin, who was rector here for fifty years. He was, if I recollect aright, the brother of Morley and uncle of William Unwin, the two friends of Cowper. After him came one Thomas Dampier, who was, however, a year or two later made Bishop of Ely, but who pro- cured the living for his brother John, and he also was rector for near upon half a century. One of the tablets is to him.

To a third of these mural monuments a curious romance attaches. The space still open to me will not allow me to relate it this week. Let me mention instead that in the churchyard lie buried the father and mother of Richard Cobden, of whom I have heard old people, who remembered them, speak with much affection and respect. In the same churchyard is buried also John Lord, the author of Lord's Cricket Ground. He left Marylebone in 1830, I believe, and came down to end his days in the house in which I began to write these Meon papers. He died suddenly on the 15th of January, 1832. Let us hope that the Marylebone club, for which he did so much, will

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always keep in order the stone which covers him. A coat of paint even now would not hurt it.

Another object of interest is the marriage register of Wm. Howley, Rector of Ropley, a village some seven miles off. Why he came here to be married I know not, perhaps it was because his wife was below him in social position. She could not write her name, and a cross stands for her signature. They became the parents of him who was called " the last Prince Archbishop," a man of real dignity, and of vast munificence. Merit or good fortune, or both, thus raised the son of a peasant girl to an exalted position, and he showed himself as worthy to fill it as if he could have traced his lineage back to the Conquest.

Here is an interesting fact connected with West Meon which deserves, I think, to be chronicled, communicated to me by my valued friend, Mr. F. J. Baigent. Sigebert (alias Sebert) Buckley, the last monk of Westminster, died at Punceholt (a hamlet in the village) in 1610. He had survived the wicked spoliation of the Abbey for seventy-two years. He had long been quite blind. The Lovedeans and Nortons, both well-known Roman Catholic families there, had taken reverent care of the old man.

PETER LOMBARD 25

June 13.

The St. Paul's Ecclesiological had a pleasant day at Waltham Abbey on Saturday. Londoners who want a nice afternoon's excursion should take an opportunity of running down there. The third-class fare is is. yd. return. A walk of a quarter of an hour from the station brings you to the Abbey, and a very magnificent structure it is. The gentleman who read us a good paper about it contends, as E. A. Freeman also does, that it is substantially the work of King Harold, and therefore antecedent to the Conquest. It is well-known that the founder of Norman archi- tecture in England was Edward the Confessor. The chancel of the abbey is quite gone, probably Harold's bones rest beneath the site of it, and may one of these days be discovered. The western tower was built in the days of Queen Mary. Near the south- west corner of the church are the old pillory, stocks and whipping posts. The latter is so beautifully carved that the temporary tenants of it must have been quite charmed during their occupancy with the contemplation, for which their very close proximity gave them abundant opportunity.

Sept. 5.

Sir John Monckton, the Town Clerk of the City of London, and Mr. Sharpe, the Records Clerk, have

26 THE LETTERS OF PETER LOMBARD

just completed a valuable boon to the student of mediaeval history. The Calendar of Wills enrolled in the Court of Hustings from 1258 to 1688 is completed, and a second part, which is in the press, will contain an introduction treating of the bequests of goods and chattels, wearing apparel, furs, armour, etc., as well as of bequests to churches, hermits and anchorites, of vestments, missals, breviaries, relics, etc. Among the wills calendared will be found those of Sir William Walworth, (the dagger with which he killed Wat the Tyler is to be seen in Fishmongers' Hall) Richard Whittington, four times Lord Mayor, Dean Colet, Sir Thomas Gresham, etc. * The will of Sir Alexander Furnell (A.D. 1440) is the first which is in English.

1892

Feb. 12.

A very interesting note for archaeological readers, by a first-rate Hampshire antiquary : —

u Hampshire contains four very remarkable Byzantine fonts. These are the well-known font in Winchester Cathedral, and those in the parish churches of St. Mary, Bourn, East Meon, and St. Michael's, Southampton. These fonts differ from any others in the country, both in regard to the stone of which they are composed, and the style of their ornamentation. The stone is a black marble, quite unlike any stone found in this part of England. Some old accounts of these fonts have described the stone as a black basalt, but as fragments of it have been found to effervesce when acted on with diluted hydrochloric acid, there can be no doubt of its character as a hard black lime- stone or marble, very rare, if not unknown, amongst English stones. The St. Mary, Bourn, font is three feet six inches square, and the block is twelve inches

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deep. The diameter of the basin is two feet six inches. This font at some period of its history appears to have rested on a handsome base supported at its four corners by cylindrical pillars like the ornamental pillar supports of Purbeck marble which were such a common form of ornamentation in the thirteenth century. These ornamental pillars have long since disappeared, and the font now rests on a low circular pedestal of white stone which gives it an appearance much too low and awkward, and one quite unworthy of such a fine specimen of workmanship. The vicar of the parish, the Rev. W. Barnes, is very desirous of restoring the base of this most interesting font by raising it and putting a basement step round it. There can be no doubt as to the nature of the base it formerly rested on, which was destroyed by the vandalism of some past age. It is probable that the four supporting pillars were originally composed of the same stone as the material of the font itself, for the remains of these broken columns may be seen at the bottom of the block of black marble of which it is composed.

One interesting consideration connected with these Byzantine fonts is their probable origin. Were they brought into Hampshire from the Byzantine empire

PETER LOMBARD 29

or were they made in the country by Byzantine workmen ? Some circumstantial evidence points to the twelfth or early part of the thirteenth century as the probable date of the connexion of these fonts with Hampshire. At that time the Venetians traded to Southampton, and also largely to the Greek empire. It is quite likely that Byzantine workmen of various kinds may have occasionally found their way into England through this traffic, and if no other circum- stantial evidence existed we might perhaps conclude that these fonts in Hampshire, which show such traces of the influence of the style of art prevailing in the Greek empire, were made in this country by workmen from that part of the world, or native English workmen who had acquired their art there. The details, however, of the fifth crusade in 1203-4 in which the Venetians were largely concerned, and which, as is well known, developed into an attack on the Greeks at Constanti- nople, may supply another explanation. In this crusade the Latin-Christians, perhaps influenced by the mercenary spirit of the money-making merchants of Venice, who found the ships for the expedition, looted the Greek churches at Constantinople and took away all the spoil they could. It was not until the time of Henry III. that the lands of Norman nobles in England were confiscated. At the beginning of the

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13th century there were many of these Normans who held both Norman and English estates. The D' Andely family was connected both with Southampton and St. Mary, Bourn, and probably came from the neighbour- hood of Les Andleys in Normandy. Many French and Norman knights took part in the adventurous expedition known as the fifth crusade. The effigy of a cross-legged knight, believed to be one of the D' Andely family, still remains in St. Mary, Bourn, church. Whether any one or more of these fonts ever had a place in a Greek church must be uncertain ; but there can be no doubt about the Byzantine influence on the art they exhibit, and consequently, whatever may have been the origin of the St. Mary, Bourn, font, there can be no doubt about its interest. Nor can there be any difference of opinion as to the desirability of placing such a rare specimen of ecclesiastical art upon a more fitting base.

February 26///.

It was on Wednesday, the 27th ult., that we started on this, to us, great expedition. Our party consisted of six ; W. and his wife, myself and Mrs. Lombard, C. and M. travelling single. A multitude of kind friends came to see us start, and with wistful,

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longing looks, we bade them " God be wi' you." On Friday morning we reached Rome, and stayed there some thirty hours. M. had never been there. We were able, on Friday, to go on the Pincio Hill and survey the panorama of the Great City, to point out the chief scenes of interest, from St. Peters and the Capitol down to the little church at our feet, where, according to tradition, the Christian slave girl, Acte, did a faithful service to the wretched Nero. The earth was well rid of him, but she remembered a time when he had been kind to her, and she had him burned, and buried his ashes reverently. And the church of St. Mary, near the " Gate of the People," covers him. From the spot where we stand we can see the burial-place of Augustus, but his bones have been thrown out of it, and the Mausoleum is now a circus. The castle of St. Angelo, too, built by Hadrian to be a place of imperial tombs, was ransacked by Alaric and every grave desecrated. We ran through St. Peter's and up the middle of the Forum, and went into the Coliseum, and saw the church of St. Andrew, the scene of one of the events which has changed the history of the world. In the recess behind the high altar, before the theatre was turned into a church, stood Pompey's statue, and at the foot of it Julius Caesar was assassinated. I saw

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the statue itself two years ago. I think it is not now shown, but it is in the Law Court, not far from the spot. Next day, as M. wanted to see one of the catacombs, I became his guide to that of St. Callistus. There is still, of course, the deepest interest attaching to the subterranean chapels at which SS. Peter and Paul, we may be certain, celebrated the Sacred Mysteries, but the inscriptions which formerly covered the graves all round you are mostly removed to the Lateran Museum. Our guide, a very pleasant Trappist monk, told us that there are sixteen kilo- metres (10 miles) of passages in this catacomb alone. We also visited another very different kind of burial- place, one of the columbaria, of which there are a great number all over the city. The name means the " dovecots." Why so called ? Enter the building. It is generally a plain square place, roofed in. On entering you find yourself at the top of a staircase which leads down to the floor, say fifteen or twenty feet below. So you are looking down upon four walls, each of which is pierced with holes, rising tier above tier. Hence the name of " pigeon-holes." In the middle generally there is a block, similarly pigeon-holed, so that the one collection faces the other. And this was all done that when any member of a household died, whether master, son, or slave, his

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body, having been burned, his ashes might be placed in one of these recesses, and sealed up, the name being placed on the outside. They have been all opened on the chance of relics being found, but the inscriptions lie about by the hundred. I pointed out to my companions the name Tryphosa. She may very probably have been the same to whom St. Paul sent a loving salutation in the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. There was just time for a run through the Lateran Church (the scene of many Councils), and for a reverent look at the Santa Sca/a, the marble steps by which our dear Lord was led down from Pilate's judgment seat. Probability is altogether in favour of the genuineness of this relic which was brought hither by Helena. In the after- noon we went on to Naples.

We had only a night and morning in Naples. After an early celebration of Holy Communion we breakfasted, and then took a walk along the shore. As it was Sunday morning we did not care to go sight-seeing, but there were two objects which particu- larly interested me. The first was the island of Capri right before our windows across the bay. Let anyone who has seen the Isle of Wight from the hills above Portsmouth think of the long, gentle slope from the

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centre of the island to Bembridge Downs on one side, and the steeper one to the abrupt rocks of Alum Bay on the other. This will give him a thoroughly good idea of the appearance of Capri if he make the following alterations. First of all turn the Isle of Wight round, put the Bembridge slope on the right and Alum Bay cliffs on the left. Next, in the centre, on St. Catharine's Downs, put a couple of lofty hills, and, lastly, take away the Needles on the Alum Bay side. Such is Capri, and very lovely it looked in its blue haze of distance, a sky almost cloudless above it, and the intense blue of the Great Sea in front. This was the island where, at the time that the Redeemer was going about day by day ministering to the weary and heavy laden, Tiberius Caesar was secluding himself from the world over which he tyrannised, attended by a myriad of spies and evil officers, the terror and hatred of the world which never saw him. Anybody who wants a clever novel to read may take my recommendation of Necera. I cannot remember the author's name, but it gives a wonderful picture of the heathen world and of Roman society under Tiberius. My other object was the Pozzuoli, and I found it after a walk of a couple of miles along the coast. It is the Puteoli at which St. Paul landed in Italy after his shipwreck, and I was desirous of

PETER LOMBARD 35

following, wherever I could, the scenes of the sacred history. I cannot remember the exact reference, but there is a very vivid account of this Great Apostle's route from here along the Appian Road in one of Bishop Christopher Wordsworth's sermons. Vesuvius was covered with heavy black clouds ; they broke for about five minutes, and we saw the smoke then, and then only ; and a gentleman showed us the situation of Pompeii. By the way, I ought to mention that after we moved away in our ship, and got nearer Capri, I saw some rocks answering to the Needles after all, at what I have called the Alum Bay end. They were not visible from the town.

We got aboard our boat about four o'clock that

afternoon and soon steamed away. The incidents of

our four days' voyage were pleasant enough, but not

exciting. At daybreak on Monday morning we were

told that we were passing through the Straits of

Messina, and went on deck. The sea was quite

smooth, though there was a fresh wind blowing. We

saw both Messina in its beauty, and Rhegium, and

thought of the Punic war, which found here its first

great ground of contention ; the death-grip of two

mighty cities which was to end in the total destruction

of one, and the beginning of the world-wide supremacy

D 2

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of the other. There never was any other such thing in history, and we may be certain that there never will be again, as nations of the world being ruled, not by another nation but absolutely by one city. So it began to be for centuries from the day when Rome wrested Sicily from Carthage.

We saw the base of Etna for half an hour before its top became visible out of the clouds. Snowy sides, but all deeply furrowed with black chasms, and a blackened top without any white at all, such was the aspect. There was no sign of the volcanic fire in the way of smoke after passing the strait. We read from my pocket Bible how St. Paul was " tossed up and down " in the waters through which we were passing. It was now all calm, and except for a little rolling now and again it continued so until we reached Alexandria on the Thursday. Apelles and his wife had joined us at Naples, a welcome addition to our party. He pointed out to me a peculiar aspect of the sea which Homer describes as the "wine-coloured sea." When the sun was shining aslant at morning and evening, whilst there were clouds overhead, the water certainly looked like very good claret. Nobody who hadn't been here, said Apelles, but would think- that Homer's expression was nonsense. I am sorry

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Apelles is not going to Palestine with us, for he is quite at home there, and his two most famous pictures were painted there, but he is going up the Nile.

The first sight of Alexandria was exciting enough, for it was our first view of a fresh continent. First we saw low patches along the horizon — sand-hills. Then the captain showed us the tall lighthouse, on the site of the ancient Pharos. Presently we saw the masts of the shipping, then the buildings, most of them snowy- white. We thought of the Ptolemies, and the Septuagint, and the great library, and Philo, and Antony and Cleopatra, and St. Mark, and Origen, and St. Clement of Alexandria, and Arius and Athanasius, and Cyril and Hypatia. What was Arabi Pasha compared with such as these? I saw his house in the course of the day, but I would ten thousand times rather have seen the house where the LXX. interpreters turned the Scriptures into a language in which the wide world could read them, and who took one of the most momentous steps in the education of mankind. It was a mighty fresh unrolling of the scroll of God's eternal mysteries.

He who would attempt to describe that landing would have to be an impressionist ; no painter of

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details would have a chance. The whole Arabian Nights turned loose ; at least the male part of them, for women there were none. I saw Sinbad the Sailor, and Noureddin, and AH Baba (the forty thieves have greatly augmented their numbers), I knew them all by the exact portraits in the illustrated edition. After we had passed the breakwater and had entered the port, we ran up a yellow flag and " stood off and on," as Captain Cuttle would say. The flag signified that we were in a good state of health, and wished the medical authorities of Alexandria to testify as much. Very soon we were boarded by the doctor, a handsome, jolly-looking old fellow, red-faced, and red-fezzed, white-bearded, red sash round him. He didn't ask to look at our tongues, but turned over some papers which the mate showed him, shook his sides at some joke which the same functionary made, waved his farewell gracefully, and departed. Then we went in. Two or three gangways were run up, and then — such a hurly-burly ! Up they rushed, in long flowing robes, blue, black, red, some with faces as unmistakably Egyptian as those on the monuments of 5, OCX) years standing, Syrians, jet black Nubians, and a dozen nationalities besides, such crowds that there must have been twenty candidates to every passenger. Free fights on the gangway, and an official (I was told

PETER LOMBARD 39

he was " a policeman ") with a little stick in his hand applied it fiercely to the shoulders of three or four men who were pushing themselves in. From the shore a very Babel of vociferating hotel-touters, carriage drivers, mule owners, and porters. Woe to the man who hasn't settled his own movements. We had previously secured the services of a Cook's agent (I am told Gaze's is equally good). He came forward quite calmly, with a number of Egyptian myrmidons, asked which was our luggage, and being shown, told us we might go ashore and leave the rest to him. One might well have thought that it was all lost for ever when you pushed your way through the motley throng, and saw them pouncing upon it. One of his subs carried us down, bade us answer no touter who spoke to us, but follow him, looking straightforward s. We did so and were put into a great omnibus, and presently we saw bundle after bundle of our luggage being packed upon drays. Our destination was the railway station to have it all registered and our places secured for the afternoon train. Then, under charge of a dragoman, we started for a stroll in the city. He was a stupid fellow, and knew nothing. We should have liked to see the historic scenes ; he took us instead to see the houses of this, that, and the other Pasha. Oh that he had fallen into the hands of Mark

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Twain ! However, there were two or three things which were of great interest, which we found for our- selves. First, when we got clear of the crowd at the boat, we saw the population more distinctly. Day by day ever since I have been here I have been more and more impressed with the tall, noble figures of the Egyptian men, and with the dignity of their aspect. There they are, old and young, grave and impressive as the figures in a sacred painting. Out of all the elderly men you meet, whether grizzled or white- bearded, half would make admirable models for a patriarch. The women, I need not stay to tell that those you meet in the street are closely veiled. A pair of piercing black eyes is all you see of them. I met three or four drayloads in a street of Alexandria, and enquiring what they were doing, was told that this was the day answering to the All Souls' Day of Christendom, and that they were going to the cemetery to weep. They hardly looked like it, but I proposed that we should go there and see. It was a striking, but not a pleasing, sight. Blocks of stone cover each grave, and at the head is a thin, slender shaft, about four feet high for the most part, with an inscription. Everything is white. Round these graves were group upon group of " mourners," with baskets of food, which they seemed to be

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enjoying thoroughly as they laughed and talked. In some cases they had made themselves tents. There may have been religious services going on, but if so I did not see them. I confess that to me it all looked rather ghoulish. Just outside the gate of the cemetery is " Pompey's Pillar," a magnificent granite monolith, surmounted with a Roman capital, and standing in the centre of a great mound. It was set up in honour of Diocletian, and is named after its founder, Pompey, who was a prefect of Alex- andria in that reign. It was formerly the centre of the Serapeum, which all readers of Kingsley's Hypatia will remember.

In the afternoon we started for Cairo, a journey of about four hours across the Delta. I have found some striking illustrations already of sacred history, which I hope to tell of hereafter. At present I can only refer to the fact that we were practically in the land of the Israelites. The Delta is the land in which Joseph's Pharaoh lived. The Delta is a very fertile plain, with no sign of a hill anywhere. We were on the left bank, Goshen was on the right, but they are altogether alike. The figures of the workers on the monuments might have been taken from the living men that we saw in the fields as we passed

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along; long garment, girdle, head-dress — nothing is changed. We saw them making bricks ; we passed many brick and mud villages, low hovels, flat-roofed, one-storied. Yes, a visit hither is a beautiful com- mentary on the Pentateuch.

II

CAIRO. February 8t/i.

I LEFT off my last letter with the remark that I had seen since I came here many illustrations of the Bible. Take this incklent of our first morning. We were driving up the hill to see one of the mosques (which, by the way, is pronounced " moosky " ) ; our driver nearly ran over a couple of women who cried out angrily, and received an equally angry retort. With furious mien one of them rushed forward, took up a handful of dust and threw it after us, though by this time we were several yards off (2 Sam. xvi. 13). During the same drive we met a funeral : it was that of a little child, evidently of the poorest class, but two or three men were singing monotonously in front. We met many more in the course of our stay, one or two of persons of the better class, and in one case

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there must have been thirty of these professional wailers, and one thought of the " minstrels and people making a noise." On our last day we met at the very gate of the city " a dead man carried out," and in this case there was a weeping woman behind the bier. Of course we remembered Nain. Once more, on that first morning we met a carriage of some rich person, and before it were two running footmen. These, when engaged in such employment, turn up their long robes to the loins and bind them fast with a girdle, thus dis- playing linen garments like knickerbockers buckled at the knees, the rest of their legs and feet bare. Then at a swinging trot, with chests well thrown forward, they glide along ; and even thus must Elijah have done when he girded up his loins and ran before Ahab's chariot, showing his loyalty to the King he was forced to oppose and rebuke, in the same spirit as did our own Anselm to Henry I.

Of the veiled women I have already spoken. If a women is engaged in any outdoor labour which compels her to uncover her face, she always, when approached by a man, lifts her garment and covers her mouth, showing as much instinctive delicacy as would an English woman in attending to her ankles in getting into a railway carriage. I have seen this

44 THE LETTERS OF

gesture constantly. Rebekah, when Isaac approached her, "took a veil and covered herself."

My next point requires a few words of preface. Egypt comprises two portions — Upper Egypt, the Valley of the Nile, and lower Egypt, the Delta. Now look at that valley of the Nile. It is a sight never to be forgotten. The banks on either side covered with beautiful verdure, sometimes not more than a mile in breadth, river and all, sometimes five or six miles. And on each side of this fertile strip — what ? Abso- lute desolation. As far as my geographical memory goes, for I have no map at hand, this great desert stretches westward to the Atlantic seaboard, and east- ward to the valley of the Euphrates, broken into, in the latter case, by the Red Sea, which sends a tongue of water up through it. I have not only never seen, but no description has enabled me to imagine, the awful loneliness of the scene.

Last Saturday I went to the Pyramids. I am not going to speak of them just now, only of the situation. You pass through the rich river valley, and find your- self at length in the desert, which here and, I believe, everywhere is a slightly elevated plateau. Now, as you stand here under the shadow of Cheops, you see

PETER LOMBARD 45

the valley all bright and beautiful in its varying shades of green, and its acacias and tall palms, and along the edge is the arid sandy plain, as clearly marked off as a turnpike road in England alongside a green common. You wade through the dry sand above your boots ; look westward over this great Libyan desert, and there is not anywhere a single vestige of any tree, or flower, or blade of grass. Here and there a mass of red rock relieves the colour of the pale sand, and the undulations make shadows ; but all speaks of loneliness and death.

Now go back with me into the valley. The Nile has no tributaries. The plain is watered, partly by the periodical overflows of the river, partly by canals and by big reservoirs. Several times I have seen this: the fields of rice, of leeks, of melons, are made up in small quadrangular portions by means of low mud-banks four or five inches high. The labourer passes up and down, carefully treading them up into good order where they have been broken down. When he wants to water the plot, he just treads a breach in them on the reservoir side, and the stream flows in. The first time I saw him I understood Deut. xi. 10 in a moment. I suppose Proverbs xxi. I must have reference to the same practice. In fact,

46 THE LETTERS OF

the management of the water supply is one of the most curious characteristics of the country. The water-carriers go to the river or the canal with their vessel, generally the skins of a pig tightly sewn up, holding the beast over their shoulder by one leg. Some supply buyers on demand, others are told off to water the streets, all with the same kind of vessel. At the wells the patient, blindfolded ox works away all day at the wheel, and the supply which he draws up is turned into troughs, and sent down into the fields to be distributed " with the foot." I have also seen " two women grinding at the mill," not corn indeed, but in one case coffee, in the other pepper ; the revolving stone upon a fixed one, with a long curved handle.

Liddon has a masterly sermon on " The Fascina- tions of Egypt." I cut it from a penny periodical, and read it in the desert. It was clearly written after his visit. Here am I early in February ; it is like a London day in July, the sun is in a cloudless sky. Think of an experience of the heat streaming down over that waterless sand, of the wind rising and driving it in a storm into your eyes and ears and nostrils. There is no difficulty in understanding the phrase "the waste howling wilderness," nor the

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regretful memories of the delicious fruits which they had left behind them. Liddon thinks that their words about the " graves in Egypt " indicate a yearning to have their bones laid in the grand tombs which they had seen there, rather than in the pathless sand. It was a terrible discipline, that of those forty years, but it turned a horde of rough savages into an organised nation.

The endless strings of camels and asses also speak of Scripture lands. Nobody rides horses, I think, except soldiers and Government officials. Well-to-do civilians in turbans and long dark mantles, covering snow-white tunics, ride along past our windows on handsome donkeys every minute, always grave and impassive of aspect. I wonder if you presented a loaded gun at one whether he would show any excite- ment. I cannot imagine him.

Our visits to the Mosques were not without reminders of the Holy Book, " Loose thy shoe from thy foot." Do not run the risk of desecrating this sacred place with any of the defilements of the common world. If you choose to take off your boots, good ; if not, you have to wear sandals over them ; and the Moslem custodians do not like you to touch these

48 THE LETTERS OF

sandals even with your hand, they prefer to tie them themselves. So shod we went into several, and the sight is impressive. A service at the regular hour of prayer you are not permitted to see. Once we were very urgently hurried out because the time drew nigh. But in two of them we found a solitary sheikh in his pulpit, seated on the floor with his face towards Mecca, chanting the Koran. And one of them did it beauti- fully. His voice was a strong and sweet baritone, and so true to the key that I could have jotted down the melody on a bit of music paper. We stood near and listened to him, but of course he took no notice of us. Here and there were a few men performing a vow, apparently; they went on from station to station reciting passages at each place. At one Mosque M. and I watched a man at M the Mecca door " (a closed- up recess pointing always towards their holy city) ; he knelt and touched the floor with his forehead, remained for a while motionless, stood up and extended his hands for a minute, again knelt in the same lowly fashion. How long he continued I know not, for he was still engaged when we left, but another joined him whilst we stood by. I fancy he looked a little embarrassed at finding himself watched, but if so he was not hindered, for he began his devotions as his fellow Moslem was doing. I whispered to M., who is

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a stiff High Churchman, " Do you suppose that prayers so earnest as these evidently are wasted in the empty air ? " " I am sure they cannot be," was the reply. And I fully agreed with him. I was deeply moved by the intensity of their manner, and trusted that in the church which I know best in London, the Lord of all souls will give equal earnest- ness to those whom I see on week days praying there with a better faith and fuller hope.

The Pyramids I cannot attempt to describe. They are familiar enough in photographs and books as far as description is possible. They stand on the edge of the Libyan desert, and within ten minutes' walk of them is the great Sphinx. Of all the impressive figures I have ever seen there is none like that. There it lies reposing, but with head erect, gazing eastward with calm, large eyes into the illimitable distance, and- — yes ! I write it deliberately — giving to all of us the impression of consciousness. Even as we saw it surveying the world, Abraham saw it. If the world shall continue to last as many centuries as the Sphinx has gazed on it, what further changes will the great creature behold ? God knows. And all doubts and fears are stilled in the heart of him who has realised that the true home of man is in a land as yet unseea

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I attended a Coptic Celebration on Sunday morning, and was agreeably impressed. The language, as many readers will know, is Greek in basis, with an intermingling of barbarous words, and written in ancient characters. I expected to be able to follow it with a translation, but found myself suddenly thrown off the line more than once when I was getting along smoothly. I have heard East-end clergy say that when they get people to church there are often complaints that they can't follow the Prayer Book because of the turning from one part to another. I used to think this nonsense ; but my own discomfiture leads me to think there is something in it. However, a young man by my side helped me several times. It is really a beautiful service, mostly, I believe, that of St. Basil. The method of Communicating is very peculiar. The bread is much like our ordinary kind ; one of the deacons afterwards gave me a loaf, which I am taking home. As the priest stands at the altar the receivers, who have put on a white robe, pass round it, and he places the holy bread in their mouths. And they still continue to pass round and to receive again and again till the whole is consumed. There were about a dozen, and I think about three of these acts of reception for each. Then the cup, out of which he Communicated them with a spoon. Some of the

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Communicants were children of seven and eight years old, and a mother brought a sick baby who was also Communicated. One Communicant, so I was told, was the chief judge in the law courts.

We saw a very pathetic scene at Tewfik's tomb, where his mother was praying for his soul, and each day a thousand people are fed with bread, meat, and rice. I was offered coffee and a cigarette, and was about to refuse, when my neighbour whispered to me that it would be taken as unkind, so I drank and smoked. It is, of course, intended to symbolise the desire for the happiness of the dead. It was note- worthy that those charged with the feeding of the multitude caused them to sit down in square patches of a dozen each, and then placed the dish between them. It reminded me of the irpacrLal irpaaiai of St. Mark vi. 39. I have no time to tell about the Howling Dervishes or of the Cairo Bazaars.

Ill

February i$tk.

We left Cairo on the 10th, and went to Alexandria

for a night. Early next morning I gave an old

Moslem a franc to take me to the Church of St.

E 2

52 THE LETTERS OF

Mark, and to my unspeakable disgust he took me to the English Church. However, there was no time to remedy matters, for we had to go aboard our ship, the Mahallah. Had we sailed from Port Said we should have had a voyage of only twelve hours, but there was no boat going ; that from Alexandria to Jaffa took us twenty-six hours. But the sea was perfectly smooth, and though I am almost always wretched afloat, I enjoyed this voyage thoroughly. We were sitting on deck enjoying the bright sun and cool breeze when Mrs. W. exclaimed, " I think I see the land." I sat facing her, and for a moment thought of her as looking west, and so curtly told her that she might as well expect to see America from the coast of Cornwall, and did not trouble to look round. Directly after I saw the absurdity of my own remark, and turned myself. Yes, it was unmistakable, a large stretch of coast, most pleasant to behold. This, then, was our first view of Asia, sand hills on the Philistine coast, not unlike those which you see between Calais and Boulogne. Presently Jaffa came in sight, a bright, handsome-looking town, on a low rounded hill with a stretch of houses extending along the level coast. Those on the hill rising tier above tier with their flat roofs and bright appearance (many of them being evidently new) reminded one of the

PETER LOMBARD 53

Mediterranean towns in Italy. We cast anchor about three-quarters of a mile from the land ; there is no harbour whatever.

I may take this opportunity of inserting a parenthesis here. I am writing it a week later. We had a tremendous storm of sand on Sunday, and I heard last night that the Jaffa boat was unable to land for twenty-four hours, and that in all probability this letter will not reach England for a fortnight in consequence.

A number of boats lay ready in the distance, but made no movement towards us. They could not do so till our doctor had gone ashore to report our good health. It was evident when he had done so, for suddenly four big boats darted out, strongly manned. It was most curious to see the way the men rowed ; they rose up each time they put in their oar, got a good purchase by putting one foot on the seat in front of them, and so pulled in, sitting down as they did so, then rising as before. As it was what would in England be a piping hot summer's day, their condition may be imagined by the time they reached us. Again the name of " Cook," which we shouted over the sides, wrought wonders ; a man, with the

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same magic word on his collar and cap, came up with his men, inquired which was our luggage, asked for our keys (for the custom house) then handed us over to one of his staff. We saw no more of our belongings till we came to our hotel, and there was everything, big boxes, little boxes, bags, wraps, umbrellas — nothing missing. But what a scene was that half-mile walk to the hotel. Up narrow winding alleys, as crowded as any London court I have ever seen, almost every person in Eastern costume, the Bedouins with " kefiyeh " (head-dress with long sides to it hanging down on his shoulders) and striped garment of camel's hair, and the fellaheen in turbans and long white robe with an "abba," thrown over it (a dark cloak). And hundreds of these people were offering fruits and small manufactures for sale. Now and then we emerged into a little square with the sellers all round the sides, and in the midst camels lying about and children playing among them. The camel has not a very good character among travellers He is said to be spiteful, and it may be quite true, but I have never seen one so among the hundreds I have seen in the East. It is wonderful to watch him kneel down at the peculiar cry of the child who has charge of him, and to see the patient way in which he goes sturdily on in spite of all sorts of

PETER LOMBARD 55

obstacles. If a storm of wind blows the sand in his eyes, he turns his head aside, but does not alter his plodding step. I saw one heavily laden with timber which was strapped to him horizontally, and now and then the boards gave him a great knock on the side of his head. He winced a little, but on he steadily went, a faithful beast. "Ce vilain [distinctly libellous] animal est le grand philosophe du monde," said Chateaubriand. I think he was referring to the comical way in which the animal lifts its nose in the air, but the remark will also have force as one sees how coolly he takes adversity. The weight he is able to carry is astonishing, and marvellous it is to see twenty camels tied together and marching along with their loads, with only one or two men to guide them.

I had been reading a book of travel which spoke of Jaffa as an inexpressibly filthy town, and the approach to the house of Simon the Tanner as absolutely impassable for ladies. We % found it nothing of the kind. To be sure, the hot sun had dried up everything; a wet day might have put the lanes into a very slushy condition. As it was, I saw a dead cat by the side of the road, and there was a mud-heap or two, but I have seen many London streets very much worse. The flat-roofed hovels that

56 THE LETTERS OF

we passed certainly looked poor enough, but the people were civil and fairly clean. So in about ten minutes' walk among the lanes we came to the house we sought, looked into the dwelling-room (now turned into a small Mosque), and then mounted by a stone staircase, out of doors, to the roof. I don't care much whether the ancient tradition as to this site be true. It must be like the actual site, it is an ancient house, and is "by the seaside." Over the same sea St. Peter must have gazed, and I regretted much that I had not brought my Christian Year with me, and read Keble's beautiful imaginings concerning the Apostle's- thoughts as he looked wistfully towards the isles of the West and won- dered what was in store for them in the counsels of God.

From Jaffa we went to Ramleh the same after- noon, about six miles, passing, as we left Jaffa, the alleged house of Tabitha, now dismantled, but a drinking fountain is attached to the wall. All along the road are orange and lemon groves, some with the fruit still ungathered, but not all. They sold us oranges, eight for a piastre (about twopence), and I never before tasted any half so good. The gardens are protected from the road by hedges of huge

PETER LOMBARD 57

cactus, or prickly pear, and most formidable they are. Dr. Geikie, commenting on the statement in 2 Sam. xviii., that "the wood devoured that day more than the sword," points out that these great bunches of cactus are sufficient to kill a man who is driven into them, and the rocks and ruts which we saw in some of the woods increased the danger a hundred-fold. We gathered many beautiful scarlet anemones and white irises as we passed through the plain of Sharon. As to whether either of these was "the rose" so named, I must leave the reader to judge after he has consulted any of the excellent new Bible Helps of the Universities and Messrs. Spottiswoode.

Ramleh is beautifully situated on the plain. It has a most picturesque cemetery with many trees, and there is a ruined Mosque with a lovely tower, 120 ft. high, in the style of that of an Early English church. The guide-book says that from the top you can see Mount Carmel and Beersheba, the Mediterranean, and Mount Pisgah — in fact a panorama of the whole country. But the day was closing in, and we did not make the ascent. It was a novelty in our quiet walk through the tombs to hear the sharp snarling bark of two or three jackals in the neighbouring

58 THE LETTERS OF

thicket. Biblical students are aware that the word translated foxes means jackals, and that it was these animals with which Samson amused himself at the expense of the Philistines (Judges xv. 4). Our dragoman stopped our carriage on our way to tell us that we were on the spot where he did it. Of course it was somewhere in the neighbourhood, for we were going through the Philistine district, and it would have been unkind of me to have asked him how he knew the exact spot.

We supped and slept comfortably in a comical hotel at Ramleh, and next morning pursued our journey. In a glorious sweep of the plain, stretching as far as we could see right and left of us, and with bold hill peaks a mile or so in front, our guide stopped us again to tell us that we were in the valley of Ajalon. A peak to which he pointed among the hills to our left he said was the Lower Bethhoron. I found on careful examination that he was right about this, and though my map marks Ajalon as some two or three miles north of our road, I quite realised that the fugitive army which fled before Joshua on that memorable day of Joshua x., must have been scattered far and wide over our plain as he drove them pell-mell down the heights. Stanley's

PETER LOMBARD 59

wonderfully vivid description of the scene will be familiar to many readers.

After crossing the " Shefelah " (translated so many ways in our version, " low country," " low plain," "vale valley") we came at length to a rough place called "the Gate of the Mountain," and here we stayed half an hour to rest our horses. For now we were at the end of the valley, and were about to mount into the hill country of Judaea. I was much interested to watch the incidents of the moment. An old labourer, almost naked, drawing up water from a well and sending some of it through a trough to a cistern below to water the animals, and his pretty daughter, a girl of about fifteen, bare-footed, and with only a single garment except a long mantle hanging round her from her head-dress, very graceful and becoming, who kept coming with a great earthern water-pot sideways on her head, filling it and return- ing with it upright, one hand steadying it at rough places, but otherwise both hands down. Once I saw a man ride by, and he asked for a draught. With a grace which Rebekah might have envied, she let the pitcher down on one arm while her brother filled him a cup full ere he went on his way.

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At length we started again, and strange and never- to-be-forgotten were our sensations as we steadily mounted up into the mountain region. It was like a Swiss pass, except that for pine trees we had olives. Of course we had no lofty heights as in the Alps, but got into a mean height of about 3,000 feet, valleys and hills undulating very beautifully. The road is a noble bit of engineering as good as any Alpine pass. For a good while I was struck with dismay at the desolate appearance of everything. Olive trees there were in plenty, but the whole ground, far and near, seemed covered with boulders and heaps of stones. It has taken me a week to correct my first impressions. A man who has lived in the rich soil of the midlands will be greatly scandalised by the heaps of flints in a cornfield in the South Downs, and both he and the Southerners would stand aghast at the rough character of a Swiss farm. But they all find that the land answers to the demands made upon it. I am here in February. It hardly looks as if any crops could be got out of soil so unpromising. But a good deal is got by good management, and if one could be here in harvest time that would be made manifest. The villages we passed looked lonely and poverty- stricken. I saw that the houses had walled gardens with little in them, but they will in a few weeks be

PETER LOMBARD 61

gay and rich. It looked very like a Scotch moor, only grayer. No time remains to describe the incidents of our journey as we went on through historic scenes, until at half-past three we went through a massive gate-way in an ancient wall. We are in the holy City of Jerusalem, and the first object which meets our eyes is the castle which covers the site of David's Palace, afterwards rebuilt by Herod the Great. I wish I could show the reader that noble citadel as it is to-day ; for the recent researches of ex- plorers has confirmed the opinion that the foundations up to about twelve or fourteen feet from the ground are the very work which David built.

IV

February 22nd.

I WILL try in this letter to give the reader some idea of Jerusalem. A map, of course, is impossible, but I venture to recommend to everybody the sixpenny Bible Atlas of the S.P.C.K. There are one or two inaccuracies revealed by late investigations, but the original compilers — one living, one dead — were two as painstaking students as ever lived.

I am lodging outside the walls on the N.W. corner of the city, and from this I start. There is now a

62 THE LETTERS OF

large extramural suburb, a very large portion of which is occupied by Russians. Their consulate, like our own, is in this suburb. They have built a very large and imposing house for it, besides a great hospice " for Greek Pilgrims," which, being interpreted, means for barracks, whenever they get the opportunity of so using them. Rumour goes that one consul has re- ceived his dismissal because when a contiguous piece of land was in the market he did not buy it for his Government. It is now being laid out as a public recreation place. There are two or three streets, in this part, which are in a very rough, unpaved, un- finished state at present; but bid fair to make a handsome show by and bye. Everything here looks new, and is so. Old descriptions of the City all dwell on its confinement within the walls. It is "built as a city that is at unity in itself."

About ten minutes' walk from this corner of the walls is a valley which here comes to an end, rjsing gently to the level of the surrounding land. This is the valley of Gihon, and just at the spring of it is the " Upper Pool." Following this valley down, we approach very near the western wall of the City, passing the imposing "Jaffa Gate." Close to tin's is a magnificent square pile of masonry, now a Turkish barrack, but known at the time of our Lord's birth as

PETER LOMBARD 63

Herod's Palace, and it was hither that the Wise Men came (Matt. ii.). But Herod had only beautified and partly rebuilt the palace of King David. The im- mense stones which rise up in sloping form to the first string-course are almost to a certainty the work of David. This point then is the N.W. extremity of Mount Zion, the M upper city " which the great king took from the Jebusites. The meaning of the Psalm flashes forth as you stand outside and look up from

the valley : " The hill of Zion is a fair place on

the north side thereof lieth the city of the Great King." A little farther to the south is the lower Pool of Gihon, and here the valley changes names. It gets a great deal deeper, and is known as the Valley of Hinnom. At the bottom of it the City is quite out of view. It turns eastwards, and your left hand now, therefore, is toward the southern wall of the City. And here let me pause to mention an inaccuracy in the S. P. C. K. map of ancient Jerusalem (No. 8). The wall is now proved to have bent eastward immediately W. of the Palace of the High Priest. If the reader will draw a line from that point, through the letter E in the word " Essence " (which, by the way, is a misprint for " Essenes "), to the wall as shown in the map he will correct the error. Recent discovery has shown that this was the course of the wall in S.W. Zion, and

64 THE LETTERS OF

what is more, the part unearthed is part of the old Jcbusite wall, older than the date of David's capture.

I do not stay to remark on the historical associa- tions of the Valley of Hinnom. The reader can seek them out for himself. Let us clamber up to the northern top of it, to the level of the City. The present boundary has receded (see map 14), and much that was within the ancient wall is now outside. Notably this is the case with the tomb of David, the Palace of Caiaphas, the room of the Last Supper. As I have said, the remains of the ancient wall enclosing them are discernible, but they are on the open hill, and therefore I may speak of them here. The tomb of David is empty. Herod broke it open in order to find treasure, but found, to his disgust, that some other robber had been before him. It is now closed, but over it is a cenotaph covered with rich cloths in a carpeted room, just as Stanley describes those of Abraham and Sarah in the Cave of Machpelah. The " Room of the Last Supper " is really under the same roof. It is a " large upper room," its roof supported by plain stone pillars, and with no orna- ments about it. As to the authenticity, who shall say? The tradition is no doubt very ancient. If it be a true one, might not one venture to surmise that

PETER LOMBARD 65

our Lord was asserting His royalty in choosing the place which adjoined the tomb of His ancestor? The " Palace of Caiaphas " is now an Armenian Convent.

Passing on eastwards, on the north side of the Valley of Hinnom, I see opposite me, on the south side, a large cemetery, covering, in fact, the whole side of the valley. There is an enclosure with a few olive trees in it, and some tombs which have been appropriated by some of the very poor as habitations. And this is no other than Aceldama. To get there would have involved descending the valley and climbing to the other side, and it was more than I felt equal to in the hot sun. The ground everywhere is covered with great boulders, and walking upon the stony paths is very hard work.

Yet further east we came to a black, hideous stream, offensive to eye and nostril, and to a pool where a woman was washing clothes. I thought at first that the stream and the pool were connected, but am rejoiced to believe that it is not so, for this pool is none other than the head of —

Siloah's brook that flowed Fast by the oracle of God.

It is the pool of Siloam, and at best its water is not

appetising to look upon. But the black stream is the

open sewerage of the city, too horrible even to think

F

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of a second time. The sight of it brought to my memory a sad passage or two from the Lamentations, and also the bright promises of Ezekiel xlvii. And now another valley, that of Jehoshaphat, comes down from the north and joins Hinnom, and they both go away together southwards like two rivers that have met, and spread themselves out into the Vale of Rephaim. (See 2 Sam. v. 17 — end.)

4

As I pass up through the Valley of Jehoshaphat the eastern city wall is again well in sight. For I am on the opposite side of the ravine, the valley, as before, below my path. That path is sometimes not above a foot wide, stony and precipitous, but a donkey of this country is as calm and sure-footed over it as was ever horse on an English turnpike, and I give him his head and look about me. Well ; first, there is the Temple wall on my left. More of that hereafter. On my right is the Mount of Olives, but as I am close under it only the foot is visible. The olive trees are thick on the side. My path is among thousands of tombs, all I believe Jewish, and some of them are of sur- passing interest. The most prominent is that of Absalom. Close to it is that of St. James-the-Less, Bishop of Jerusalem, simple, yet handsome, three columns supporting an entablature. He was martyred

PETER LOMBARD 67

by being hurled from the pinnacle (pterugion) of the Temple, almost exactly opposite. And next to that is the tomb of Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, a square tomb supporting a pyramid. This is a Hebrew tomb, and almost certainly was there in our Lord's time. It had recently been erected by the priesthood, and it is no extravagant flight of fancy to suppose that Christ was actually pointing to it from P the Temple area (where I have seen it a second time this morning) when He uttered St. Matt, xxiii. 29-31 and 35. This was the spot where Josiah burnt the idols, and where Athaliah was slain.

A few minutes further, and we are on yet more sacred ground. With my right hand on the enclosure of Gethsemane, I pointed out to my companions the little bridge over the Kidron on our left, with the certainty that there within the circle of half-a-dozen yards the xviith of St. John must have been uttered. We took off our hats and spoke with bated breath. Then we entered the " Garden," first taking note of our guide's words that on the great mass of flat stones outside the gate eight disciples slept, while three were taken within. Even if the Agony did not take place within the present enclosure, it must have been near at hand. We read the narratives aloud among the old

F 2

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gnarled olive trees, and then once more went our way. The Valley of Jehoshaphat soon widens out, like Gihon, and then rises like the sides of a basin into the surrounding hills. The north side had still to be traversed to reach the place from which we started. The road descends into a valley about the middle of the length, then rises again. Now a word about that valley. It goes north and south through the whole length of the City, separating Mount Zion from Moriah, and is called by Josephus the Tyropaeon. It thus divided the City into two parts, and I have taken a good deal of trouble to trace it. A good deal is filled up by the debris of many sieges, and much is built and arched over. But in ancient times this valley was almost as deep as the Valley of Hinnom between Zion and Moriah, which enables one to under- stand the tremendous difficulty which Titus had in taking the city piece by piece.

About the middle of the North Wall is the Damascus Gate. It literally covers that through which St. Paul rode, on his great journey of Acts ix., for my guide showed me the top of the old arch beneath the present magnificent gate. And here I am, possibly, at the most solemn spot of all. Just outside this gate there is a long precipice of rock,

PETER LOMBARD 69

say 60 ft. high, running along the side of the road, and surrounded by a crest of green grass. On my right, as I look upon it facing north, is the place, at the foot of the precipice, where St. Stephen was stoned. A little further westward is a large cave in the face of the rock. It is called Jeremiah's Grotto, and here tradition asserts that the prophet, looking from the height upon the ruined city, wrote his Lamentations. But the top of that green hill, recent explorations, and theories built upon them, have claimed for it that it was the site of the central act of the World's Redemption. It bears at present the name of " The New Calvary." I shall have a few words to say on this question presently, but now pass on and reach the place from which I started. The reader will bear in mind that we have been riding round the City outside, and have not entered it. No description of such a ride would be complete without mention of the swarms of beggars. Many of them are, I am told, professionals, but unmistakably there are also " the poor, the maimed, the halt, the blind," and, above all, especially at every gate, the leper, ghastly and horrible. They crowd round you, with a pitiful monotonous wail, the like of which I never heard before. What can one do? Dragoman and guide-books alike exhort and warn one to give them

70 THE LETTERS OF

nothing, and I saw a frightful scene in Cairo, where I disregarded the injunction, and gave a few small coins. If we saw a leper or two or a blind man alone they generally got a trifle, but where there is a number a fight will follow a gift. But none the less is the sight sad. I believe these people are horribly poor, and I could not but remember that these were the scenes to the very life upon which the Good Shepherd looked with compassion. " Have pity upon us " was the very cry with which two blind men met us at one of the gates last night ; so I was told his words meant. It gives an impetus to the petition "Thy Kingdom come,"" to remember that His compassions were not special favours, but exhibitions of a love to be revealed to all sufferers when the Kingdom comes.

We enter the City, and I do not hesitate to say that any inhabitant of Western Europe must stand amazed at all that he beholds. "The streets of Jerusalem " — do not think of the streets of London, Belgravia, or Whitechapel, nor of any country town. Tall houses of brown stone, the wide streets about 1 2 feet apart. The Via Dolorosa is rather wider in places ; we measured it, and found that at one spot it was 15 feet wide, at another only 10. I need not

PETER LOMBARD 71

say that it is no place for vehicles. You can drive inside the Jaffa and Damascus gates for a few yards, nowhere else. The streets are paved, and frequently ycu go down steps ; the greater number are arcaded. Leaded camels and asses pass to and fro unceasingly, the drivers shouting continuously to clear the road, which is always crowded with foot-passengers in their picturesque Eastern robes. The city is divided into four quarters, Moslem, Jewish, Armenian, Christian, but they are a good deal intermingled. To these four quarters must be added the Haram, or great area of Solomon's Temple and its surroundings. It is four- sidec, every portion steeped in the most sacred recollections. In the centre a higher elevation marks the site of the building itself. In the centre a huge naked rock is roofed in by the Mosque of Omar, and I am bound to say that so far as beautiful work goes this is the most beautiful that I have ever seer. The pavement, the mosaics, the beautiful soft light from the small coloured windows, every- thing is exquisite of its kind. But that great rock is the top of Moriah, and everything goes to confirm the universal tradition that it was the threshing-floor of Araunah. Upon it Solomon set up his great altar of burnt-offering. Immediately to the west of it stood the Holy Place, and beyond that the Most

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Holy, the site of the last being now occupied by a flight of steps. Through the eastern doors, open according to custom, Isaiah was gazing when he saw his sublime vision. To the east of the Mosque of Omar is a small portico on the spot where the priests examined lepers, and received gifts for sacrifices, and here it was that the Holy Child was presented to the Lord, and Simeon uttered his Nunc Dimittis. But how can I dwell upon all the associations ? I must not attempt it. Only one more memory I will name. The N.E. part of the enclosure was in New Testament days a secular spot. The Tower of Anton ia stood there, where the Roman garrison was quartered. We saw the open space where the furious crowd surged round St. Paul, and the site of the steps whence he addressed them. Nay more, some of the steps may be there yet (Acts xxi. 40). Some of the plain rock which still forms the pavement must often have been trodden by the feet of God. I will only mention here that my readers have reason to be most grateful to Mr. Hanauer, one of the Church Missionary clergy, who is a native of the city and one of the Palestine ex- plorers. He went over the ground with me, and 1 have faithfully set down here a few of the beautiful lessons that he taught me.

PETER LOMBARD 73

In writing this letter on the subject of the " Holy Places " in Jerusalem, the scenes specially connected with the Lord's Passion and Victory, I am obliged to ask the reader to set a map of the city before him. Many Bibles have one ; that before me is the S.P.C.K. map (No. 14) in the tenpenny Bible Atlas. The Palace of Caiaphas I have already mentioned. Follow on to Pilate's Judgment Hall. The site is now certainly known. I do not venture to say that this spot, called the " Ecce Homo," is that from which Pilate exhibited our Lord to the angry Jews (St. John xix. 5), but the " Gabbatha" of verse 19 is part of the convent of " The Daughters of Sion," and one of the Sisters kindly showed it to us. It is on the north side of the Via Dolorosa, a pavement of hard Bethlehem marble. (In the map just above the word " via.") Of course we can only guess at the architecture of the house, but probably the street was then a wide square at this point, reaching to the tower of Antonia at the N.W. extremity of the Temple area. The soldiers' guard-room was adjacent to this pavement ; there are some diagrams cut upon it where they used to play games.

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There were probably three arches spanning the open square, and tradition goes that Pilate appeared on the central one with the Divine Sufferer. On the subject of this pavement there is unanimous consent.

But a very difficult question, and one which is still a matter of earnest controversy, follows upon this — " He bearing His Cross went forth " by the " sorrowful way," which takes its name from the fact. It is, as I have already said, a narrow street, not straight, but with two right angles in its course. At one of them a Latin inscription on the wall states that it was here that the Lord addressed His words of pity to the daughters of Jerusalem. At a certain point one path leads to the Damascus gate, another to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. By which of the two was He led to His death ? For fifteen centuries at least Christians who came hither have believed that the place of the cross and of the Lord's entombment are within the great group of buildings known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. But of late years this belief has been disputed. Mr. Ferguson in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (art. " Jerusalem ") in a long disquisition contends that the Mosque of Omar is really the Church of Christ's Sepulchre. Respect for the writer as well as for much valuable matter on other points in the

PETER LOMBARD 75

article leads me to mention his view, but it is now universally rejected. I believe he had not visited the city when he wrote his article, and was misled by inaccurate statements.

But in the new edition of Murray's Guide to Palestine it is contended that the Crucifixion took place on the north of the City, outside the Damascus Gate. This opinion was first put forth by a Dr. Anderson, it was accepted by the German Thenius, and was warmly taken up by the hero Gordon. It is an idea which was never heard of until the present century. I pro- ceed to examine the grounds for questioning the received site.

Our Lord died outside the City. This appears from St. John xix. 20, Heb. xiii. 12. The Holy Sepulchre and the alleged place of crucifixion are in the very heart of the present City. The question therefore turns upon the boundaries of the ancient city.

I have already said that David built the first wall, the northern portion of which lay east and west along the north of Mount Zion. A second wall was built north of this by succeeding kings. A third was

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added yet further north by Herod Agrippa. This last was of course subsequent to our Lord's time. We therefore have only two walls to take into account. The S.P.C.K. map (No 8) makes this wall start north from the corner of David's Palace, after a while it turns eastwards and then again goes north. Within the right angle thus formed Golgotha is placed, outside. In other words, this map accepts the received site. I must once more ask attention to the map to make clear my next point. The editor of Murray, following certain members of the Palestine Exploration Society, draws the segment of a circle from Herod's Palace to the Prsetorium, reaching nearly to the Damascus Gate. If this were really the line of the wall, the church of which I have been speaking is inside it, and all who regard it as the scene of the death are clearly mistaken. The same writer having thus rejected the ordinary view, contends that his own answers all the conditions, that the Jewish tradition favours it, and that the real Holy Sepulchre is close beside it. He has stated his argument with great force and clearness in an article in Murray's Magazine for Sept., 1891, and I must refer the reader to it. But I must also add that, having several times read it, certainly without prejudice, I reject it so far as my own belief is con- cerned, and believe the received site to be the true one.

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In the first place, his contention, and that of Conder and others, about the second wall, cannot be sustained by facts. No fragment of the old wall has been dis- covered to justify the innovation. On the contrary, I have seen a portion of the old wall, lately discovered, which is exactly where the S.P.C.K. map places it, just east of the Holy Sepulchre. The explorations are at present very imperfect, but everything yet brought to light is in favour of the traditional view. Mr. Hesketh Smith, the editor of Murray, makes much of the appearance of a skull on the face of the rock on the site for which he contends. Very curiously Mr. Hanauer, to whom I am indebted for much of this paper, showed me from the papers of the Palestine survey how strikingly the shape of a skull comes out on the received site.

By all means let us at all times be ready for new light. I do not want to dwell on the long ages during which the opinion has been maintained, or on the millions of worshippers who have worshipped on this spot. I should, I confess, find it difficult to suppose that they have all been mistaken, and that it was reserved for the nineteenth century to show it. But surely it is not uncritical to believe that as there has always been a

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Church of Jerusalem from the days of the Apostles, it is, to say the least, improbable that the site of an event so transcendently important should have been forgotten by them. Our Editor says that the Christians retired to Pella during the siege, which is quite true, and that thus the site was forgotten. But they did not retire for a period such as is covered by the ordinary life of a man, and all probability is against this view. Let the story about the Empress Helena go for what it is worth, the current ideas which she found prevailing must be regarded as at least weighty.

But the reader will naturally look for some account of the place itself. You enter by the beautiful front with which pictures have made us all familiar, a building dating from the days of the Crusaders. Immediately in front as you enter is what looks like a long canopied tomb. The stone covered by that canopy is called "the stone of the anointing." Generally there are persons kneeling before it in devotion. A few yards to your right is a flight of steps. Ascending it you find yourself in a chapel, and at the further end, which is richly decorated, is an altar consisting of a slab, open underneath. You look

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down, and if the belief of many ages be well founded, you see the place of the Cross of Christ. A gold plate covers it, but so hollowed in the middle that you can look down on the solid rock. There are several portions of this rock visible about the chapel and beneath it, and there can be no question, at any rate, that here you have a part of an original portion of a hill. I need not say that I knelt down. The bare possibility of the authenticity called for so much reverence, but as I have already said, I hold it to be the true site. Whilst I was there a procession of monks entered singing the Vexilla Regis very sweetly, but I did not stay to hear the service which followed.

Descending the steps and passing the stone of anointing, you come to a lofty rotunda resting on rows of massive pillars, and in the middle of this is another shrine. Entering it you are in an ante- chamber, and beyond this again is a small doorway, which you have to stoop to enter. And having entered, you are standing beside the sepulchre. The tomb occupies about half the chamber reaching along the full length of the right side. There is room for three persons to stand beside it. The roof is invisible

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for the many beautiful lamps which are suspended from it. I do not stay to describe the other chapels within the same great pile of buildings, the Latin in one part, the Greek in another, that of the Empress Helena, and that under the staircase of the Calvary containing the tomb of Godfrey of Bouillon, as well as some relics of him, his sword and part of his armour.

One remark I am moved to make, concerning the " new Golgotha " for which the editor of Murray contends. Though I do, not believe in it, I am free to confess that it must at any rate look more what the real Golgotha looked on the first Good Friday than the other. No chapel covers it, there is nothing to mark it. We walked over it and gathered a few flowers in the quiet afternoon. I am not quarrelling with the devotion which has covered the other site with costly decorations, but without question these decorations have destroyed the original appearance.

I forgot to mention in its proper place that in the ante-chamber of which I spoke there is a stone lying on a pedestal, which is called the stone which covered the mouth of the tomb, and which St. Matthew tells us the angel rolled away. As for this stone, we saw more than one example of the way

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that it was placed. There is a magnificent series of tombs about twenty minutes from the City on the north side, known as " The Tombs of the Kings," though Mr. Hanauer satisfied me of the untruth of this. The Kings in his opinion were buried beneath Mount Zion, and the site is as yet undiscovered. You pass down into an open square below the level ground, on one side of which is the entrance under a beautiful entablature, and find yourself in a perfect labyrinth of burial places. In one of these we saw the stone which closed the sepulchre standing beside the opening ; it was circular, and could have been rolled to its place by a strong man. But it was grooved behind a wall, and whoever wished to move it would of course have to get round behind it. How is he to get at it ? There is a door by the side which he would have to creep through, and if this door were locked up he could not possibly get at the stone. It seemed to me that I saw here the meaning of the sealing of the stone in St. Matt, xxvii. 66.

It would be impossible in the space at my disposal to give an account of the day's visit which I paid to the Jewish synagogues. I really do not know how many there are, but the Jewish quarter is full of them. Here there were the Cabbalists. We were there on

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the Sabbath. A large number of men of ascetic aspect, pale, thin, and of piercing eyes, arrayed in white robes and hoods, were mostly standing motion- less with their faces to the wall on the Temple side, though a few were sitting down. In one corner an old man was reading portions of the Scripture, and from time to time offering prayers to which they gave their " Amen." Ever and anon they made longer responses in which I could distinguish " Q'odesh, q'odesh, q'odesh (Holy, holy, holy)," and "Adonai," the name which they substitute for Jehovah. But the strangest part of his prayer was a monotonous sound exactly like the hum of a bee, sometimes loud and with gestures to accompany, sometimes very soft. I found, on enquiry, that he was offering his secret intercession for them, and that when he was evidently excited and earnest, this expressed his special im- portunity and eagerness. And I confess that Romans viii. 26 came into my thoughts, the " groan- ings which cannot be uttered." Then, not far off, were the Karaites, a sect so strict that not only they will not cook food, but will not have it cooked by Gentiles, will not have a fire, or even strike a match. They welcomed us very warmly, and showed us their synagogue and their habitations. One very handsome old fellow of nearly fourscore took us up into his

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study, a plain, stone-paved, uncarpeted room, with divans round two sides on which we had to sit. He has an immense collection of books, all, so far as I could see, in Hebrew. He is a Rabbi, greatly respected, and as he is too infirm to go to the synagogue three times a day as heretofore, the other Rabbis come to him, and listen to his expositions. But each nation has its own synagogue, and nearly all nations in the world seem to send Jews to Jerusalem. In the Jewish school of the London Society for their conversion I found that there were Arabic, Spanish, Moorish, German, Persian, Italian, Turkish, Greek, Russian, Roumanian, French, and English Jews.

Many of the race are wretchedly poor. The stories which were told me to prove it were all but incredible, but equally striking and pathetic were the other stories which went to show their patriotism, the marvellous self-denial shown even by the poorest on behalf of the object dearest to their heart, the restoration of their race to Jerusalem. The " wailing- place " on the western side of the Temple wall interested me more than I can tell. But oh ! the awful condition of their dwelling-houses. I have never seen anything approaching to it, and I have

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seen a good deal of London slums. One house under another, deep under ground, apparently to the very original base of the Tyropoean, no sort of sanitation. For many days I had the smell of these clusters of habitation in my nostrils.

VI

Before leaving Jerusalem there is just one word which I ought to say concerning a visit which I was privileged to make to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the present occupant of the office which was once held by St. James the Just whose tomb I have already mentioned. My old and very kind friend, Bishop Blyth, offered to introduce me, and it was a great delight to me to accept his offer.

At the appointed hour the Bishop called for me and we went off together to the Patriarchate, preceded by an official with sword and silver wand. So much ceremony is regarded as imperative, and so much the better. I do not see that a Bishop is likely to lose anything by magnifying his office. We proceeded

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down " Christian-street," like all the rest a narrow, crowded thoroughfare, in which a carriage would be about as passable as a man-of-war, and so we reached the residence. Again much ceremony. Chaplains came forward in their long black cassocks, and tall hats without brims, made their salutations to my Bishop, and at length, having passed through several rooms, we were ushered into the Patriarch's presence. He is a tall, dark man, with a long, black beard, I should judge about forty years old, very dignified in manner. He sat in his tall chair in the middle of the room, and had us placed by his side, addressed to us a few measured words in Arabic which the interpreter we had brought with us translated. He expressed to us the great obligations which his communion owed to the late and present Archbishops of Canterbury, telling us how enthusiastically the late Archbishop of Syros, Lycurgus, always talked of his visit to England and his reception by Arch- bishop Tait and the English clergy. I ventured to tell him how warmly I and my brethren welcomed every sign of brotherly love between the Anglican Church and the East and expressed my hope that the union might be yet closer, and the divisions of Christendom healed and he cordially reciprocated my sentiments. Then we had refreshments, of the

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same character as I had had at the old Jewish Rabbi's a few days before. A servant hands a tray on which are as many glasses of water as there are guests, an equal number of spoons, and three sorts of sweetmeats. You take a spoonful of the sweets, then lay your spoon in the receptacle as for things out of use, and drink some water. No. 2 takes a clean spoon and does the like, and so on till everybody has helped himself. After that a biggish glass of liqueur ; we all hold our hands with these till everybody is helped, when the Patriarch pledges us, clinks his glass against ours, and then we all drink. These glasses disposed of, we finish with small cups of strong coffee. After a little more talk about English literature, in which " his Beatitude" seemed well up, we took our leave. I cannot help congratulating Bishop Blyth on the hearty goodwill which he is creating between the English and Oriental communions. If once the Moslems could sec Christians at peace one with another, there might be some hope of their joining the Church ! At present no progress towards their conversion seems to be made. There is indeed good work for the English Church to do if she will do it, not pro- selytising from the Greeks, but teaching them and showing sympathy with them. But I will not go into controversy.

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I proceed to our first excursion from Jerusalem. It was to Bethany. Starting from the eastern side of the city, past the enclosure of Gethsemane, we went up the Mount of Olives by a rugged path of loose and slippery stones, the same path by which David went weeping when he fled from Absalom. At the top of the Mount, a little on the further side, is the " Church of the Ascension," alleged to be on the spot whence the event took place. I have not the same faith in the site which I have in the other holy places. The evidence for it is of the weakest character, and it certainly does not answer to St. Luke's words, " He led them out as far as to Bethany." If by Bethany be meant the village, this certainly does not answer, for the church is not more than half-way thither. However, we looked reverently on the site as a possible one, and read the narratives of the Gospels, and said the collects for Ascension Day and the following Sunday. Close by is a Russian Church with an enor- mously high tower, evidently intended in reality for a place of military observation.

We walked down the further slope to the village of Bethany, and soon found ourselves at the reputed tomb of Lazarus. There is at least this in favour of its genuineness, that it is the only rock-hewn tomb at

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present known at Bethany. An attendant near at hand produces a wax taper for each of us, and we descend twenty-six steps into the cave. That it has been a tomb is evident. At the bottom of this cave is another, to which you enter by three or four steps more, so low that you have to remain stooping. The probability for this site seemed to me very great. Emerging from it we went on to the "home of Martha and Mary." It is a ruin, walls 3 or 4 feet high ; there are three rooms on the ground. Thence we went up to the " house of Simon the leper," also a ruin, but a more imposing one, dominating the whole village with a towering arch. Plucking a few wild flowers from the ground around it, we went down to the other side of the village, into a good road. And this is the road by which our Blessed Lord made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. A master-hand has brought out the great features of that event, the ride past the olive and fig enclosures, the crowds before and after, the sudden turn round the shoulder of the mountain, the sudden view of the Holy City and of its great Temple. Dean Stanley's description in his " Sinai and Palestine" is familiar now to thousands of readers.

Another excursion was partly over the same ground. We "went down from Jerusalem to Jericho." Our

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Lord's expression is true to the letter. The journey is a wonderful descent. We had to go over the same ground by which we had returned from Bethany. All of us were on horseback, the journey being one of twenty miles. Murray says that there is a carriage road all the way, but that it is very dangerous in places. No doubt the editor thought, not unreason- ably, that the said road would be finished by the time his book was published. But if so he has been disappointed, for it isn't. Foot or horseback is your only way for quite half the distance.

When we came alongside Bethany I observed a young man standing beside a great rock armed with a long rifle, and a splendid Arab horse by his side. He was a fine young fellow of dark olive complexion, with a handsome abba (cloak), and a turban with a gold band round it. Our dragoman and I had passed him when he suddenly sprang on his horse and galloped down towards us, slinging his rifle across his shoulders as he did so. As he passed in front of us I said to our dragoman " Who is he ? " He knew enough English to understand me, and turning round with rather a pleasant smile said " Khalil " (friend). He was the Sheikh of the Bedouin tribe inhabiting the Jordan valley, and had been engaged by our drago-

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man to go with us. As in Christ's time, so now, this Jericho road has a reputation for being infested with thieves. If the Sheikh, however, be on our side we are in no danger. He would shoot a robber with as little compunction as he would a hare. His power is almost absolute. There are places still where it is well for a party to keep together, but we did not trouble to do it here, for we were assured that our Sheikh was a whole army of defence. Certainly all the people we met were most civil to us. And he was a charming acquisition to our party. He sat his beautiful horse with perfect grace, galloped him up awkward rocks and caracblled among the sand-hills, took flying shots successfully at birds, and gave me a beautiful bird like a partridge, only bigger, which he had shot flying, and which we ate for dinner. The descent is never uninteresting, though you scarcely pass a village, or even house, after leaving Bethany. In the first place, the scenery is very beautiful. Rocky, indeed, the hills are everywhere. Now and then I could have fancied myself on the Downs round Hurslcy and Winchester, substituting chalk ranges for the great rows of boulders, and firs and beeches for olives, with now and then an ilex. But this was rare. The hill country of Palestine is everywhere

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infinitely more stony than the English hills and downs. But more and more ever since I have been here I have noticed that it is very fertile. A farmer from the Midlands seeing for the first time the countless flints which cover South Down soil would probably stand aghast ; but neither he nor the Southerner would be prepared for the first sight of a mountain side which appears to be all rocks. But between these rocks corn grows abundantly. You couldn't cut it with an English scythe, and you couldn't even get a reaping machine into the field. I didn't see them reaping, of course, for it is not the season ; but I had the process described to me. I have got the model of a plough, doubtless such as Elijah found Elisha using, and greatly would it astonish a farmer at home.

But the fields and the rich wild flowers were the least interesting objects .we saw. I do not remember more than two buildings all the way. One is a simple basin, built to receive the flow of a mountain stream, the other is an ancient khan, or inn, that is, a large place where travellers can lie down under its rough shelter, and also tie up their animals. Food and drink they do not buy there, as at an English inn. They bring it with them. What interest

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attaches to these two spots ? The first is known as " the Disciples' fountain " ; as we drank of it we remembered Who must often have done so as He came past in the heat of the day when He came up to Jerusalem, for nearly always He did come this way. And the Khan? They call it " the Good Samaritan's Inn," and not without reason. Our Lord must have had it in His mind when He spoke His parable, for it is the only one all along that long twenty miles, and it is to the last degree improbable that there was ever another. It is very ancient, built of large rough stones, about half way on the road. The road is a long descent throughout. I do not mean that there are no level places, or even occasional ascents ; but as you journey along you realise that you are going down, down into a deep valley. At several places you are obliged to go in single file, and to take care how you go. With care you are quite safe. The horses are wonderfully sure-footed, and step from boulder to boulder, up or down, with the utmost confidence. If somebody will cover all the steps up to the whispering gallery of St. Paul's with enormous stones all thrown higgledy- piggledy, and then ride down, he will get a very good idea of a great deal of the Jericho road. It was

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a moment of great interest to us when our guide was at length able to show us the hills of Moab, and the highest point of them, Mount Nebo. Yet more interesting it was when, after about five hours' ride, we caught sight of the Dead Sea, still a good way off, and very beautiful it looked under the cloudless sun.

VII

Another turn of the long road, and the Jordan valley lay stretched out before us. After having been for some hours solely in sight of barren mountains, it will easily be understood how we were fascinated by a sudden vision of fertility. The river itself was invisible by reason of the trees, the valley was still far beneath us, but there were the rich fields hundreds of feet down, encouraging us to continue our still toilsome descent. Meanwhile another object of interest was attracting us, a terrific gorge on our left, more lonely and desolate than any I have ever seen in Switzerland. We could not see the bottom, only the bare rocks of the deep cleft, though we could hear the hoarse murmur of the torrent below. It was the Wady Kelt, the brook Cherith of I Kings xvii. It was certainly a curious coincidence that

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while we were looking down into the great chasm with the deepest interest, a large raven lighted on the rock within forty yards of us. M. and I both exclaimed at the same moment, u Look at that raven ! " I am quite aware that my friend, Sir George Grove (art. "Elijah" in Smith's "B. D."), thinks that the Oriebim who fed the prophet were Bedaweens whose sheikh had a raven (Oreb) for his crest. Very likely he may be right ; still I mention the coincidence, which is matter of fact as I have stated it.

At length we reached the level of the valley, turned to the left and forded the Cherith. I had a little trouble to get my horse over, for the stream is rapid, and recent streams had swelled it, and he did not much like it. One of the mules fell and saturated one of our tents. Then once more we ascended a little, went through another stream, and a very interesting one. It came down from a fine spring of beautiful water which burst out of the rock, and which is known as M Elisha's Fountain." It must be the water referred to in 2 Kings ii. 19-22, for there is no other stream near. A lonely, treeless, grassless mountain on our left is called the " Mountain of the Temptation." It is easy to understand why

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the instinct of Christendom has identified it with that mysterious passage in the Lord's life. Our guide pointed to some caves high up in the face of the mountain, and told us that a few hermits live there.

Immediately after fording Elisha's spring we found ourselves among a lot of white tents, a sign that our day's work was ended.

That was our first experience of camp life, and a few lines may be given to it once for all. Your tents are sent on before you at early morning, in such wise that when you arrive at the end of your day's tramp they are already pitched. There are first the sleeping-tents, carpeted, chaired, washing-basined, bedded, and assuredly well-ventilated. They are comfortable as regards size, and, unless a very heavy rain comes, are water-tight. But you will do well to take plenty of wraps' and waterproofs; for I have seen things soaked on a bright night with dew, and of course nobody can control the wind. We had taken all precautions, and up to the present moment have found the benefit of them. In the month of February you don't expect to escape rain and cold, and I have been most thankful to find that rugs in plenty have been provided. Then there is a big tent

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for dinner, and adjacent to it is the tent-kitchen, with two or three Moslems busy besides charcoal fires and stewpans. They serve us up a dinner fit for an Emperor every day at 7. Down in this valley it was a warm night, and I quite enjoyed it all. It was so strange to hear the muttered talk of our Bedaween escort, who, wrapped up in their abbas, slept in the open-air ; I heard them two or three times that night beside their watch-fires. And from the jungle in the valley just below us came the incessant barking of the jackals. There are also hyaenas and leopards there, but both are described as arrant cowards.

At half-past six in the morning your dragoman wakes you up with a big bell. And you must turn out at once, or you are likely to be carried off tent and all. Before you are well dressed the muleteers are busy pulling your tent to pieces and packing up. Whilst you are breakfasting they depart, carrying your tents and luggage with them. Otherwise they would not be ready for you at the next halting-place. In the present instance we had a day's respite, for this camping-ground was held by us for two successive nights. Before turning in I took one look round upon our camp. There were twenty-five horses and mules

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Nine men were employed with the horses, and there were the dragoman, the cook, and two waiters. When we started on a larger expedition, we were a larger company.

The sun was rising gloriously over the hills of Moab when I turned out next morning. The horses were picketed all around us, and the servants were augmented by a few natives who came up to see if they could get any employment out of us. Below us was the rich green valley, thick with trees, none large, but fine shrubs. Two of these shrubs at once became deeply fascinating. First, there were "the apple of Sodom," yellow fruit like small oranges to look upon, and (so it used to be said) with bitter ashes inside, the fact being that though they are certainly not good to eat, the dust and ashes resolve themselves into the black seeds of the plant with which the yellow husk is filled. Secondly, there was the thorn, known as the spina Christie from which, in all probability, the crown of thorns was made. I cut some branches of it to carry home, but it tears one's hands all to pieces even in the gathering, and as to packing it up it is impossible.

Next morning we started for the Dead Sea. In the clear atmosphere it looks as if a ten minutes' ride

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would bring us there. It took us two hours and a half. For, in the first place, we had by no means reached the Dead Sea level when we had got into the green valley. Everybody who has seen two Swiss peaks in the same landscape has thought some close together which are really a day's march apart. And this is something of the same kind.

There are three Jerichos. The place at which our camp was pitched was that of Joshua. Enormous mounds cover the ancient city. Further south, about the same distance from the mountain range as the old, stand the ruins of the Jericho of Christ's time. More mounds, but smaller, a long piece of wall, and some shapeless ruins, are all that remain of it As we passed it this morning on our way down to the sea, I looked wistfully at the path leading from it to the pass up to Jerusalem, knowing that somewhere in that path was the scene of the miracle of Bartimoeus. And whilst I longed for the means of identifying the very spot I felt that far better was it to have the record in the Bible which I was holding in my hand, " He is not here, He is risen." And His love and care are the birthright, not only of those who saw Him in the flesh, but of us who know that we are very members of Him.

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If we draw a straight line from these two Jerichos, and on this as a base construct an equilateral triangle, the modern Jericho will be on the apex. It is a miserable village, mud hovels, and Bedaween huts. Passing through it, and through the low forest of brushwood and thorns, we emerge at length upon a district of sand, hills and valleys of it, with no grass at all, but still with stunted, poor-looking, grey tamarisks dotted about. As we ride through this region, our guide shows us a great mass of ruins, and tells us that it is the ancient Gilgal, the first place of the sanctuary after Israel had crossed the Jordan. Then on the left is seen a great mound of rocks, strange and peculiar to look upon ; it is impossible to say whether they are ruins or natural features. But the opinion has of late gained ground with Palestine explorers that here are the ruins of the doomed cities of the plain. We still continue to descend, and I notice that even in this scene of desolation the Cherith making its way towards the lake has a margin of oleanders and reeds, long after other vegetation has ceased. But even this dies out as the stream approaches the Dead Lake ; the sand all around is now encrusted with salt. The shore is reached at last, and we are standing on the lowest ground as yet discovered on the

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globe. It is 1,300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean.

And yet this wonderful lake has not itself any aspect of death. Looked at from afar, it is, as I have already said, of a lovely blue, and with the hills of Moab in their soft verdure overlooking it, one is reminded of Windermere. When you come to the edge you see that the water is clear as crystal, and the pebbles under it sparkle like jewels. Put your finger in and taste. It quite makes you start. It is said that 26 per cent, of the water consists of salt. After a moment you are aware of a nauseous taste. It is absolutely destructive to life. A heap of dead wood and reeds lies all along the shore ; it has drifted down from the Jordan, and all life has been quite washed out of it. I picked up several pieces to carry home.

Up to this time the Jordan itself had not been visible. After half-an-hour's ramble by the sea we mount our horses again, and ride away to the N.E. A long spell of sand, then once more we are in a forest of shrubs and brushwood, a little higher than one's head, a labyrinth of paths going through them, all like the "rides" in an English coppice. The

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luxuriance of these shrubs and of the wild flowers, apprises us that we are drawing near to the river, and our hearts throb with expectation. Suddenly, we are upon it — there it is, that sacred stream, sweeping rapidly, but majestically along, oleanders, tamarisks, reeds, willows, luxuriantly clothing the banks. The river is about the width of the Ouse at Olney, or the Itchen between Winchester and St. Cross. It had been overflowing, and the banks were so deep in mud that we had some difficulty in getting close enough to bathe our hands in it, and fill our bottles. This is the traditional site of our Lord's baptism and also of the escaping of the Israelites. I cannot help doubting both. Our Lord was probably baptised nearer to Galilee (St. John i.), and the bank on the further side at this part of the river is a precipice 40 ft. high. Beneath the Moabite hills is a plain where the whole multitude could easily have encamped, but then to be on the river bank they must have got the women and children, as well as themselves, down this precipice. Unless the whole aspect of the country has changed, which is certainly possible in alluvial land, the crossing must have been some miles higher.

Our return to Jerusalem need not detain us. I

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hasten on to a second excursion which we made from Jerusalem, namely, to Bethlehem and Hebron, an excursion unlike any other if it were only for the fact that there is a carriage road all the way. Bethlehem is about five-and-a-half miles from Jerusalem, Hebron twenty-four.

Past the well of Enrogel and through the plain of Rephaim, scenes of two interesting incidents in David's life (2 Sam. xvii. 17 ; v. 17-24), we were out upon a road by the sides of which were fields, stony of course, but giving signs of good corn crops by and bye, and meanwhile rich with olive trees. Two objects were shown us by our guide as we went along ; the first I fear is mythical, " the well of the wise men." The legend tells that when they were dismissed from Herod's presence, they were at a loss whither to go next, but stooping over this well to let down a pitcher, one of them saw the star reflected in the water, whereupon they all "rejoiced with exceeding joy." About the other there is no sort of doubt. It is Rachel's tomb, on the right hand of the road, about ten minutes' distance from Bethlehem. Without going into description, it may be sufficient to mention that there is an exact copy of it at Ramsgate. Sir Moses Montefiore had it copied, exact size and all, to cover the grave of his wife.

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And now we turn up the hill to our left, and are in the City of Bethlehem. At the entrance of the town we go down a yard past some cottages and are at "the well of Bethlehem" (2 Sam. xxiii. 15). A girl brought a pitcher and a rope and drew us up a bottle of the water, which we are taking to England. Then we went on to the Church of the Nativity. It would take too long to describe what has been described in many guide books. The Greeks, the Latins, the Armenians, all have chapels contiguous to the sacred spot, and a Greek service was going on as we went through theirs. We passed down through the room where St. Jerome did so much of his great work on behalf of Bible exposition and criticism, saw his grave and that of St. Paula, and both were deeply interesting to us, though we were in quest of what was far more touching. And so we came at length to where it was written on a brass plate on the floor in Latin, " On this spot Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary." Two or three persons were kneeling there. I myself knelt and kissed the spot. I do not know whether anybody will think me superstitious. If they do I don't care. Two or three yards from it is the place of the manger. The whole is in the hard rock, and the authenticity of the site is vouched for by the fact that, before any sort of honour was paid

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to it in the way of decoration, Jerome found it as the only " Inn " (Khan) in Bethlehem, and calls it ancient. It is incredible that the inhabitants can have dis- carded the old Khan, and established another in the interval between the Nativity and the days of Jerome.

Soon after leaving Bethlehem we pass three great reservoirs, known as " Solomon's Pools." They are not mentioned in Scripture, but are probably the work of that king. For Josephus says that he made in this neighbourhood " the gardens," in which we know that he delighted. But I mention the place specially because a foot-path from Jerusalem leads past them to the village of Urtas ; and Urtas is very probably to be identified with Emmaus. If it be so, then let the reader conceive how we stood still on that path, and remembered a conversation which was once held along it. I read St. Luke xxiv. 13, 33, and tried unsuccessfully to repeat to myself Cowper's beautiful lines upon the passage. It is right to mention that another village, Kubebei, on the west of Jerusalem, is also claimed for Emmaus. I saw this also, and can only say that I do not know which is the right.

Hebron has the character of being the most

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fanatical of Mahometan towns in Palestine. There are Jews there, but the inhabitants boast that they have kept out all Christians. I believe there is not one Christian family there. We inspected the outside of the cave of Machpelah, the oldest burial place known In the world. The children hooted us as we went round it, evidently enjoying our inability to enter. One young gentleman made faces at me, and told me (I had just picked up Arabic enough to understand him) that I was the son of the devil. Perhaps f I had given him a baksheesh, he might have withheld the compliment, but no doubt he would have thoight it none the less. We slept at the Jewish hotel there, and next morning made a pil- grimage to see the ancient tree known as Abraham's oak. It stmds on a spot commanding a beautiful view of the plain, and on the rising ground in front of us we saw the old Jewish cemetery where are preserved, ifthe account given be correct, the tombs of Ruth and Jesse, and of Abner and Ishbosheth.

VIII

- I NEED hardy say that we left the Holy City with regret. Thre< of us went once more on the last

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morning over the Temple area, so as to fix the details in our memories. Murray says that the cost of such a visit is about ios. a head ; ours cost us five francs the first time and four the second, including back- sheesh to officials. I may mention that at this second visit we were shown, having missed it the first time, the stone which is said to cover two of the murderers of Becket. They died while on pilgrimage, and were buried in a church of the Crusaders, built on the site of Solomon's " ascent to the house of the Lord," now the Mosque al Aksa.

At two o'clock we started. Our journey lay due north. Nothing but a bridle path, and in some places a very difficult one. I have never seen ii our Lake country one so stony and steep as parts of this. On Scopus (the hill on the north of the city) we turned to take, as we mistakenly thought, our farewell look at Jerusalem. First we passed Nob on our left (i Sam. xxi.). In the distance on the summit of a bold hill is Mizpeh (i Sam. vii.). This i$ visible from many places in our tour. Our guide abo showed us Gibeah of Saul, though there appears to be some doubt as to this site. The road rises, and we find ourselves literally riding upstairs. Tm mountain in front of us seems all composed of smooth ridges of

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limestone rock, as if a giant had laid them down in terraces, and up these one after the other our sure- footed beasts make their way. Passing round the mountain, we have an elevated plateau to cross, and then the terraces begin once more. But before we have reached the top another turn brings us to our halting place for the night, Bethel. It is a marked feature of the landscape that these terraced mountain sides meet your view, look which way you will, and it was a happy thought of Stanley's, which succeeding travellers have accepted at once, that the sight of them suggested his dream to Jacob.

Bethel is a very poor village now. It stands on a hillock rising out of the mountain side. We emerged at the lower end, close to the village fountain, and all the inhabitants turned out to look at us, just as English cottagers would do if they were visited by a camp of Kaffirs. The air seemed to echo all round the word " baksheesh." We walked through the village, steep lanes, say five feet wide, and hovels without a vestige anywhere of a glass window. In fact, these are rare anywhere in Palestine. Most of these cottages, so far as I could see, were lighted only by the door. This, or the dirty faces, or both combined, may account for the ophthalmia which is

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so painfully common. We mounted, on the invitation of the owner, to the roof of the highest house, and were rewarded by the view. The altar of Jacob and also of Jeroboam were probably on the hill over against us. On the skyline to the south we could discern with a good opera-glass the church of the Holy Sepulchre and some towers, and, of course, the Mount of Olives. The road by which the disobedient prophet came must have been that by which we our- selves had come. On our left was the site of Ai, and beneath it the pass by which Elijah and Elisha went down to Jericho.

Our dragoman warned us when we turned in that it would be a very cold night, and he was right. All the wraps we had brought with us were brought into requisition, and were none too many. At half-past six next morning we were ruthlessly knocked up. By the time we had done breakfast our sleeping tents and beds were clean off the ground. And whilst you are at breakfast you have to look out sharp, for if you put down your knife for an instant the attendant will swoop down upon your plate and carry it off, so eager is he to pack up and be gone. By eight we were in saddle and riding off to our next destination, Shiloh. As we advanced into the heart of the country, the

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inheritance of the sons of Joseph, we were struck with the increasing fertility. Rocks there are always, and now and then a stiff climb or descent. Once or twice our dragoman asked us to get off and walk down a precipitous path. But the rich carpetings of wild flowers (and they such beauties), the goodly promise of the corn-fields, the vast olive-yards and fig-tree enclosures, all combined to make scenes which brought whole passages of the Psalms and the Prophets continually to one's memory. The peasantry were busy in the fields, and a remarkably handsome race as a whole they are. The ploughmen wear a rough single garment down to their knees and a turban ; the women vary. In the south they have one long garment, generally blue, and over it depending from the head-dress a mantle, hanging in straight folds to the knees, altogether as graceful a costume as one would wish to see. In the north they wear loose trousers and short skirts, while the mantle, instead of hanging from the head-gear, is folded round them. But the way to see a handsome woman of this country to advantage is to watch her coming from the fountain with her great waterpot balanced on her head. She must needs be upright then ; and splendidly she moves along, fearless and strong. Sometimes she will raise her hand to steady it, but

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generally she does no such thing. One hand she swings, the other is on her hip. And as for the waterpot itself, it is as much as I can just lift, when it is full.

Shiloh, it will be remembered, was the place where Joshua set up the tabernacle, as soon as he had gained firm possession of the heart of the country (Josh, xviii. i). One glance round us explains why. It stands on an isolated hill. The eye surveys a magnificent landscape, the widest panorama we have yet seen. It was the centre of a whole colony of population. But the place itself — what a desolation ! The tragedy of Eli and his sons was simultaneous with the fall of the sanctuary, and from that terrible day ruin has marked the site (Jer. vii. 12). There is now only one roofed building, quite deserted. Clambering through a great mass of nettles and thorns, I got inside. It is a low building which might be the nave of a church ; two columns with Byzantine capitals divide it into two parts. Murray's Guide thinks it may have been a synagogue converted into a church. It has been also turned into a mosque for there is the mecca door, plainly an insertion. The site of the tabernacle, I venture to say, was at the top of the hill. There is a large smooth platform

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which may have been made on purpose for it. And all around are more ruined houses than I can count. But not one sign is there among them all of present human habitation. There was not a person but our- selves within sight. All round the sides of the hill of the deserted sanctuary are rock-hewn tombs. One may safely assert that in one of them Eli must have been buried. The highway beside which he died must have been that by which we had come, for it is the only way to the district where the Ark was taken.

After two or three hours here we moved again northwards, and at sunset reached Lubban, the Lebonah of Judges xxi. 19. We had thus passed through the lot of Benjamin, and were now in the tribe of Ephraim. Lubban is now nothing but a Khan ; the fountain which flows beside it causes it to be much frequented. We encamped beside it on a lovely evening. Whilst we were there a long caravan of camels came up ; they were journeying from Damascus to Egypt. The more I saw of these strings of camels, and I saw many hundreds of them the more they attracted me. As you look at one in the Zoo, it must be confessed he is not an attractive beast. But see them in their proper country, perhaps

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twenty of them strung together with their heavy loads, there is a downright stateliness about the procession as it moves along against the sky or against the sides of a hill. On the foremost beast rides the conductor in state, and the others follow on, generally without any other person upon them. It is the very perfection of patience and obedience. Generally the rear is covered by two or three men riding donkeys.

Before leaving Lubb&n I may note that in all probability our Lord must have rested here the night before His talk with the woman of Samaria. For we know that He came along this road. There is no other house within reach. He reached Jacob's Well at noon, which is the same time a traveller would reach it leaving this Khan in the morning.

The beauty of the road does not diminish as we pass on through the Vale of Mukhna ("camp''), which we reach after about an hour's ride. The name is probably derived from the encampment which Joshua caused to be made when he gathered the people together between Ebal and Gerizim (Josh. viii.). As we go through the Vale, which is seven miles in length, we see thousands of fig trees

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and olive trees in the midst of the corn fields, and whole woods of them high up on the hill sides. All the while that we are enjoying the prospect we are on the look-out for Mt. Gerizim, and presently our guide shows us the white Wily (Saint's tomb) which marks the top of it. Before we pass into the defile between the two mountains we come upon an object which engages our reverent attention, Jacob's Well. It is in the middle of a piece of ground now enclosed, and kept by a native peasant. We sat down by it and read St. John iv. with the emotion which could hardly be absent at such a moment. The custodian lifted an enormous stone ; the well bears one of those peculiar shapes which are so common in Palestine, small at the mouth like a bottle, and enlarging below. When he went to work to draw us up a vessel full, it was found that, as of old, " the well is deep," for the rope he brought was not long enough, and we had to put together a lot of strings out of our baggage before we could fulfil our purpose. I filled my bottle before leaving. Within sight as we sat there was Joseph's tomb, lying between us and the village of Sychar. It is of the usual type, a rect- angular building with a dome. Immediately after leaving it, we pass into the narrow valley between Ebal and Gerizim, in which Israel was gathered to

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hear the blessings and the curses recited. The entrance to this valley is now guarded by Turkish barracks, which appeared to be strongly manned. Passing it we move through a beautiful olive grove, which brings us to the town now known as Nablus.

Shechem is one of the first two cities mentioned in Palestine, the other being Hebron. It was hundreds of years old when it was rebuilt in the days of Vespasian and called Neopolis (" new city "), now corrupted into its present name. I wish we could have stayed here" longer, for the historical associations are of delightful interest, but our drago- man, moved by considerations of camping and weather, urged us to move on further. Two objects, however, I was determined to see before budging. The one is a remarkable abutment of rock, striking out of Gerizim into the town like a great pulpit or platform. A man standing upon it can audibly address hundreds of people below him, and upon it Jotham stood when he addressed his striking parable to the men of Shechem (Judges ix. 7-21). I have no manner of doubt that this was the same platform which formed the scene of Rehoboam's fatal defiance to all Israel, when they assembled in the ancient

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city ready to make him king. It is a most striking natural object, such as would attract the notice of any passer by, even if he were ignorant of the history. The other was the famous Samaritan Pentateuch, the oldest copy of the Scriptures known to exist, asserted to be written by the hand of the grandson of Aaron. It is not very easy to get sight of it, for the Samaritans are very chary about it. But I had some good friends to back me, and we were introduced to the High Priest successfully.

I am not going to give here the history of that deeply interesting document, nor to offer theories about the Samaritans generally. But it will hardly be out of place to state the broad question which is matter of doubt. Some historians hold that the Samaritans are descendants of the Assyrians whom Tiglath-Pileser placed in the cities of the Northern Kingdom when he took their former inhabitants away. Others hold that he only took away the bettermost of the inhabitants, leaving the poorer people, but filling the higher places with his own nominees, much as William of Normandy did after his victory at Senlac. I fully believe this view to be the correct one, and that the Samaritan race, and the northern Palestinians, are descendants of the

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Ten tribes. The Samaritan Jews then claim, and, I believe, rightly, to be descended from Ephraim and Manasseh. How they got possession of this priceless manuscript of the Pentateuch is a piece of history which plenty of books will tell. They keep the Passover still on Mt. Gerizim, which the Jews of the South are precluded from doing because their Temple is destroyed. Therefore, I need not say that there are many Biblical students who take a deep interest in that Passover. The best account of it which I know by an eye-witness is Stanley's. I heard a story, half ludicrous, half pathetic, about them in Jerusalem. They are dwindling in numbers, and are much distressed at the fact. Whenever a child is born among them, if it is a daughter, there is much rejoicing, if a son, the contrary. For they would not hear of marrying with any but one of their own race ; they are the strictest of the strict. There are at present twenty-five young men craving in vain for wives. None are to be had. They applied recently to the Jews of Jerusalem to furnish some. The reply was " We shall be very happy if you will submit to our authority, and send us our Pentateuch, of which you unlawfully hold posses- sion." The conditions were refused, and the old feud continues.

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Our visit to the synagogue to see the Pentateuch was a very curious one. We entered the gate of the city with a good guard, for the Mahometan inhabitants are violent fanatics, and we passed through a densely crowded street of the usual eastern type, a footway lined with bazaar stalls. We turned at length to the left, up a dark and filthy street, and found ourselves at the synagogue, a plain whitewashed building. We were received by one of the priests, a boy who could hardly have been more than fifteen, for the priesthood is a caste, rigidly adhered to. His brother was still in his teens, I should think. Their father, the High Priest, is a tall, handsome man of about forty. He was in a sort of priestly undress uniform, and after welcoming us civilly, brought out his treasures. The roll containing the document is enclosed in a handsome silver case. We gave him a few francs and took our leave. I am very sorry that some of our party sided with the dragoman's fads about moving on, their interest in Old Testament history being of the slightest. It has been my only disappointment in this journey that we left this ancient capital without exploring it further. The opportunity was lost, and, so far as I am con- cerned, will never return.

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Leaving Nablus we found ourselves in what was certainly a novelty, a good road. An English carriage would have bowled along it most pleasantly. The landscape on both sides was one of fertility. Sud- denly we came upon this object — a stone roller right in the middle of the road ! That it had been there some time was evident, for the weeds had grown up all round it. So then, it is a characteristic of the Turkish government to be ineffectual. They began well, with a new road to Caesarea, thought better (or worse) of it, and thus left off in the middle, and there it remains, an eloquent protest of incapacity. So once more we had to take to the bridlepath, and passed on to Samaria, which we reached late in the afternoon.

Samaria, which Omri made the capital of the Northern Kingdom, is not a particularly interesting place at present. There is a vast number of marble columns, apparently the remains of colonnades made by the Herods. And there are terraces, beautiful even in their desolation, looking down over what must once have been magnificent gardens. The ancient gate, so memorable in more than one passage of the Books of Kings, is still recognisable. I could not undertake to say whether any remains of Ahab's

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palace or Jezebel's temple to Baal may still be left. But we saw the "Pool of Samaria" in which Ahab's bloodstained chariot was washed, and also the tomb of Elisha hard by. It was beside a mosque, which I entered. It was touching to see a large number of men joining earnestly in a series of prayers under the direc- tion of a sheikh. A zeal not rendered according to knowledge, but unquestionably sincere in its ignor- ance.

IX

Samaria stands on an isolated hill, olive woods gathered round the foot of it, and again round the middle. The town towers on the top, and in the days of Ahab and Jehu must have presented a noble appearance. At first sight one understands the epithet by which the prophet describes it, " the crown of pride," Is. xxviii., and, again (ver. 4), " the glorious beauty which is on the head of the fat valley." But its very isolation was a source of weakness, and facilitated the severe sieges which it so frequently sustained.

When we had ridden away from it for about an

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hour, and I looked back, the view struck me as the most superbly beautiful I had ever seen in my life. The hill of the city was dwarfed in the midst of the plain ; behind it, all across the southern horizon, were the hills of Ephraim. They are hills, not mountains in the Swiss tourist's sense. From their top down to the swelling plains beneath, far as the eye could reach, all was fertility, the rich colours of the profuse vegetation blending into the loveliest harmony. The foreground was a mass of wild flowers. On our right the heights were not so lofty, and one could quite imagine the plain of Sharon on the other side of them. I seemed to share in the exultation which was kindled in the souls of psalmists and prophets as they gazed upon fruitful Ephraim and poured forth their ecstasy in song. And when I further bethought me how the oppressor now treads the beautiful land down, I yet rejoiced in remembering the last words of Amos, the shepherd prophet, who so unsparingly denounced the very spot on which 1 was gazing, but yet was sure that, after all, victory and joy would triumph over judgment. How it shall be brought to pass that the plougher shall overtake the reaper, and these mountains overflow with wine, I do not know. But I am sure that any man gazing on this scene with faithful and reverent eyes will

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rejoice in the prophet's words, and pray for their fulfilment. The present fertility remains a pledge of it.

Dothan was within our sight as we passed along, but we did not go through it. I am told that it has many " pits " similar to that into which Joseph was put, bottle-shaped stone cisterns for the reception of rain water. It was a coincidence, though in no wise remarkable, for it was an hourly sight with us, that we saw a long caravan of camels passing by it, I believe on their way from Nazareth to Jaffa. And now the hills get tamer, but the roads are still trying, especially the precipitous rocky pass which leads down to Jenin. The last words at first sight will not convey much, but I must enlarge upon them. The pass of Jenin, anciently Engannim, leads down from the great compact mass of hills through which we have been travelling, the hill country occupied by Manasseh, Ephraim, Benjamin, and Judah. Other passes lie parallel to it to the West, but none so frequented as this. They all emerge on the north upon the great, and fruitful, and famous Plain of Esdraelon. Let the reader take his stand with me at Jenin and look northward. On our left this plain stretches out widely, as flat as a great billiard table,

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and I was going to say as green, but the green would look patchy on the table, for there are all sorts of shades of it according to the crops ; but all is evidently as fruitful as land can be. In front of us it is narrower, for a hill has come up from the East and wedged itself into the middle of the plain. This hill is no other than Mount Gilboa. On the other side of it the plain continues, so that it takes the shape of a Y with Gilboa between the forks. In the distance on the north is the range of Galilean hills, occupied of old by Zabulon and Naphtali. The Vale of Esdraelon was the inheritance of Issachar. Somewhat to the left of Gilboa, between it and the mountain range, is Little Hermon. These are the main features of the scene which met our view when we encamped at Jenin for the night. A little brook went purling by us — a brook with watercresses, and we filled our vessels from it for camp use. It was one of the sources of "the ancient river, the river Kishon." But oh ! the croaking of the frogs that evening. I never heard anything like it in England. If you can imagine a thousand English sparrows, all with bad colds, chattering with terror at the sight of a hawk, you may get something like an idea of it All the different intonations reminded me of the queer sounds of the frogs in Aristophanes, which hitherto

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I had thought unmeaning. But here was the whole assortment.

The Plain of Esdraelon (which, by the way, is a Grecised form of " Jezreel ") is the great battle-field of Palestine. Gilboa, as I have said, was right before us. It was in all probability on the other side (the north) that Saul perished, for the Philistine head- quarters were at Aphek. Within sight of us was a hamlet around which was fought one of Napoleon's battles in 1798, and at the back of Little Hermon Saladin smashed the army of the Crusaders in 1187. But the battle which excited my keenest interest was that of Judges iv., only it took place at the western end of the plain, and its place in these letters is later, when I shall cross the plain again. And I have more to say directly about the pass of Jenin.

Next morning we started betimes, for a long ride was before us. Our first halt was at Jezreel. I have already described the smooth plain. Lay a penny bun on a bare table-cloth, and you have the situation of Jezreel. It stands on a low hill, plain all round it. We mount this hill, and find a fairly large population inhabiting the hovels, of which, as usual, the town is composed. There is one large building conspicuous

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amongst the rest, and its massive foundations are evidently of remote antiquity. I think anyone walk- ing round this building, and comparing it with David's greater tower at Jerusalem, must see at once that this is the remains of Ahab's palace, the scene of Jezebel's death. It is now the filthy residence of half-a-dozen families who crowd each corner of it, and as usual clamour for baksheesh. Hard by it on the east side of the town is a field on which are some masses of prickly pear and a few vegetables — our guide told us it was Naboth's vineyard. Probably he was right, the situation exactly fits. Again I will ask the reader to stand with me on this plot of ground and look east- ward over the plain. There is the road skirting the northern side of Gilboa, by which Jehu drove furiously on his way from Ramoth Gilead. Within sight of our standpoint Joram was killed. With my Bible in my hand, I was certain almost of the very spot. " Take up and cast him into the plot of Naboth," said the fierce conqueror, and drove on to the palace. This is exactly how the events would occur on the sites indicated. Add to this that there are wine-presses still to be seen adjacent to the vineyard. But I call attention to the accounts of the death of Joram and Ahaziah. The narrative of Ahaziah's death in 2 Kings ix. 27 differs from that in 2 Chron. xxii. 9. It is impossible,

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in the absence of fuller information, to arrange with certainty the exact sequence of events. Bishop Wordsworth, in his commentary, is probably correct in substance, but I venture to alter his solution a little. I worked it out in my mind on the spot. Joram was killed very near to Jezreel, at the foot of Gilboa. At that point the road turns to the left straight for Engannim, called in our version " the garden house." Along that road Ahaziah fled. His object was to get up the pass to Samaria. In that pass he received his wound, but managed to creep into the capital and hide himself. Jehu made diligent search for him, and once more he fled, like a hunted beast, down the pass again, intending to reach Jerusalem by way of Megiddo, but his strength failed, and he died there.

One more object I have yet to note, as I stand on Naboth's vineyard. Along that road, so fatal to the two kings, I see about two miles off a shining pool of water. It is the " Water of Harod," the fountain at which Gideon's men were put to their memorable test.

All these things came under our eye before we moved on across the plain and ascended the western shoulder of Little Hermon. Coming at length to a

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plantation of cactus we made our way through quite a labyrinth of it. To have broken through the fences on either side would have been about as impracticable as boring a hole through an ironclad. At length we emerged upon a village, squalid, indeed, for the most part, but yet with good gardens and other signs of having well-to-do people. This was Shunem, the village of the rich woman who provided a habitation for Elisha. Leaving it we passed round the mountain, and in an hour reached Nain. The place of the miracle, so affectingly related by St. Luke, is des- cribed as being near " the gate of the city." That probably means merely the entrance, for there are no signs of walls. At that entrance we rested. There is a small church built on the spot, and in that we read the narrative together. Then once more we continued our journey over the plain, and so began our ascent of the hills of Galilee. On our right we saw Endor about two miles off, the scene of Saul's interview with the witch : and we passed along the foot of Tabor, a lofty, rounded top abundantly wooded, very much in appearance like the Yorkshire Penygent. The road to Nazareth is an ascent of about two hours, and I am ready to confess that it proved less interesting to me than any town I had yet visited in the Holy Land. True that our blessed

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Lord spent thirty years of His life here, but no incidents of that life are recorded beyond the fact that He " was subject to His parents." Consequently there are no localities on which the imagination can dwell. Nazareth is more like a European town than any that we have seen in this country. I even saw a steam engine working a mill. And the houses have doors and windows. But closer acquaintance is not pleasing. As we rode along we saw a new house being built, and I was grieved to see women carrying heavy loads of stone, and if I am not mistaken, working the trowel. Our road had an open sewer all down the middle of it, and there lay a dead dog and a dead horse, both of which had certainly been there a considerable time. We passed, at the entrance to the more crowded part, a fountain which probably was there in our Saviour's time, and in that case His blessed Mother must have oftimes been there with her pitcher, as we saw the women. The Franciscans have a convent, beneath which is the alleged house of Joseph and Mary, but I was not impressed by it, and do not believe that it was genuine. The synagogue of Luke iv. which I visited was more probable ; it is an ancient plain building, and this and the fountain were the only sites in Nazareth that I could accept as possibly genuine. The " Mount of Precipitation "

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(Luke iv. 29) may be so : but the city is not built upon it. The passage may mean the brow of the range of the hills — it overlooks the Vale of Esdraelon.

We spent Sunday there, and had a Communion together in camp, as there was none in the English church. My friends went to morning service after- wards and heard a service in Arabic at which "Jesus lover of my soul " was sung in that tongue. There appears to be good work going on here. Mr. Gollmer, the clergyman, came to see me, a very good and sensible man.

Our next destination was Mt. Carmel. A long ride to the south-west brought us once more to the Plain of Esdraelon on the western side. It was a wide, shallow stream where we forded it, and the spot is named Hartyizeh. It is the " Harosheth of the Gentiles," where Sisera dwelt. We carefully surveyed the field of battle from the hill above. The Taanach and Megiddo of Deborah's song were within sight, on the south of the Plain. The encounter took place in the plain itself, near these towns. Sisera was dis- comfited ; a storm of wind and rain favoured his adversaries, and the Kishon became impassable. It is no wonder, for the river is one of the most dangerous

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rivers in Palestine at such times. As we crossed it on our way to Nazareth, we had a heavy shower, almost the only rains that we had, and our dragoman was very anxious in consequence, and when we had to ford it further down, he not only made careful enquiries beforehand about the condition of the river, but employed a native to go with us and pilot us. Mr. Gollmer told me that he was once riding hither with a guide, and one of the Turkish police told the latter that if he dared take his companion across in the present state of the river he would report him and have him imprisoned. It is not so much that the river swells rapidly as that the alluvial banks are soft and treacherous, and the horses are terrified to find themselves losing their footing. The manner of Sisera's defeat is as clear as any military narrative that I know. In our case we rode down the river and explored our way carefully before fording it. At our crossing place it is about five and twenty feet wide.

So crossing the plain we came at length to the slope of Mount Carmel, our destination for the night. I hardly know why, but I have always imagined this mountain to be like Beachy Head, a mere promontory. No conception could be more inadequate to the reality. Carmel is a great and broad mountain

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range, a group of the Alps on a small scale. This will be seen if I succeed in giving a clear idea of our journey over it. Our halting place was the scene of Elijah's sacrifice (i Kings xviii.). The site is indicated by the name, " The burning." There is a little chapel on the top of the range, but the Editor of Murray thinks the actual place a quarter of an hour's walk lower down, and has good reason for his conjecture. It is fully in sight of Jezreel, which is right across the plain in front of us, sixteen miles off. Below us flows the Kishon. On a great natural platform on the height where we stand a vast crowd could have easily stood that day, arid there is a spring of water there which has never been known to be dry, from which the water that drenched the prophet's bullock could have been drawn. Our editor even conjectures that two great masses of limestone in the midst of the plateau may have served for bases of the rival altars. Right below us on the bank of the Kishon is a great mound, unquestionably artificial (such a one I once saw on Towton battlefield), and to this is given the name Tell-al-Kassis, " the hill of the priests." It is no extravagant conjecture to fix this as the scene of the slaughter (i K. xviii. 40). After it was ended, Elijah went higher up the mountain, and sent his servant (according to tradition, the youthful Jonah)

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to the summit to watch for the promise of rain.

Next day it took us nine hours to ride to the end of the promontory, to the modern town of Haifa. That ride revealed to us what a very large range it is. It is, of course, not Alpine ; there are no snow peaks or barren ranges. But there are heights and valleys quite hidden from below, rocky gorges and precipices, secluded valleys as there are in the Alps, some with flocks of sheep upon them, others with fat kine, others with fruitful fields of growing corn. There are no great trees. Fuel is one of the scarcest of articles in Palestine, and, except fruit trees, very few survive. But there is abundance of brushwood, shrubs, and thorns, and several times we came across charcoal burners at their work, their material being this rough shrubbery. For the first time, as I passed along among this luxuriant vegetation, I seemed to under- stand such expressions as "the forest of his Carmel," in Isaiah's message to Hezekiah, " the excellency of Carmel," etc. " The sides of Carmel" are surpassed by few places in the country for fertility and varied beauty. On our way we passed Dalieh, a hamlet which figures much in the religious vagaries of Mr. and Mrs. Laurence Oliphant, and I believe the people there

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still remember gratefully the generous kindness which outweighed the eccentricities. We also went over the famous monastery at the head of Carmel, where one of the Brothers, a bright, sweet-mannered, intelligent Frenchman, showed their treasures, such as they are, took us on the roof, and pointed out Acre across the bay, and in the far distance beyond it Tyre, on the other side Caesarea. It was hazy, or we could have seen Jaffa. I noticed a set of Newman's works in their library, which some visitor had given them last year, and among the " prohibited books " were a novel or two of Dumas, a history of Indian missions, and — a Bible. Lastly, the good monk showed us his plank bed, whereat my bones ached for the rest of the day. I forgot to mention that to-day we saw a herd of wild gazelles on the side of the mountain, beautiful grace- ful creatures, and a jackal, not beautiful. One spot I was sorry to be hindered from visiting through lack of time, a large cave in which Elisha is said to have lectured " the school of the prophets." His traditional seat is shown.

Our journey next morning lay at first along the south side of the Bay of Acre. Our sight of the famous town of St. Jean d'Acre was thus only such as we obtained

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across the bay. It was, of course, all clear enough in outline, even without our glasses. But, considering what history has to tell of it, one was startled by the insignificance of its appearance. The Israelites could not wrest it from its Phoenician inhabitants (Judges i. 31), nor could Simon the Maccabee. The Crusaders failed at their first siege, but took it at the second (A.D. 1 103). Saladin recaptured it after his bloody victory of Esdraelon ( 1 1 87) ; it was recaptured by the Christians in 1 191, after a two years' siege, at a loss of 60,000 men, and a century later its recapture by the Moslems put an end to the Crusades. In 1799 Buonaparte besieged it in vain against Sir Sidney Smith, and in 1840 it was captured by Sir Charles Napier. It looks now as if a single ironclad could blow it all to pieces in an hour, and this is probably the case ; but, in truth, its importance as a military position is departed. It was once the only entrance into Palestine from the north, and a garrison there could keep all invaders at bay. Modern warfare sets all such exclusiveness at defiance.

The road along the coast has two remarkable features ; first, the great dunes, sands running far inland over the level plain ; and, secondly, a magnifi- cent forest of palm trees, said to be the finest in

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Palestine, which lies along the outskirts of these dunes. The palm trees, so differing in size and height, with their dark green foliage against the sand, the white houses, the grey haze of the mountain behind, all make a glorious landscape. We presently crossed the Kishon again, now a broad estuary, over a long wooden bridge, once more struck across the Valley of Esdraelon, and again ascended the hills of Zabulon. Shefr 'Amr, the seat for awhile of the Jewish Sanhedrim, has some fine rock tombs, where members of the Great Council were buried. The greater number of the inhabitants at present are Christians. The C.M.S. and Roman Catholics both have schools here, and it pains me to write it. u That they all may be one" is a text which has echoed in my ears unceasingly since I read it aloud on the spot where it was uttered, and have seen the rivalries of Christians all through the country. By the way, I am informed by one who has been here for years that the common statement that the Turks have to keep a detachment of Mahometan soldiers to prevent the Greeks and Latins at the Holy Sepulchre from killing each other is quite untrue. These soldiers are here to see that the precious Government gets its proper amount of baksheesh out of the income.

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Our resting place this day was SefTurieh, the Sepphoris of Josephus. It lies on the side of a valley embosomed among the hills, not far from Nazareth, on the north of it. In fact we could just see the tops of one or two houses at Nazareth on the hill above us. Sepphoris is not mentioned in the Bible, but it was an important place in New Testament times. Herod Antipas made it the capital of Galilee, and tradition gives it as the home of Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Blessed Virgin, and her birth-place. After the fall of Jerusalem it was the principal city in Palestine for a while, and it was also an important stronghold in crusading times. It is now a village of two or three thousand people, all Mahometans. It was the first place where the people were not civil to us. When we reached our camp, which, as usual, was all set up by the time we reached there, a good many of the inhabitants had turned out to look at us. This was nothing unusual, but these looked sullen and spiteful. Our dragoman as usual went to a house near to ask for water, and the woman refused him. He is a big powerful man, and flourishing his horse- whip he told her that there were only two alternatives ; he would beat her and take it by force, or pay her for it. She accepted the latter alternative, sulkily filled a large vessel for him, and took his money without a

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word of thanks. He evidently saw that he had better make his ground good, and sent for the sheik who soon came down, a fine-looking, middle-aged man. Our man produced cigarettes, and they smoked peace. The sheikh selected from the bystanding population two strong men, told them (so I was informed) that we were English nobles, who were the staunch friends of the nation against the Russians, and that they were to watch through the night that nobody robbed us. Our dragoman at once felt that all was right; our newly appointed guardians at once went heart and soul into our service, took our horses down to the pond, and made themselves every way useful. We had no sort of annoyance afterwards here. Next day they received a good baksheesh, as did the sheikh himself. The dragoman is certainly a man of resource. A few days later, when we found our tents in close vicinity to an enormous Bedouin encampment, he again made play with the sheikh, and secured him with a promise for the morrow, but he also told the swarm- ing race that we were princes, and that they had better not come near our tent ropes, for we were heavily- armed and peppery-tempered, and would instantly fire upon all trespassers. I beg here to say that none of us were parties to this " white one," but nobody who was human, I think, could help laughing at it

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when it was afterwards translated to us. He certainly knows how to manage the people he meets. In appearance I fancy him like Mr. Bucket the detective, and certainly he is like him in character. He invari- ably becomes the confidential friend of everybody that we meet, "reckons them up," secures their co-operation, and suppresses all extortion with imperturbable good- will and jocosity. It is now six weeks since we have been under his guidance, and in all our knockings about and movings none of us have lost a single trifle.

Our next day's ride was one of as great interest as we had had at all. It was at first ascending, and, as usual, some of it was rough, though not so much so as the country of the central mountain district. The hills of Naphtali are rounded and not so high as those of the southern country. Two places which we soon passed were familiar from Holy Scripture. The one is now Kefr Kenna, the other El Meshed. The latter is the Bible Gathhepher (2 Kings xiv. 25), the village of the prophet Jonah, and where his tomb is shown. Kefr Kenna is Cana of Galilee. There is another place, indeed, not far off, which claims the honour, but Christian tradition has so entirely and constantly asserted this to be the scene of the first miracle that it

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is perversity to dispute it. It is a Christian village, and a very pretty one — fig trees, pomegranates, and olive trees girding it round. An old Greek monk, whom our dragoman sought out, conducted us over his church and showed us two of the water pots, affixed to the wall. They are very heavy and enor- mous stone basins of the roughest workmanship. I have seen some of the water pots in a church at Cologne, the whole six, if I mistake not ; so I was forced to be sceptical concerning the relics of both one place and the other. Close by is a Latin Church, and the monks there insist that theirs is the scene of the miracle. Our dragoman, who is a Maronite (they have their Liturgy in the Syriac tongue, but are in communion with Rome), was of course in favour of the second site. One locality, however, we frankly accepted as genuine, a beautiful fountain just below, where doubtless the water pots were filled at the Lord's command. There were half a dozen women doing the same thing now. As we rode out of the village we passed a house, on the front of which was inscribed the statement that it was the house of Nathanael.

It was an exciting moment — we all drew rein to gaze — when we came at length to the first view of the

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Lake of Galilee, " the most sacred sheet of water in the world," as Stanley well calls it. We had been aware for some time of its situation, for the shelving rocks marked unmistakably the basis of the lake below, but it was the blue water which we so rejoiced to see. It lay far beneath us, for this lake, too, is 650 feet below the Mediterranean level. We knew, therefore, that it would take us some time to reach it.

Meanwhile there was another object of absorbing interest to look upon. A hill on our left rising out of the undulating plateau, known as Kurun Hattin, i.e., "the horns of Hattin." The meaning of Hattin is unknown ; the " horns " are the names given to the two points which rise above the flat middle. This is claimed by tradition as the mount on which our Lord preached His great Sermon. There is so much in this view which attracts me that I am loath to state my difficulties, but I find them ; and the question is one which interests me so deeply that I would fain discuss them, and ask the reader to help to decide. But this must be in my next paper, for it is needful first to look carefully into the question of places on the Lake of Galilee, which will come naturally next time.

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The road down to the lake is so steep that it may be almost called precipitous in places. Once I saw my way to a short cut among the zig-zags, and suc- cessfully managed it, but the dragoman gave me such an awful blowing up that I did not try it again. Our destination was Tiberias ; the ground at that part of the lake is elevated, whereas the Plain of Gennesareth on the northern side is marshy and malarious. The town of Tiberias is not mentioned in the Gospels, and there is no evidence that our Lord ever visited it. It was a Roman built city and inhabited by that people and not by the House of Israel. It is, like the other Palestine cities, much decayed, but the ruins of its fortresses are imposing, especially from the water side. It is the only place, at present, on the Lake which has any population. They are mostly Moslems of a very fanatical type. It is not safe to go into the city without escort. We encamped about half a mile from the town on some rising ground in front of the Lake, and very delightful were the three days' rest of that encampment. On the first morning we simply strolled about by the water, picked up shells (which lie on the shore in millions, minute cowries and bival- ves), and cut ourselves walking-sticks out of the " Nubk," or Spini Christi trees, which grow abundantly all over the district. We went down also ten minutes

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further south to the hot springs, which burst out of the rock in a clear stream and flow into the lake. I had not a thermometer, but the water was too hot to hold my hand in. A great portion of the stream is diverted into two bath-houses. I looked into one, but the stifling heat and steam drove me out again in a minute. There were a great number of men being rubbed and thumped in the water. In the afternoon we arranged for an excursion on the lake, but it was a failure. Our object was to cross to the other side to Gergesa, about six miles. I do not care to repeat Mark Twain's somewhat irreverent jest about the boatmen on this lake, but I entirely agree with him as to their laziness and cowardice. Long before we had got halfway across, our rowers pointed to the sky and explained to us that a storm was coming, and there was nothing for it but to return. However, we " took it out " of them by making them row for the stipulated time along the shore. Storm there was none. We saw plainly enough the " steep places " on the eastern shore, but we never crossed to them.

The next day we made a great excursion. Our in- defatigable dragoman had got a good crew together and immediately after an early breakfast we started for the north-end of the lake. There were the whole

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six of us in the boat, besides our dragoman and his assistant and seven boatmen, fifteen in all. The boat was covered in at the two ends, and had one mast with a very tall sail. On the upper deck in the hinder part sat C, myself, and my wife, besides M., who acted as steersman. What I had been looking for I believe I saw at once. When the Gospel says that our Blessed Lord " was in the hinder part of the ship asleep on a pillow," it must mean on this upper deck. There is just room enough for a man to lie outstretched in such an attitude. He might, it is true have been underneath it. One or two of the sailors who were not engaged for the time in rowing lay down under this deck ; but the place of dignity was certainly above, and there, I doubt not, Christ slept. That that boat was to all intents and purposes like our own I also take as sure. Outward things have changed very little in the East — witness the monu- ments— for thousands of years. But I must defer the details of our voyage till my next letter, and close this with a light incident. In the course of our voyage our dragoman's assistant bought a young dog at a Bedouin tent. It was brought into camp, and made much of, and when we started again three days later the dog followed as a faithful dog should. But

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by luncheon time he was dead tired, and his feet hot and blistered, as M. discovered. So a place was found for him on one of the luggage mules, and ever since the dog is delighted to lie on his perch, and go from place to place, looking round him with supreme complacency, and evidently considering that it is all for his amusement. He is a great character in the camp, and an immense favourite.

XI

OUR sail upon the Lake of Galilee was first directed to the northern extremity. We landed at the point where the Jordan enters it, and walked for some time on the bank of the river. The mountains recede on both sides sufficiently to leave a bright green valley with shrubs plentifully bedecking the banks, but, as usual, with hardly any large trees. On the eastern side of the stream two spots were well within sight ; the one nearly opposite to where we stood, a slope on the side of the hill, the other two miles to the north, also a slope, beside a ruined village. These are the two sites put forward by differing writers as the scene of the feeding of the 5,000. The first-named is that commonly believed in ; the Editor of Murray contends for the latter. There seems to me not sufficient

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evidence to decide this point. After filling our pockets with shells, and picking a few flowers, we went aboard again, and sailed to Tell Hum, the site beyond any reasonable doubt of our Lord's " own city," Capernaum. As I have already said, the Plain of Gennesareth, i.e., the north-western portion of the coast, is now fever-begetting, and therefore almost deserted. A halt there for one night is said to have killed Laurence Oliphant and his wife. In the days of Christ it was the most populous part of the shore. Tell Hum is a desolation ; on the hill above it are a couple of ruined houses, the only remains of Chorazin ; at a bend of the lake a little south of Tell Hum is Tabighah, ancient Bethsaida, " the city of Andrew and Peter," also only a hovel or two. Continuing along the coast is the district named in the Gospel, " the parts of Dalmanutha," and there is a larger village, Medjel, anciently Magdala, the home of that Mary who was named after it. A scene of loneliness and desolation. A few Bedaween were tenting about, but except at Magdala I doubt if there was a single occupied house. But let us look at Tell Hum again.

We landed at the end of a garden which has been stocked by the piety of a Franciscan fraternity, and went through it to a new khan which they have built

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there for the accommodation of pilgrims like ourselves. It is a conspicuous object for miles around, because it is built of white stone and stands out against the dark hills. We could see it quite clearly from Tiberias. To reach it through the garden we clamber through some ruins. Contemplate them reverently — they are the remains of the synagogue in which was spoken the great discourse of St. John vi., and which was the scene of so many other incidents in the Saviour's life. The ruins are striking in themselves ; those pillars which must have marked the place in which the roll of the Law was kept are in situ, though broken off about 4 ft. from the ground. There is a broken entablature containing some beautiful carving, a vine, some pomegranates, and a pot of manna, clearly discernible. All tumbled about, overgrown in many places with weeds, such is the condition of the place once " exalted unto Heaven " by the presence of its Eternal King. We spoke softly as we remembered the solemn foretelling of the present terrible death. About five minutes' walk at the back of the convent is a fine tomb which is traditionally called the tomb of the prophet Nahum. Our guide bade us look to our going, because, he said, there were a good many venomous snakes about, but we did not see any. On our way back there was one point of view to which I

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call special attention. Just after passing Bethsaida an opening of the hills inward discloses to us Kurum Hattin, popularly known as the " Mount of the Beatitudes." We can see the whole north side of the mountain, and the slope of it down to the lake. It must be three or four miles off as the crow flies.

This being impressed on the reader's thought, I next call attention to St. Mark i. 21. It certainly appears from the course of that narrative that our Lord went on to Bethsaida, which is not far off. A very instructive essay in Good Words which I remember perfectly well — though writing in Palestine, I am unable to give a reference to it — is entitled " A Day with Christ," and dwells with great eloquence on the sequence of that day's events. Follow it on. The Lord must at the close of that laborious day have retired for a while to rest. But He rose up a great while before day, "went out into a solitary place and there prayed." But there was no rest there. His Apostles came to Him with the words " All men seek for Thee." He came down from the top of the mountain, but probably feeling the burden greater than He could support, He chose His twelve Apostles to help Him (St. Luke vi. 12-13), and with them He came to the multitude, and there on the

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slope of that mountain He spoke the Sermon on the Mount. The healing of the leper followed, and other mighty works, as well as the parables of St. Matt. xiii. But at length, worn out with labours, He went on board ship, gave commandment to depart to the other side, threw Himself down upon the deck, and was immediately in a sleep so profound that even the hurricane could not disturb it — nothing but the cry of distress (Mark iv. 38).

I have written all this without making it clear what has made me hesitate about the locality of the great sermon. If the sequence of events be as I have stated it, it may fairly be asked, " Is it probable that our Blessed Lord would go away so far from the scene of the day's labours to seek the retirement of which He felt the need? Were there not solitary places nearer at hand ? "

In accepting the traditional view, after careful reading, I reply to the questions asked. First, I do not believe that there was a lonely hill nearer than Hattin. I have looked round and round, and could find none. And, moreover, it may well be that the whole neighbourhood was a network of villages, as is the case at present where I am writing these lines

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under Lebanon. The Gospel tells us of Capernaum and Bethsaida without indicating localities very minutely, and it is quite conceivable, and in harmony with the general tenor of the passage, that He was moving along all that day towards the base of Hattin. Accepting, then, the tradition which belongs to the place, and believing that Kurun Hattin was the Mount of the Beatitudes, there seems to me a wonderful fitness in the locality. " He went up into a mountain and there continued all night in prayer to God." The side nearest to the lake has a depression on its top shaded with trees. There was much in the loneliness and silence of these trees which reminded one of Gethsemane. If the Saviour loved that shade it is in harmony with His love of the sacred olive-grove by Jerusalem — if there He called to Him the twelve, and with them descended to the lower slope, still " on the Mount," but a place where thousands could have gathered themselves together to hear Him proclaim the law of His Kingdom — everything fits entirely with the scene as Faith beholds it to-day, and once more reverently and thankfully calls back the scene.

I cannot remember who it is who suggests that the illustration of the 4< city set on a hill " was prompted by Safed, which is certainly a most conspicuous

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object to this day from Hattin. You see it far and wide, right on the top of the hill at the north end of the lake.

I must not omit two little incidents of this day's expedition. On our return our sailors let down their nets opposite Magdala and caught us a capital dish of fish for dinner. And in the evening after dinner we were invited to go and see the whole party of them at supper. Our cook had prepared for them a goodly feast of "rice and meat." The rice, I believe, was seasoned with herbs and butter, and served in an iron dish as big as a large tea-tray, the meat was laid in slices upon it. The guests sat round on the ground, and fed themselves with their fingers. First they ate all the meat, then took small handfuls of the rice, rolled them up into pellets, and swallowed them, occasionally turning round to us to say " Ver good." So I have no doubt it was, for our old Moslem cook was a superb artist, and not one of his dishes for us was a failure.

Next day, Sunday, we had an early Celebration in one of the tents, walked by the lake all day, and had evensong up in the hills, using the rocks as our prayer-desks. Next morning we started for the Waters of Merom.

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XII

Once more we went by boat up the Lake of Galilee as far as Dalmanutha, our horses going along the shore to meet us there. Our crew, poor fellows, were profuse in their professions of allegiance, and kissed our hands at parting. We mounted our horses and climbed a very steep hill, after turning round often to get another and another regretful look at the sacred Lake and the Mount of Beatitudes. We were now on the caravan road to Damascus, and saw hundreds of camels in the course of the day. Some of them were unloaded, and getting a meal among the shrubs. The more I have seen of these beasts the more I like them, admiring, most of all, their stately walk as they move along in line. In one case we saw forty tied together, a man in charge was lying at full length on the back of the first, the others were heavily laden with goods only, and they went in such a quiet, business-like way, it made me feel quite systematic and orderly to look at them. Sometimes the camel gets angry when he is being loaded ; on such occasions he turns his head sharply, grinds his great teeth, and grunts exactly like the rolling of a muffled drum.

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A ride of two hours and a half brought us within sight of the Lake of Merom, and we moved along the whole western side of it at about a mile's distance. Our destination this evening was Hazor, the ancient capital of Jabin, King of Canaan. The ruins of Hazor are among the largest in the country. It must have been a place of prodigious strength, and the wide level plain explains clearly how he was able to manoeuvre with his nine hundred chariots of iron, and why Joshua found it necessary in this portion of his campaign to hough the horses (Joshua xi., Judges iv.). We saw more Bedouin encampments all over this valley than anywhere else. Some were tending cattle, others weaving tents, for which, I believe, they find an export market at Safed. The Jews have got possession of a good deal of land about here, and are busy getting it well under cultivation.

Next morning we again went northward, parallel with the Upper Jordan, which, however, is not here the swift, compact stream which we had seen in the south. The land is, very swampy in places, and constantly we saw not one stream, but a wide expanse of waters dispersed through the green pastures, snow- topped Hermon closing it in all the while on the

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eastern side. This part of the Jordan Valley is a favourite resort of sportsmen, wildfowl abounding, to say nothing of bears, hyenas, and wolves.

We rode for five hours this morning, our object being to get eastward of the Jordan. But the swamps hindered us much, and more than once we had to retrace our way. Sometimes our path was on the eastern slopes of the hills of Galilee, and here were some of the stiffest bits of climbing that we had. Every stream that we forded was, of course, a tributary of the river. As we moved towards the head of it, the country was luxuriant, full of trees, chiefly maple and dwarf oak, and the converging streams grew more frequent, and rushed impetuously along. The gardens of herbs and vineyards were charming to look upon over the landscape, and con- stantly we saw the deserted " lodges " such as the prophet speaks of (Isaiah i., 8), where in the fruit season the watchmen keep guard, and, their duty done, leave them to tumble down. The Jordan through its whole course receives but few tributaries, and therefore gets no larger than it is at the Galilee outflow ; but I was hardly prepared to find the main stream so powerful as it was as we crossed the Merom Valley eastward. A ride through a beautiful and

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romantic gorge, with the river rushing and splashing beneath us, brought us at length to a fine bridge of three arches, spanning the stream. I suppose it is a Roman bridge. It is strongly built, and wide enough for a carriage, but has no parapet whatever. It is exquisitely festooned by nature with wild flowers, red, yellow, and white, in a setting of green foliage. A glorious mass of cyclamens in full bloom covered one of the arches. After this we had another climb over a stony path, another small stream or two to ford, and then we reached Laish, the scene of the settlement of Judges xviii. 20. The first object on which our eye rested was a group of magnificent oaks. Large trees are so rare in Palestine that we are much attracted by them when we do find them. One was a "fetish" tree, z>., hundreds of parcels were hung upon it, apparently letters folded in paper, I suppose on the me tabula principle of Horace. We had not the least intention of meddling with the tree, but a few natives came to keep watch upon us lest we should pick leaves off it as we halted at midday under the tree. There also came a man with a bear and monkey, and put them through the usual per- formances. The bear belongs to the district, a large but apparently gentle beast. A strong source stream rushed along by us, and we filled our bottles, and

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drank of it copiously. Then we climbed the hill close by ; it is little more than a knoll, but, as the plain is wide, the view from the top is fine. To the south of us, about a couple of miles off, a grove of small trees marks the site of Jeroboam's northern altar.

Then we rode away again, and at even-tide reached Banias, the ancient Caesarea Philippi, where we found our camp pitched in a most lovely olive grove, and a well-stocked tea-table which our indefatigable dragoman had caused to be prepared for us. People flocked round us as usual with old coins to sell, Roman, Byzantine, and Crusading. Banias is very interesting from its historical remains. There are two temples, one of the times of the Seleucidae, and one built by Herod Philip. On the top of a perpendicular cliff is one of the grandest ruins in the country, a vast castle, 1,500 feet long, which must have been of prodigious strength, not only from its position, but because of its massive walls. The greater portion appears to be of the date of the Crusades, though some of it is older.

The name Banias is a corruption of Paneas, a shrine of the god Pan, which stood beside a splendid fountain which gushes forth from under the rock, and

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flows away to join its fellows in making up the Jordan stream. Stanley supposes that our Lord's promise, " On this rock I will build My Church," may have been suggested by the castle, conspicuous for miles round, on the strong rock above us. It will be remembered that it was in this neighbourhood, the furthest point which He reached, that the words were spoken.

Next day was the hardest climb we had yet had. Our dragoman confided to me afterwards that he had earnestly prayed day by day that we might have fine weather for this day's journey, for a storm here is extremely dangerous. I can say without exaggera- tion that for hours it is all just like riding up a stone quarry. You are making your way up the shoulder of Hermon, and great boulders here and crumbling debris there, alike call upon you to take heed to your going. And though rain would be painful, a storm of wind down the narrow parts of the pass would be worse, and this is not rare, and a further danger is found in the mists, which are also by no means unusual. As it was, we had a glorious, sunny day, and the continual change of prospect as we sur- mounted each successive height delighted us each hour. First we passed through the village, which is

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walled all round, bearing testimony to its former strategical importance. There is a fine gateway and bastion, but as we look closely at it we see how it has been knocked about in past sieges. Thus we observe a great many pillars built endwise into the wall.

It is remarkable to notice how, as we leave Palestine for Syria proper, the geological formation is altogether changed. Palestine is all limestone; the side of Hermon is unmistakably volcanic. At first it reminded me a good deal of the Malvern Hills, but presently there came another change. After some hours' stiff "riding we reached the crest of the pass, and got a great view to the east. I will not undertake to say how may peaks, plainly extinct volcanoes, were within sight, but I believe there were twenty. Far away to the south-east was the Hauran, the Trachonitis of the New Testament and the Argob of the Old. At our feet lay a plain absolutely barren ; there was hardly a shrub upon it ; but we comforted ourselves by thinking how smooth it looked for our riding. This is the great Syrian desert (i Kings xix. 15), and when, after our midday halt, we descended into it, we found ourselves un- deceived as to the smoothness. It is all covered with volcanic remains, and reminds you of the English

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Black Country, only it is Nature who has thrown out the heaps of cinders and calcined rock, and not the iron-smelters. You make your way through and over great heaps, and could fancy yourself in the suburbs of Walsall or Glasgow.

But before descending into this desert plain one object called for our delighted attention. Far off eastward a long line of dark green marked an oasis in the desert. And in the middle of that green oasis was a narrow strip white as snow, like a fine touch of light in a water-colour drawing. When we got our glass into focus this white strip resolved itself into a mass of houses and beautiful minarets. It was our first view of Damascus, apparently the oldest existing city in the world. We were still two days' journey from it.

I ought just to mention that on our way we passed a flourishing Druse village where they sell porcupine quills to passers-by. These Druses hold much in common with the Mahometans, but superadd to their assertion of the Unity of God a good deal of Free- masonry. I made a Masonic sign to one whom I met in the road and he returned it. But I did not learn more about them than I had read in books. Our

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dragoman, being a Maronite, has an hereditary feud with them, and hates them cordially.

At the close of the day we forded the Awaj, the ancient Pharpar, a swift, dark blue stream, and in a few minutes reached Beit Jinn, our camping-place for the night.

XIII

I SHOULD like to give the reader an idea of Damascus, but it is not an easy kind of task with any Oriental city ; everything is unlike what I ever saw before. I have already mentioned the distant view of the mass of green foliage by which it is surrounded. Coming closer, this great mass is seen to comprise oaks, olives, and, above all, fruit trees in such profusion as certainly I shall never see again- They are mostly apricot trees ; right and left for miles there they were in full bloom, and I need not say the sight is a very lovely one. You enter the unpaved and dirty streets ; behind the mud walls, and in the valley of the beautiful Abana river below you on the left, are still these apricot orchards. At length the houses get the upper hand, and presently we are among a crowded population. Two sites are

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claimed as the scene of St. Paul's conversion, one on the road by which we have come, another on the southern side of the city, over which the Franciscans have built a small church. Plainly, it is impossible to settle matters between these sites, for both roads are, as probably they always were, frequented roads to Jerusalem. They show you the place, too, where the Apostle was let down in a basket. Our guide- book dismisses it with a sneer, and says that the wall is plainly Mahometan. It may be — though I am by no means clear on that point — but if it be, it is probably on the site of a previous wall. The " street called Straight" there is no question about. Mark Twain laughs at it, and says it must be so named because there is not a straight line in it. A dull joke, and not a true one ; for, as things go in these parts, it is a very straight street. At any rate, you can see nearly the whole length of it as you stand in the middle, just where there is a slight declension. I should call Oxford-street "straight," though you can't see the whole of it at once. Damascus is rectangular west, north, and east, on the south it is the segment of a circle. Straight-street runs the whole length, and is about a mile long within the walls, and about a quarter of a mile more outside on

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the west. About half of it is covered in, like the Burlington-arcade, though the general aspect is differ- ent enough. The width of the city is not half the length, the first aspect is confirmed by intimate acquaintance, a long narrow strip. Let us enter the street on the west side. We are under the waggon roof, most of the houses comprise shops, and there, as everywhere, the Turks squat like tailors, and chaffer with buyers. There are articles in repousst brass, walking-sticks, pipes, carpets, silks, silver chains, sweetmeats. No pavement ; and the street is narrow. If you are run over in an Eastern town, the responsibility rests entirely with yourself, as much as it would with a man who should walk on an English railway. Damascus is different from Jerusalem and from most towns in this, that carriages drive through a few of the streets. There are not very many, but there is no right or left, in fact there is seldom room for two abreast. Consequently you must keep your eyes open, and when one comes get out of the way. The driver will shout, as the men do on a fire engine, but he docs not think of stop- ping : it is your look-out, and not his. A camel, with his nose in the air, has no more idea of making way for you than a locomotive engine has. I saw one or two people knocked down ; they scrambled

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out of the way as they lay, and then got up and took it as a matter of course. Some of the buildings, especially the places of exchange, are very handsome.

Guided by my map, I sought out the house in this street in which St. Paul is said to have been baptized. It is now a mosque, and for some days was always closed when I went by. But one day I found it open, and expressed a wish to go in. My guide did not much like the idea ; but he said, " You will have to pull your boots off." " No difficulty there," I replied, and I took them off in the street, gave them to him, and went over the threshold. But it was rather ticklish work, I found afterwards. Some of the bystanders came round my companion and angrily inquired what I had gone in for. He, constant to his inventive habits, replied that I had gone in to pray. One of them followed me and kept close to me as I walked round. There is nothing to see, however. There were about a dozen people praying with great devoutness : at a great bath at the end two or three were bathing their feet. I saw that my guide was glad when I emerged and put on my boots. This site is probably genuine. So I think, is the alleged house of Ananias at the

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east-end of the street. This is now a small Christian oratory.

I forget whether I have mentioned that dogs seem to swarm in Eastern cities. They have no owners. There they are loafing about all day near the same spots. Offal and house sweepings are thrown out each evening, and the dogs are the scavengers. Anything in the way of bones and meat they devour ; the rest is trampled into the ground. Here and there you see a rough kennel for mothers who have puppies. Nobody owns them, but everybody seems to protect them. They make night hideous with their barkings and howlings : you complain in vain, nobody will molest one. Most painful is it to see those which are paralysed or mangy. An English lady in Constantinople told me what trouble they had there with diseased dogs. There was nothing for it but for her servants to slip out after dark and stab the poor brutes to the heart, to put them out of their misery. But what amazes you most is that these dogs lie and sleep in the roads, and not one in twenty disturbs himself at passers by. He takes it for granted that it is you who are to get out of his way, not he out of yours. M. pointed out to me as we went along how the holes in the roof arching the street

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threw patches of light upon the ground all along, and on each patch lay a dog basking in the sun. The drivers of the carriages took care to avoid them.

Just outside the Eastern Gate, at the end of Straight- street, is a squalid-looking ruin. It is said to be the house of Naaman, and till lately was used as a Leper Hospital. Passing by it we come, as usual, to a cemetery ; not a pretty God's-acre like an English churchyard, but a long stretch of waste land, without any kind of fence between it and the road, uncared for apparently, and untended. There is a Christian burial ground also on this side of the city, and in it I sought and, with a little trouble, found the grave of Buckle, the historian. He died at Damascus in 1862. The stone was covered with blossoms which the wind had blown down from the surrounding fruit trees.

The finest building is the " Great Mosque," at the back of the Bazaars, a quadrangular building 280 by 200. Some of it is Roman, and it was once a magnificent Christian Church, and though it is now defiled by being turned into a Mosque, you can make out the former situation of the altar and the choir. There are a few beautiful Christian mosaics which have escaped the barbarians, and some of the

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Mohammedan work is very skilful and beautiful. Here, almost to a certainty, was the house of Rimmon in which Naaman bowed, as his master Benhadad leaned upon his hand. Here, too, was the altar which so tickled the fancy of stupid Ahaz, that he had one like it made for the temple of Jerusalem.

It was very curious that when the Mohammedans knocked this fair building about they overlooked one inscription over a doorway. We clambered over roofs and inspected it. I took a copy but have mislaid it. It is in Greek uncial letters, and declares that our Lord Jesus Christ is King of kings, and that His Kingdom shall last for ever and ever.

I was much interested, too, in visiting some Jewish houses and schools. It is characteristic everywhere that you frequently approach these houses up narrow and filthy streets, bearing marks of poverty and neglect up to the very door. You enter, go perhaps a yard or two down a mud-floored passage, then find yourself in a luxurious court-yard, with a beautifully carved fountain in the middle, trees overhanging it, divans, open to the yard, at the sides. More exquisite marble carvings and richer decorations I never saw. We had to drink coffee out of cups about the size of

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big thimbles, generally offered us by the master's sons, barefooted but richly dressed. No sort of picture did you see anywhere, the decorations were arabesques of richly veined marbles, the beautiful carpets made you almost believe in Sindbad the Sailor.

" Never outrun your welcome," says the old proverb. I feel that I am in danger of doing it by thus keeping the reader button-holed week after week. I fully meant to finish up these letters to-day, but I must beg the reader to indulge me one week longer while I compress as well as I can our journey to Beyrout and thence to Constantinople into one page more.

XIV

OUR journey from Damascus took us past the spot whence Mahomet is said, as he gazed on the fair city embosomed among the trees, to have exclaimed " Paradise ! Ah, no, for Paradise is above." It is a spot that visitors go out to at eventide when the setting sun throws its light on towers, and minarets, and roofs.

Past the rushing Abana — and it is a lovely river — we went up hill after hill, into the range of Anti-

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Libanus ; past rocks more frowning and terrific of aspect than any I have ever seen. No Swiss scenery can compare in this respect with the sharp volcanic crags shooting up into the sky, and constantly over- hanging the path.

The road is a splendid piece of engineering skill. It was made by a French company, who have a monopoly of it for fifty years, and they charge a very heavy toll. I think we had to pay £2 toll for our journey to Beyrout. The old mule path is seen, now this side, now that, and many strings of camels and asses we saw pursuing it, their owners not able to pay the toll. The same company have acquired the right to make a railway also, from Beyrout to the Hauran, with an arriere penste of going on to the Euphrates. But a railway from Beyrout to Damascus would of course injure their newly-made carriage road, so their course of procedure is to begin at Damascus and go eastwards to the Hauran (or Bashan), and not to make the railway at present over the Beyrout way. I see that an opposition line is being started, from Haifa through the Vale of Esdraelon to the Lake of Galilee, and thence to Damascus. But at any rate the first company have the start. We met processions endless of mules

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heavily laden with rails, which were being carried to Damascus for the Hauran line ; so evidently they mean business. And according to all account, they will open up a magnificent corn-growing district when this line is finished.

Having crossed the Anti-Libanus range, we descended into the beautiful plain of the Leontes, and were now fronted with the line of Lebanon. Looking southwards we could still see the snow- capped heights of Hermon.

Lebanon is not particularly striking of aspect. The range is level-topped, like a plateau, and the lines of snow all down the furrows reminded one of the stripes on a tiger's back. But we did not cross it that day. The course of our journey led us up the valley between the two ranges. This is the valley commonly known as Ccele-Syria, £*., " Hollow Syria," a name dating from the days of Alexander, and expressing the fact that it is a hollow depression between the two ranges. It is, if I mistake not, about twelve miles wide, rich both in cornfields and vineyards. Our halting-place at the entrance of the valley was Shturah, a village on the fine road I have mentioned, and the seat of a most flourishing wine trade in the

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hands of some French people from Rheims and the neighbourhood. We bought a large quantity of their wine very cheap, but it has not yet reached us here in England, so that we cannot tell how it will bear the sea voyage, nor ask the opinion of our friends upon it. But we are rather sanguine in our hopes.

The object of our excursion up the valley was to visit Baalbec, which lies at the northern extremity of it. The native name of the valley is Bukaa, and Baalbec means the Temple of Baal in that valley. We halted for the night at Muallakah, on the side of Lebanon, and were amazed to find a long, flourish- ing village, or rather a long line of contiguous villages, the inhabitants of which are mostly Christian, Oriental certainly in aspect, but still bearing everywhere marks of the French civilisation to which in a large measure the colonising here is to be attributed.

Next day we went on to Baalbec, and I need not tell anyone who has read about it that it has been a most wonderful city. At the Phoenician buildings which yet remain we may take it as certain that Jezebel must have officiated, for here were the head- quarters of the foul Baal-worship in the days of her father, Ethbaal. To this day the method by which

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the Phoenician part of the walls was constructed remains a mystery. For let the reader contemplate these facts : (i) a huge row of masonry twenty feet high ; (2) upon this lie six blocks of stone thirty feet long and thirteen feet square, so exquisitely finished and laid in position that though no cement has been used they are absolutely as close as two sheets of paper ; (3) upon these, three blocks sixty- four feet long, and fourteen feet square. How on earth were they got up there ? Nobody can tell. The quarry from which these stones were dug is about half a mile distant, and in it there lies one bigger than any of them, being seventy-two feet long. It has been carved and chased, but whether or not they failed in their attempts to move it, who can say? There it lies, and has lain these thousands of years, one of the wonders of the world.

The magnificence of the principal temples, however, is indescribable ; but they are not Phoenician. They were built chiefly by the Antonines. It is a hard day's work to go all over them and mark the magnificence of the columns, some standing upright against the clear sky, some lying prone, one leaning against the wall against which it was thrown by an earthquake, but both wall and column so strongly built that neither

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was broken. The columns of one temple are 75 feet in height. Six of these remain upright, and a splendid entablature of 14 feet rests upon them. Yes, vast is the right word for these ruins ; but then the exquisite carvings upon them are not a whit less wonderful. The roof of the peristyle under which we rested from the sun is as rich and delicate as the ornamentation of any Gothic cathedral in Europe. And you stand amazed, too, at sight of the great portal which led into this temple, because an earth- quake in 1759 shattered, but did not destroy it. There are the stones in their displaced condition ; and the very fact that they remain in their vastness, jarred, but not thrown down, is an astounding revelation of the mighty strength of the construction. But the reader must see plans and pictures to realise in some degree this stupendous collection of heathen fanes. I wish I could show my photographs to every reader of these lines.

We were loth to quit so wondrous a spot, but after a night's encampment we bade Baalbec farewell. We saw the road which would have taken us to the Cedars of Lebanon, but it was impracticable at the time of year that we were there, by reason of the deep snow. Just over the hill before us is the stream where Adonis

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was killed, according to the legend. That legend also tells how his blood reddened the stream, and certainly the red clay in all this neighbourhood gives a tinge to the water, arid probably to this the fancy is owing. How the women wept for Tammuz the reader who does not remember the legend must find in his annotated Ezekiel.

Two days' more riding carried us over the Lebanon range and down to Beyrout. We passed the scene where took place the cruel massacre of the Maronites by the Druses in i860. One good, at any rate, came out of the atrocity. The Turkish Government was obliged to make a few concessions to the outraged conscience of Christendom, and to acknowledge the Christian League for the protection of our brother Christians. But Mahometanism will remain a curse and blight upon the world as long as it exists. When the Queen made the Turkish Sultan a Knight of the Garter (!) our leading journal flourished away most fluently, and prophesied that for the future Christianity and Mahometanism would go hand in hand in the work of progress. It might as well have prophesied that St. Michael and the devil would be seen walking arm-in-arm down Pall Mall. Poor Abdul Aziz! he did try ; and they killed him because he really wanted

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to make Christians equal with Moslems. I sought out his grave in Constantinople, and stood silently for a long time by it, and joined my prayer for his soul with one that the darkness might pass away and the true light shine.

But this is a digression. I must hasten to a close. We had a storm of rain at Beyrout, just when we did not mind it. The weather had been like a glorious summer all the time of our encampment under the heavens. On Monday, the 28th of March, we embarked at Beyrout, and though it was windy as we started it grew calm almost immediately, and for a week we were on the Mediterranean once more and enjoyed it to the full. At both Cyprus and Rhodes we halted for a night, and read our Bibles diligently, as well as talked of heathen legends and the great Colossus. I need not say that there is not a rock or an island which we passed in the ^Egean sea which is not enrobed in beautiful stories, true and allegorical We passed Patmos towards eventide, and with my glass I could see the cave where St John is said to have written the Apocalypse. Assos, Mitylene, Phocea, we knew something about them all, and next day went on land at Smyrna. We had a little disappoint- ment here, for we had planned to visit Ephcsus, but it

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came on to rain heavily, and we had to give this up. But we saw St. Polycarp's church, and the place of his martyrdom, and his tomb, and here also in the " Sailor's Home" on the shore got sight of some news- papers, the first I had seen for many weeks. So away again, past Troas and Tenedos, and the tomb of Achilles, and up the Dardanelles, past Abydos and jEgospotami, into the sea of Marmora. We were in bed, however, during our voyage across it. Next morning, we went on deck to behold the beautiful city of Constantine looming through the mist.

I cannot do justice to the beautiful city and its history in this column ; I fear I have well nigh worn my readers' patience out, but the visit to St. Sophia and the other sites which I knew pretty well from the history books, will never die out of my recollection. Nor will the visit to Scutari, where I blended together the memories of the great Council of Chalcedon and the Christian work of Florence Nightingale. Both had their place nearly on the same spot. We spent our afternoon in the burial ground hard by the hospital, and recognised many a familiar name on the stones, and saw many a great mound where forty men or so were laid to rest together.

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Oh ! seek them not where sleep the dead,

Ye shall not find their trace ; No graven stone is at their head,

No green grass hides their face. They had few prayers, and no mourning bell, They are tombed in the true hearts that loved them well.

So I bid farewell to the East. But, as I have rather abused the Turks, my last word shall be about Bishop Blyth. He has already done good work in smoothing differences between the English and the Eastern Church. Speaking for myself, I must say I wish he had been supported better. 1 do not believe, so long as the Turkish Government rules, that intercommunion is possible. The Turks hate and detest the attempts at our reunion, and are bent upon keeping us apart. But they can't go on for ever. The Bishop has pursued a wise course in showing the Greek Church that we respect and revere her ancient traditions. And I am sure that in the disputes which he has had with English Christians at home he has been right and they have been wrong.

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April 20

It is not an easy thing to describe a foundation like that of the great Abbey of Bury St. Edmund's in such a way as to convey an idea of it to the reader, especially without a plan. Perhaps it is rash to attempt it. Our hotel stands on the west side of a large space sloping slightly downwards, which is known as Angel Hill. Opposite to us and stretching away to the right is the site of the great Abbey, the most magnificent in eastern England, hallowed not only by the saint to whom it is dedicated, but by more than one great episode in our national history. Its two noble gateways are still standing, the one, almost facing our hotel, is Perpendicular, the other, on our right, pure Norman. The Norman gate led straight into the precincts of the magnificent Abbey church, so that as men stood in the street, and looked through the gate, they could see not only the west front, but when its doors were open, the high altar at the other end.

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That west front still stands, strangely transmuted indeed, but beautiful even in its partial ruin. It is now shorn of its ornamentations and has modern windows ; it forms the vicarage house, and the vicar was kind enough to show us the strong and massive Norman arches which the wall still exhibits on the inside. Alongside this great church on the north lay the Abbey buildings and the Abbot's house, and the other gateway was the entrance to that portion. Now the good reader, I hope, will be able to comprehend thus far. Two gateways in a straight line, one leading into the Abbey buildings and grounds, the other to the Abbey church and churchyard, the two portions thus forming a couple of adjacent parallelograms. At the opposite (the east) end runs a little river, over which is a gem of a stone footbridge of three arches known as the abbot's bridge.

Now let us return to the fine Norman gateway. It is in the form of a tower, in which hangs a good peal of bells, of which more presently. Passing through it, you are in the peaceful and beautiful churchyard, with its tall, shadowing trees. On your left is the south wall of St. James's Church, and on your right at the other side of the churchyard is St. Mary's. It is a striking feature of this spot, these two fine churches within the

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same churchyard, to which, until the dissolution by Henry VIII., was added the great Church of the Monastery. There can have been no scene in England of greater ecclesiastical grandeur than must have been thus presented. I have before me a plan of the whole as restored, and it is startling to note the smallness of the two existing churches as compared with the Abbey Church, which was as large as Ely Cathedral. I fancy the elevation is to a large extent conjectural, but there is a glorious tower as fine as Lincoln or Gloucester.

Now for an attempt at the history. Sigebert, King of East England, resigned his Kingdom in 633, and built a monastery here, which was then named Bederiesworth. Here he died and was buried. Nothing is known of its history for the next two centuries, but in 870 came the event which was to make it famous in the ages to come. Edmund, King of East England, was taken prisoner and shot to death by the heathen Danes at Hoxne, near Thetford. J. R. Green well calls him the English St. Sebastian. His martyrdom was the most favourite subject of ecclesiastical art, and a vast number of churches in East England were dedicated to his memory. The oak to which tradition declared he had been bound fell in 1848, and when it was cut up an arrow head

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was found embedded in the trunk. I believe the relic is now in possession of Sir Edward Kerrison. Dr. J. M. Neale says that a piece of the tree was used for the holy table of a church, but does not specify where. Can anybody tell me ? The martyr's remains were brought to Bederiesworth for burial, and henceforward the name of the little town was changed to St. Edmund's Bury. In ioio, as the fierce Danes still continued to ravage East England, the King's body was removed to London, lest they should outrage it, and a church was built over its resting-place, and called after him. In 1013, Sweyne King of Denmark, harried the country and robbed the monastery, and as he died immediately after- wards, his death was put down to his sacrilege. His son, Canute, who began as a fierce heathen, became a devout Christian, and one of his works was to restore the desolated monasteries. He con- veyed the body of St. Edmund back to Bury, and one memorial of this translation still exists in the wooden church of Greenstead, near Ongar, a building which was hastily constructed of great chestnut slabs to afford a temporary shelter for the royal martyr's body on its way back. On reaching Bury the corpse was for a while placed in the parish church of St. Mary's, but a new shrine was immediately begun,

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and its wonderful popularity is proved by the fact that in Domesday Book, the monastery of Bury has 58 manors in Norfolk, 158 in Suffolk, besides others in the counties of Cambridge, Bedford, Northants, and Essex. The martyr's body was placed in its new shrine in 1095. As I have already said, part of that old Norman building still remains, of prodigious strength.

The Norman gateway in the Abbey Church was built by Abbot Anselm, nephew of the famous Primate so named. He had vowed a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James of Compostella, and was about to set forth when his monks stopped him. They would all go to pieces, they declared, if he left them, and so they prevailed upon him instead to build a church to St. James in the Abbey grounds. This, then, is the origin of St. James's Church. Its object was to provide church accommodation for the townspeople instead of sending them to worship in the Abbey, where the monks didn't want them. His church has been replaced by a Perpendicular build- ing on the same site, but his tower remains in its pristine beauty, and has been turned into the bell tower of St. James's church, though detached from it.

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"Alas, how like an old osseous fragment, a broken blackened shinbone of the old dead Ages, this black ruin looks out, not yet covered by the soil ; still indicating what a once gigantic life lies buried there ! It is dead now, and dumb ; but was alive once, and spake. For twenty generations here was the earthly arena where painful living men worked out their life- wrestle, looked at by Earth, by Heaven, and Hell. Bells tolled to prayers ; and men of many humours, various thoughts, chanted vespers, matins ; and round the little islet of their life rolled for ever (as round ours still rolls, though we are blind and deaf) the illimitable ocean, tinting all things with its eternal hues and reflexes ; making strange prophetic music ! How silent now ; all departed, clean gone. The World-Dramaturgist has written, Exeunt? So wrote Thomas Carlyle in 1843 in the early portion of his most fascinating book, " Past and Present." No book in the language shows us like this the life of an old monastery, its piety, its shortcomings, its struggles, its beneficence. I am not going to draw upon it for this column, since it can now be bought for eighteen- pcnce, and the buyer will not regret his bargain. Suffice it to say that a great portion of it is occupied with the chronicle of Jocclin of Brakelonda, a monk of Bury, who in the time of the Plantagenets wrote

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his reminiscences, and whose manuscript was printed (1842) in a dainty little volume by the Camden Society. Carlyle in his racy picturesque English amplifies and illustrates this chronicle and makes Monk Jocelin and his brethren and Abbots live again, and the old Abbey rises before us and good King Edmund ; and there is Abbot Hugo, an old lazy- bones who lets his finances get into the hands of the Jews, and Abbot Samson, who gets them out again and reforms his monastery, which had gone much to the bad. What superb literary skill Carlyle had, witness the chapter headed " Saint Edmund," in which he describes the disentombment of the martyred King, preparatory to removal to a more stately shrine, contrasts it with the opening of the coffin of John Hampden, not to the advantage of the nineteenth century over the twelfth, and speaks up for reverence for the dead. And then in the same chapter he goes on to tell from Chronicler Jocelin how Abbot Samson got the Coventry monks out of trouble, and how he was sent for by Richard Cceur de Lion across sea to advise, and departed, and — here the MS. ends abruptly. Not another line does Jocelin write.

Well, well, I leave the reader, if so disposed, to

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revel in this record as I have done again, after leaving it on my shelf for five and twenty years. I have gone through it, and it seems all as fresh as it was on the first day. And, curious coincidence, I look up from my paper and there on my mantel-piece, put there by accident yesterday, is Carlyle's portrait and autograph which the old man gave me in 1879.

The Abbey grounds are now laid out as a garden, and the blackened ruins, which peep through, here and there, are identified more or less certainly, in an old map of which I have become possessed. There are the " brewhouse," the " stables," the " abbot's palace and offices," the " mint " (for this abbey coined its own money), the " cellarer's room," the " infirmary," (the four walls of this stand sturdily forth, and there are still some architectural details discernible upon them), the u kitchen " and " refectory," the * bowling- ground," the "great cloister," the "chapter house." In some cases these are only represented by a heap of stones. There is one roofed ruin down by the river, called (and probably correctly) the dovecot Beyond the river you discern some green terraces ; they mark the site of the monk's vineyard, and you can also see traces of their fishponds.

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So much for the Abbey grounds. Of the great church there is the remnant of the west front, which as I have already said, is now the vicarage, and in a line with it the baptistery. The church, I need hardly say, was cruciform. The lofty columns of the chancel arch remain. These are now in private grounds belonging to Canon Blackall, who takes reverent care of the ruins. The transept had double aisles distinctly traceable. On one of the tall columns a couple of tablets record a momentous incident of the past not long subsequent to the time described by chronicler Jocelin. We have no means of knowing whether he lived long enough to see it. On St. Edmund's day, 1 2 14, the barons of England in righteous indignation at the tyrannous wickedness of King John assembled before the altar of the king who had died a martyr's death for defending his people, and there took a solemn oath to resist the usurpations of the ungodly king and to curb his power. The outcome of that oath was Magna Charta, signed at Runnymede on the 15th of June, 121 5. One tablet records the fact, the other gives the names, and the descendant of one of them pointed out her ancestor's name to me the other day.

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April 27.

In short papers like these space is very small, and most reluctantly I find myself unable to use an account which has been written for me of the original burial of St. Edmund, and of the miracles which the old monks relate as having taken place at his shrine. Abbot Samson made a new and beautiful shrine, of which there is a representation in Knight's Old England (Vol. I., No. 463), in which the assembled lords are represented as taking their oath on St. Edmund's Day, 12 14. It is described by Lydgate, the poet monk of Bury; as "of gold standing on a pedestal of Gothic stonework." It was swept away by the desecrators under Henry VIII, who describe it as " most cumberous to efface." I said last time that I did not know whether Abbot Samson lived to see the baron's meeting ; I find now that he died two years before it.

Runnymede brought the Charter, but not the long-wished for peace. The war broke out again ; East England was the field of it. At length the barons in despair sought the aid of the French King, Philip Augustus. He sent his son, afterwards Louis VIII., who received the homage of the English barons

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in St. Paul's. But they soon found that he meant treacherously by them ; and when John suddenly died, leaving a son ten years old, their sympathy went out towards the boy King, and Louis went home again, seeing his cause hopeless. But it is alleged that before doing so he robbed churches by whole- sale, that he carried away the body of St. Amphibalus from Redbourn, and that of St. Edmund from Bury. I say it is so alleged. But the evidence must be called doubtful.

Nov. g.

I am obliged to begin with a trifle of autobiography. Near upon fifty years ago (in 1845, 6, 7) I was a student in St. Mark's College, Chelsea, and on my last visit to Torquay I went up to the cemetery and said a Requiescat over the grave of our old Principal, Derwent Coleridge. In those days the two leading members of the Council were Thomas Dyke Acland and Gilbert Mathieson. There were reasons which brought me into personal contact with them, and when he heard that I was going to Exeter, the former of them, now a baronet of eighty-five years old, expressed a wish that I would go and see him. Mathieson has gone to his rest these forty years or more. So four of us, old fellow students, made up a

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St. Mark's party to visit Sir Thomas, and were welcomed most cordially. It was a touching sight to see the old man, his hair still black, his foot firm, his eye keen, taking us up the hill to his chapel, and showing us the views from his beautiful park, his deer, and his Exmoor ponies, some no bigger than col ley dogs ; and yet more touching was it to sit down with him and hear him pour out reminiscences of the old days when the fight for Church education was being fought. Much of what he said was new to me, and is worth putting down, if it be only as a minute contribution to a history of Education, which will have to be written.

Sir Thomas went back to the days of the Melbourne Ministry. The Tract movement was in full swing, the clergy were waking up to a higher sense of duty ; even those who held aloof from them were recognising the power and spirituality of the new leaders. Not only Pusey and Newman and Keble, with their friends, but such men as Joshua Watson, Dr. Hook, Norris of Hackney, Archdeacon Bayley, the Wordsworth brothers, Samuel Wilberforce, were all busy in their way, each with his own ideal of what the Church should be. Mr. Watson was eager about S.P.G. and S.P.C.K., but it was also he and Dr. Bayley who threw

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themselves with great eagerness into a movement for connecting the reviving life of the Church with educational improvements, and seeing that it was intellectually abreast of the time. Thus, for instance, Lord Brougham and Charles Knight had been mainly instrumental in starting the Penny Magazine on a non-religious basis ; the two men I have named started the Saturday Magazine, which aimed at being fully abreast of the other in secular matters, whilst it also recognised the powers of the world to come. So Mr. Acland, Mr. Mathieson, Lords Ashley and Sandon (afterwards respectively Shaftesbury and Harrowby), Mr. Gladstone, Henry Nelson Coleridge, Samuel F. Wood (an uncle of the present Lord Halifax), W. M. Praed, S. Lutwidge set to work first of all to form diocesan boards, with a view to forming training colleges and providing for inspection. They were anxious, too, to give encouragement to good teachers by promoting them to Church middle schools. This idea is put forth in Mr. Gresley's story, "Church Clavering."

And they had great success. The first training College was at the National Society's at Westminster ; the clergy sent up promising lads to have a six months', in some cases only a three months', training,

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before settling down in country villages as school- masters. And unpromising as all this may sound to modern educationists, I can tell them that not a few of these men proved well worth their training, very good schoolmasters indeed. My own, for I was taught in a village National school, would never have got through a first year's examination, nor even a Queen's scholarship. He was not clever, but he was plodding and painstaking. His old rector helped him, and all his life he did his best. And many of his boys have done well in the world. There was an emulation and a zeal amongst us youngsters which it might be hard to account for, and he taught us to do what he had done himself, to observe, to acquire facts, and to like our books. And there were many such steady-going men who had in a few months learned at the training school how to learn when they got back to their work.

But of course all this tended to more complete work, and so a fuller training had to be provided for. And the pioneers I have named set to work, and the National Society founded St. Mark's and Battersea for schoolmasters, and Whitelands for schoolmistresses. St. Mark's, and I think the other two, were opened in 1841.

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That was an eventful year in Church and State. The Melbourne Ministry went out of office, and were succeeded by that of Sir Robert Peel, and this was a distinct gain to the Church party. But it was also the year of Tract 90, and the year in which Newman, as he tells us in his Apologia, set his face definitely Romewards. The bitterness with which he and his friends were regarded by the Evangelical party (and it must be remembered that the latter were by far the strongest numerically) had never been so great as now. They were fiercely proscribed, not only in the secular press, but in the two newspapers which circulated among the clergy. On the other hand, Pusey and Keble were men of learning as well as holiness, and these bravely held their own in face of clamour. And St. Mark's was from the first marked as in sympathy with the High Church party. Mr. Sinclair, the secretary of the National Society, so Sir Thomas Acland told me, was hostile to the College for that reason. However, when he became Arch- deacon of Middlesex, I am certain that he behaved fairly and generously to it. Except St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, I think the College chapel was the only place in London where you could hear a Choral Service. People used to come from all parts and fierce was the onslaught which, more than once

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was made upon it. Archbishop Sumner would never go near it. I saw his brother there once, the late Bishop of Winchester, who was a man of wider views. Bishop Blomfield was always a most generous friend.

Justice should be done to the Whigs, however. The appointment of the Committee of Council on Education in 1839 was their act, and the gain to the Church from it was very great. Under it the Church Training Colleges were largely subsidised, the in- spectors were Churchmen, and the teaching of the Prayer Book and of Church history was fully sustained. Here, for instance, are a few names that Churchmen who remember them will always hold in honour — Moseley, Archdeacon Allen, Norris, Tin ling, Cowie.

Under the Peel Government the Church movement progressed quietly, though Newman deserted to Rome. Sir Robert had but few bishoprics to fill ; so far as I remember Wilberforce and Lonsdale were his only nominees. In 1846 he gave place to Lord John Russell, and the new Premier at once took up again the question of National Education. I do not feel called upon to re-open the controversies which arose out of his measures. He was a religious, but narrow- minded and self-satisfied little man, but according to

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his lights he was energetic as well as conscientious. The system which he inaugurated of grants of public money to elementary schools, and of pupil teachers to be prepared for the training colleges, has been steadily pursued ever since, and it has tended to the furtherance of the Church. No one would have been more shocked than Lord John Russell, or Mr. Forster after him, at the attempt to unchristianise our elementary schools.

1896

Feb. 28, 1896.

How many men living can say they ever played cricket with Cardinal Manning ? I can for one. It was in June, 1845. He was Archdeacon of Chichester, and he, Sir T. D. Acland, Gilbert Mathieson, and some others gave the students of St. Mark's College, Chelsea, a day's treat on Wimbledon Common, and we played cricket together. The day is burnt into my memory. I reminded the Cardinal of it at a King's College Hospital dinner eight or nine years ago. I know I got eleven runs, and missed a catch.

March 13.

The other day I got Collingridge's large map of London, and stuck into it a brass drawing-pin on the site of every old London church. It certainly was a remarkable map to look upon when so bedecked. The City portion was as thickly studded with bright spots as a star-map. And then I carefully cut out a paper

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pattern exactly marking the ravages of the great Fire of Sept. 2-6, 1666, and stuck it on. What an awful event it was ! The earthquake of Lisbon was far more terrible as regards loss of life, but the destruction of property there was as nothing compared with the Fire of London. It ravaged 396 acres, burnt 13,200 houses, nearly all the great public buildings, four of the City gates, 89 churches, and (it is estimated) property worth three or four million sterling. The covering of the burnt part revealed a noteworthy fact, namely, that outside it the churches were comparatively few. There are two reasons for this. First, that a great portion of what is now so thickly populated was then fields. I hope to say something hereafter about the outlying churches as they existed then ; there are not many of them. But these which were so crowded together in the City could hardly have been all needed for the population, one would think, though it was a dense one. Many of them were built by City merchants who, in mediaeval times, made their dwelling places within the walls, and who very frequently built churches, as a nobleman has a private chapel in his country mansion.

Wren rebuilt fifty-three of the destroyed churches and patched up one. The rest were never rebuilt.

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But their names survive in those parishes which are now joined under some one or other of the restored buildings. Thus the rector of St. Margaret's, Lothbury, has six other parishes, the united population of the whole, according to the Clergy List, being 543. The rector of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey has six parishes, the population being 322. One of these (St. Mary Mounthaw) has, I believe, three houses only, the rest having been swept away by the construction of Queen Victoria-street. The first time I meet the rector I shall inquire how that parish manages about church- wardens. I should think they would find it simplest to " go the odd man."

The names of these churches and parishes are interesting. Some of them, whether dedicated to scriptural or ecclesiastical saints, have an affix, e.g., " St. Andrew Hubbard," " St. Laurence Pountney." In both these cases, as in some others, the second name has reference to the founder or benefactor of the church. Sometimes it refers to the site, " St. Olave Jewry," " St. Martin Vintry," " St. Mary Bothaw," i.e., " at the Boatyard." One of the most curious is St. Benet Sherehog. A "hog" was a young eighteen- month-old ram, and its first shearing was supposed to produce extra good wool. There was a place for the sale of such wool in Pancras-lane, and the church was

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in the midst of this market. Hence the name. St. Mary Aldermary means the elder church of St. Mary, there being others which were its daughters, St. Mary- le-Bow being one. Some of the names point to Danish settlements in the city, as St. Olave, and also St. Alphage and St. Edmund. The latter were Englishmen ; but the Danes, who had martyred them, paid special honour to their memories on becoming obedient to the faith.

The name of St. Botolph is remarkable as having a church dedicated to his memory at every gate which led East and North ; Aldersgate, Bishopsgate, Aldgate, Billingsgate. Too little is known about him to enable one to say for certain why he was held in such signal honour, but there are over fifty churches dedicated to him in Eastern England. He was a rich Londoner who gave up the world while yet a young man, went away to Lincolnshire, founded a monastery and there died. Obviously the churches at the gates were intended for travellers into his county, who might pause there on their journey and beseech his inter- cessions before starting. The frequency of some of the names, e.g., St. Martin, is to be accounted for by the fact that they were the patron saints of the Guilds. St. Martin was that of the Vintners ; St. Mildred, of the bakers ; owing, I believe, to the

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fact that the Isle of Thanet, which was under her protection, was in early days the source from which the Londoners got their corn supplies almost entirely. One of the churches dedicated to her had for its weathercock a ship, the hull of which would contain exactly a bushel of corn.

March 20.

Sir Christopher Wren's work must surely be reckoned among the wonders of the world. He built nearly every parish church now existing in the City of London, and also its magnificent cathedral. Of his other great works here and elsewhere I do not pur- pose to speak. Nor does the marvel stop here. There are two other English cathedrals which may fairly claim for themselves that one man designed them as they stand. Salisbury was the work of Bishop Osmund Poore, though the spire was raised after his time ; and Truro is the work of Mr. Pearson, though he skilfully brought in some work which he found already on the site. But Wren laid the foundation- stone of St. Paul's in 1675, and witnessed his son laying the last in 1710, and for some thirteen years longer came ofttimes to look upon his finished building. And the original contractor, Robert Strong, also lived

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to see the completed work. He lies buried in St. Peter's church at St. Albans which Lord Grimthorpe has just so generously restored. Bishop Compton, who took the see the same year that the stone was laid, held it until 1 7 14.

Wren, as we all know, was not a " Gothic " architect. His whole genius lay in the Italian style, though I hope to say something hereafter about his Gothic churches. The reproach which has been cast upon him, that he understood nothing about making chancels, is unjust. However we account for it, the old churches in London that remain have the same feature, the absence of the chancel arch, e.g., St. Ethelburga's, St. Olave Hart-street, St. Katharine Cree, St. Giles Cripplegate. At most you have simply a recess. The fact stated in my last paper, namely that many of the churches were as chapels of the great City merchants will largely account for this. The whole tenor of Wren's life goes to prove that his view was entirely in agreement with Laud's about the position of the altar, and the reverence with which it should be treated. He was following the traditions of past London, and considerations of space absolutely pre- cluded his making deep chancels if he had wished to do so. But his fertility of resource, and apparently

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endless power of variety, are very wonderful. And though he did not construct chancel arches, there are at any rate two beautiful screens of his existing, namely, at St. Peter's Cornhill, and St. Margaret's Lothbury. The latter has been brought from the lately demolished church of All Hallows, Thames-street, and fitted by Mr. Bodley with great success in its present position. But let me now go to one of Wren's churches by way of a beginning.

St. Martin's at Ludgate is not one of the most elaborate, yet it is both skilful and handsome. Look at it from the street. . A blank grey wall, with a tower in the middle surmounted by a lofty black spire. You enter this tower and find yourself in a corridor running along the whole length. You cross this corridor, open the door on the other side, and are in the church. Well, what was that empty place for? It effectually shuts out the noise of the busy street. When you get into the place of worshipping you might be fifty miles away from the roar of the cease- less traffic. There was just the same feature about St. Mildred's church in the noisy Poultry, now pulled down. The side facing the street was a dead wall without any windows at all. And so with St. Mary Woolnoth, built by Wren's pupil, Hawksmoor. I

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heard Mr. Penrose, the cathedral architect, point out that he, too, whilst presenting a blank wall on the Lombard street side, yet managed to make that wall a very handsome object.

When you are in this church you find that its floor is a parallelogram. But Wren has placed four composite pillars in square in the centre, and upon these has placed a groined roof. Then he has placed entablatures round the remaining portions of the roof, and a waggon-shaped ceiling to each arm of the cross. The whole appearance thus created is that of nave, aisles, transepts complete, and the top of the cross forms, of course, the chancel. It has been raised two steps ; between the two eastern pillars and the wall is the choir ; the sanctuary stands two steps higher still, and the holy table is elevated on a foot-pace. The whole effect is very beautiful in its simplicity. The organ is at the west end, so is the font, which has round it the well-known " recte et retro " inscription, NltONANOMHMATAMHMONANO^IN — " Wash from sin, not the countenance only." This church, if I mistake not, was the last which was restored by the late Mr. Christian, and critics who do not look kindly on a good deal of his work confess that he has done this admirably. Though I had been

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in it previous to the improvements, I do not recollect it sufficiently well to dwell on the changes, but merely describe it as I saw it the other day. But there are a few other features to note. The present rector was incumbent of St. Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street, until that church was destroyed by fire in 1886. He then accepted this, the rector of St. Martin's resigning and the two parishes were united. Another parish that of St. Gregory-by-St. Paul, had also been united since the fire of 1666. The present incumbent has succeeded, with the help of friends, in setting up appropriate symbols of the three saints who are thus combined. On the east wall of the quasi-aisle are two frames from the altar-piece of St. Mary Magdalen's, with a benefaction board of the same church, on which are paintings (1) of St. Mary Magdalen, after the Mantegna in the National Gallery, and (2) of St. Gregory. To these has been added that of St. Martin dividing his cloak with the beggar. It is a copy of a work by Van Dyck. That painter took St. Martin for his subject more than once. There is one by him in the Queen's collection at Windsor, and there is a copy of it in Vintners' Hall, Upper Thames-street He also painted it for the village church at Savcnthem, near Brussels, where it now is, though Napoleon stole it with so many more for the Louvre, and loud were

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the lamentations of the Parisians when after his fall the Allied Powers compelled them to restore the ill- gotten booty. " Nos conquetes " was the wail that went from north to south as the lions of St. Mark, and Rafifaele's Transfiguration, and multitudes of others were sent back to their owners. So would the Artful Dodger have mourned if Charley Bates had restored a stolen watch. But this by the way. The picture of which I have been speaking is copied for St. Martin's, and a very admirable work it is. Van Dyck died in the immediate neighbourhood on December 9, 1641. His daughter, Justinian, was baptised at St. Anne's Blackfriars, on the very day of her father's death. He was buried in Old St. Paul's, near John of Gaunt. Their memorials perished in the fire.

March 27.

There are several dedicated to All Hallows. That of which I am about to write is called All Hallows- on-the-Wall, built in part, at any rate, on the wall with which the Romans encircled London in the end of the second century. It used to be said that the clergyman on duty had to leave the parish to get into the pulpit ; he goes into the vestry by one door and enters the pulpit by another, and the allegation was that the vestry was not in the parish of All Hallows,

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but in that of Bishopsgate. I believe this was really the case at one time, but it is not so now, for at present, unless I am misinformed, the parish boundary runs along outside the walls of the church. The vestry in question stands on a bastion of the old City walls, and a portion of that wall is still visible close by. The old church, probably older than the Conquest, escaped the Fire of 1666, but afterwards becoming ruinous, it was pulled down in 1767, and rebuilt by Dance, the architect of the Mansion House.

The parish records are of great interest. There is a complete list of the rectors (about fifty) from 1335, and a book of churchwardens' accounts going back to the days of Edward IV. In this volume are some curious details about one " Simon the Anker," £*., Anchorite, who seems to have lived in the bastion already mentioned. He was apparently a Chantry priest, and there are other " Ankers " named at different times, so that the conclusion arrived at by Dr. Freshfield in a paper read before the Middlesex Archaeological Society is that these " Ankers " were attached to the church, as lecturers are still to some of the City churches. Simon the Anker was a some- what generous benefactor to his flock. The Guildhall

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librarian, Mr. Welch, found in the British Museum a volume printed by Wynkyn de Worde, entitled the "Fruyte of Redempcyion," at the conclusion of which the reader is entreated to pray for Simon the Anker of London Wall, who has compiled this volume for the ghostly comfort of those that understand no Latin. He gave a chalice to the church weighing eight ounces, and some other gifts.

The last incumbent held the living for fifty years, a dear old man of refined tastes and most winning manner. He remembered the Jubilee of George III., and I wanted him to go with me and see that of Queen Victoria, but he excused himself by saying that he thought he was getting too old for crowds. He was ninety-six. But he waited at his window to see me return, and immediately came bustling out to hear all about it. His anecdotes about celebrities at the beginning of the century were really most fascinating.

Nov. 13.

The Horseferry-road in Westminster is a winding, somewhat dingy street, with a good many interesting associations, which some day may be worth looking up in this column. Its name explains itself. There

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was formerly a ferry across the Thames from Millbank to Lambeth, in other words, from Middlesex to Surrey, and it was the only horseferry allowed on the Thames in the neighbourhood of London. At a time when there was no other bridge than that of London across the river the tolls must have been very large. They went to the Archbishop of Canterbury. When Westminster Bridge was opened in 1750 the Primate received £3,000 compensation. The ferry was not unused, however, for passengers until the present Lambeth Bridge was built exactly on the site in 1863. Old writers not infrequently write of " Lambeth Bridge," e.g., it is mentioned in Archbishop Parker's letters. It simply means the landing-stairs at the end of the ferry. I remember the old ferry well. Stand- ing by this ferry, then, on Millbank you see across the water a smoke-blackened, yet stately building. It is Lambeth Palace, the residence for seven centuries of the Archbishops of Canterbury. On the north, facing the river, which, be it remembered, here runs north and south, is a heavy brick tower, called, though inaccurately as we shall see hereafter, " Lollards' Tower." At right angles to it, presenting its long side to the Thames, is a low picturesque building, with a turret in the middle surmounted by an enormous weather-cock, on which are the arms of Juxon im-

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paled with those of the see, and above that again is a mitre. This was the " Great Hall " rebuilt by Juxon after the destruction of the Great Rebellion. Arch- bishop Howley turned it into the " Lambeth Library." Southward of this again is the fine brick gateway of Cardinal Morton. This is the southern extremity of the Palace ; immediately outside it is the stately grey tower of Lambeth Parish Church. In front of it all is the beautiful Thames Embankment, I can remember when the Thames came over the site of this Embankment, and a footway shaded by trees all along by the wall of the Palace, and called the " Bishop's Walk," was the only thoroughfare on the river-side to Westminster Bridge-road.

When Lambeth Palace first emerges out of the darkness into the light of written history, namely in Domesday Book, it belongs to the sister of Edward the Confessor. She gave it to the Bishop of Rochester, but it seems to have been tenanted by the Archbishop, who thus held it from his suffragan. William the Conqueror gave it, or part of it, to his brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, but his son, Rufus, restored it to Rochester. But London was growing in importance and superseding Winchester as the chief royal residence, and when Edward the Confessor

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built his palace at Westminster, the Archbishops of Canterbury were also drawn from their Cathedral City to London. Archbishop Hubert Fitz Walter exchanged lands with the Bishop of Rochester about the year 1200, and from that time Lambeth became, and has ever since remained, the residence of the Primate of All England.

Look at the recess here under the gateway. On Sunday night, Dec. 9, 1688, a woman with a baby in her arms is crouching under this shelter from a fierce storm of wind and rain. Who is it ? It is Mary of Modena, Queen of England, wife of James II., and her baby is the unfortunate Prince of Wales, just six months old, known afterwards, because he was unfortunate, as " The Pretender." The King, on the near approach of William of Orange, had hastily sent them across from Whitehall in a boat, the storm tossing the water into threatening waves, and there, under the gateway, sheltering herself under a shawl which the French Ambassador lent her, she waited for the harnessing of the horses to the carriage which carried her away to the coast, to leave England for ever. What a strange parallel and contrast it all is to that flight to Varennes a century later ! We enter the palace by the gateway of Cardinal Morton's

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Tower. It is one of the finest specimens in existence ; of brick, with stone dressings ; two square towers flanking the gateway and postern. On the second floor is a recess, closed in with oaken doors, where the Cardinal Archbishop's folding-bed is said to have stood. There is no doubt the rooms here were very frequently used for imprisoning, and it would seem not unkindly. Some of them are comfortable, and many a good man was kept there in safe and well- meant detention, in the hope that good words would convert him to loyalty or orthodoxy. Thus in 153 1, Hugh Latimer, then rector of West Kineton, Wilts, preached a somewhat wild sermon in which he declared that almost all the clergy, including the Bishops, were thieves whom there was not hemp enough in England to hang. And at St. Mary Abchurch, in London, he said that St. Paul, if he lived in that day, would be convicted of heresy, and obliged to bear a fagot at Paul's Cross. For these things, and also for denouncing the worship of saints, he was confined in Morton's tower, but after an interview or two with Archbishop Warham, he acknowledged he had been indiscreet and was released. Sir Thomas More, visiting Warham, says he saw Latimer walking in the garden with the Archbishop's chaplains, and they were all laughing merrily together. Latimer, after

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his release, visited Bainham in Newgate, then under sentence as a heretic, and urged him in vain to recant.

Passing through the gate, we find ourselves in a small quadrangle, with grass in the middle ; on our left is the street wall, on our right Juxon's Great Hall, in front is a doorway leading to a square chamber, paved roughly with tiles, the roof supported by a strong oak post in the middle of the chamber. Consequently the room is known as the "post room," and there is a foolish tradition that the Lollards were tied to it to be whipped. On the north side is a door leading into the so-called Lollards' Tower ; on the west side is another door leading into the chapel. Instead of entering either at present, let us recross the grass quadrangle as far as Morton's Tower. At the further angle eastwards is another gateway leading into a very large quadrangle, across which is the great doorway of the Archbishop's residence. Now the basement of the great part of the building is Norman, but the portion above ground was practically rebuilt by Archbishop Howley, the architect being Mr. Blore. It is therefore modern Gothic, and though there are plenty of faults to be fairly found with it, the effect is certainly imposing. We need not go into the

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house at this moment ; at the further corner is an open archway, and if we go through that we are on the fine lawn, with the beautiful gardens beyond, and on the right a great meadow which the two last Archbishops have freely allowed to be a playground for cricket matches and other sports. A good view of this meadow is obtained from the windows of the trains of the South Western Railway. Over that wall the Pope's nuncio once jumped to offer Laud a Cardinal's hat if he would turn Papist.

Nov. 20.

The real Lollards' Tower, for a most interesting account of which I must refer the reader to Dr. Sparrow Simpson's learned books, was at the south- west corner of Old St. Paul's. That which goes by the name in Lambeth Palace is never so-called in any writer of the 16th or 17th century. Its old name was the " Water Tower," so given because formerly the river washed close up to it. It has been used for a prison undoubtedly, but not for Lollards, as far as any evidence goes. However for our present purpose we adopt the now general title. It was built by Archbishop Chicheley (1434- 1445). On the outside, facing the river, the passer-by may see an empty niche in the wall. That formerly contained a statue of St. Thomas

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of Canterbury (Becket), and the Thames watermen, as they rowed by, used to doff their hats to it. You ascend into the tower from the post-room by a narrow circular stair, the stones of which are much worn. A rope which you can hold in your ascent is not un- acceptable. A door on the first landing leads to three sets of apartments which Archbishop Tait and his successor allotted for as many Bishops who have no town-house. They lodge there comfortably, I believe. Passing up, we next come to a little door from which we may emerge, if we choose, on to the leads and get a striking panoramic view of the City, of Westminster, and of South London., Once more we ascend and enter the prison room, 12ft. by 9, and that it was such there is abundant proof at first glance. There are two doors to the single doorway, both of thick oak, and thickly studded with iron fastenings. Along the wainscot are a number of large iron rings firmly fixed. On the wainscot are carved several names and broken sentences — " Chessam Doctor " ; " Petit Jouganham " ; " John Worth " ; "IHS keepe me out of el companye, Amen " ; " Jesus est amor meus " ; " Deo sit gratiarum actio " ; " Nosce Teipsum." Perhaps the most touching evidence of all is that beside the narrow slit of a window at the north-west corner. When there is light enough to see it the visitor may observe a vast

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number of holes prodded by some sharp instrument in the wood, and at first view there is not much to notice. But look again. Some poor lonely prisoner, con- demned to inactivity, stood there and made a map of the stars as he could see them from that window. The stories of the Bastille that one reads are hardly more pathetic than this. Then who were the prisoners? There may have been some at the Reformation period, but those of whom there is any record were in Morton's Tower. It was in the days of the Common- wealth that the room before us was thus used. Such a crowd of royalists and dispossessed clergy were gathered here in 1645 that a deadly fever broke out among them. The registers of the parish church tell of burials over and over again of " prisoners in Cant. House." Bishop Kennet says that " nearly a hundred ministers were brought up from the West and clapt in Lambeth House, where almost all of them were destroyed by a pestilent fever." At the time of Cromwell's death there were a great number still confined there. Mr. Cave-Browne, in his valuable history of the Palace, offers an explanation of the misnomer, " Lollards' Tower," which certainly com- mends itself to one's judgment. The real Lollards' Tower had been swept away, like St. Paul's, by the Great Fire of 1666. Twenty years later James the

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Second's ill-advised endeavour to restore Romanism in England roused the Protestant feeling to fever heat, and there is no doubt that public opinion went into ecstasies over the success of Dutch William's invasion. Every memento of Papal tyranny was looked up and gloated over, and historical accuracy was not nicely attended to. There had been a Lollards' Tower, and there had been Lollard martyrs. Here at Lambeth were relics of imprisonment, and the inscriptions showed that it was for religious convictions. And so the conclusion was rushed at, of course they must have been Lollards. And from that day, namely 1688, this became Lollards' -Tower. Let me not omit, in passing, that this room once contained two notable prisoners, whose romantic tragedy finds place in our English histories. The ill-fated Earls of Essex and Southampton, when arrested at Essex House, Strand, on the night of February 8, 1601, were brouqht hither for the night, instead of being carried straight to the Tower, because the shooting of Old London Bridge was such a dangerous business at night time and with an unfavourable tide. Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier poet, author of the oft-quoted line, " Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage," was confined here in 1648. I wonder whether it was he who mapped the stars on the wainscot. He talks more

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than once of the " sentinel stars watching in the sky."

The chapel, one of the most perfect specimens of Early English in this country, was built by Archbishop Boniface (i 244-1 270), the Savoyard uncle of Eleanor, Queen of Henry III. She brought over her three uncles, Peter, Amadeus, Boniface, enriched them with lands, and endeavoured to make them supreme in the national government. And thereby she did much to bring on the righteous rebellion of Simon of Montfort. Boniface, by being made Archbishop, held the highest post next to the Crown. The hatred which he gathered upon himself from the nation was not solely because he was a foreigner ; so were Lanfranc and Anselm, but they became Englishmen in thought and sympathy. Boniface hated England to the end. His armed retainers plundered the City markets, he with his own fist knocked down the Prior of St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield, and the Londoners were in such a rage that he fled across sea, having first pronounced sentence of excommunication against them. He found it was no use, they were too strong for him, so he took off his ban, returned to Lambeth repaired some damage which they had done, and settled down into comparatively quiet life. But it

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was so clear to the people that he was their enemy that when the civil war began he had again to go beyond sea. However, he built this beautiful chapel. It is 72 feet long, 25 wide. At the east end are five lancet windows, and on each side three triplets. Few spots have deeper historical interest. It was a momentous event in our ecclesiastical annals when Wycliffe appeared before Archbishop Sudbury and his assessors in the early part of 1378, in Lambeth Chapel. He had already, about a year before, appeared before Courtenay, Bishop of London, at St. Paul's, and was so warmly supported by John of Gaunt, that the Bishop was powerless before the tumult that was raised. However, the people who crowded into the church were evidently on the Bishop's side. At Lambeth it was quite the contrary. Wycliffe stood his ground ; he knew that he was secure. Both sides, however, were rather fencing with blunt weapons than fighting in earnest. The Archbishop knew that WyclifTe's accusers were taking ground much of which was not tenable, and the reformer knew that the nation was not ripe for the acceptance of his root and branch views. Angry citizens crowded round the doors, Sudbury dismissed his prisoner with a formal injunction, and that scene closed. Three years later the Archbishop was dragged forth and beheaded in

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Wat Tyler's rebellion. The little ante-room under the organ which serves as the vestry of the chapel is said to have been Cranmer's study. There are two scenes in Cranmer's life connected with Lambeth Chapel on which one has no choice but to pause for just a moment. The unhappy Anne Boleyn, the day after her condemnation to death, was brought hither in order that Cranmer might pronounce, not her divorce from Henry, but the sentence that she had never been lawfully married to him. The grounds remain unknown. No shorthand notes either of the trial or of this judgment are known to exist : omnes illacrimabiles urgentur ignotique longd node. And the world is none the poorer. And the other scene is the fierce controversial encounter between Cranmer and Bonner, in the beginning of the reign of Edward VI., for which the reader must turn to the pages of Foxe. The first Archbishop of the reformed Church, Parker, was buried in the chapel in 1575. No other Primate rests there ; of Parker's successors some are buried in Lambeth Church, some in Croydon, five at Addington, Archbishop Benson, the first since Pole, in Canterbury Cathedral.

Laud takes a conspicuous place in the history of the chapel. The screen which divides the chapel into

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two is his. And as he found the windows of the chapel broken and " pieced together," " patched like a beggar's coat," to use his own expressions, he pro- ceeded to fill them with stained glass representing Scriptural subjects, and copied from the simple woodcuts of the Biblia Pauperum. When the last frail cords which held the peace between Charles I. and Parliament were snapped, a placard, said to have been written by Lilburne, was fastened upon 'Change calling on the London apprentices to rise in arms and attack Lambeth Palace, and an angry mob of some five hundred responded to the call (May II, 1641). Laud, however, who was never deficient in courage, fortified himself, and the insurgents retired after smashing a few windows. But the demon of destruc- tion was abroad. Laud was seized next year, and carried off to the Tower, and bad times fell on the Palace. The bones of Parker were dragged from their grave and buried in a dunghill. Prynne on Laud's trial made a furious attack upon him in respect to the " Popish windows," one specially ob- noxious one representing our Lord upon the cross. Needless to say that the windows themselves were broken to pieces, to be restored as nearly as could be to their original appearance by Archbishop Tait. The Puritans put the Palace up for sale in 1648, and it

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was bought by Thomas Scot and Matthew Hardy w for £7,073 os. 8d." They destroyed Chicheley's Great Hall, and sold the materials, turned the chapel into a dancing-room, and outraged the remains of Parker, as we have seen. At the Restoration Hardy was compelled to exhume them, and bury them again in the chapel and to build a handsome monument over them at his own cost. That monument is now removed to a corner in the ante-chapel ; the Arch- bishop's resting place, at the foot of the altar steps, is marked by the simple inscription cut on the floor : —

Corpus

Matth^ei

Archiepiscopi

tandem hic

quiescit.

The first Archbishop of Canterbury consecrated in this chapel was Morton, afterwards Cardinal in i486. Subsequently there were several, and it was the usual place for the consecration of the Bishops of the province from Cranmer to far into the time of Sumner.

November 27. As already mentioned, the Puritans made fearful havoc with Lambeth Palace on getting possession of

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it when Laud was sent to the Tower, and one of their Vandal acts was to destroy Chicheley's " Great Hall." It had witnessed some important events. For example Chicheley himself had shown high hospitality in it. The Palace in his time is said to have comprised " a great chamber, a little chamber, a study, a prolocutor- ium (shortened form, "parlour"), a great hall, a steward's chamber, a registry, a registrar's chamber {camera armigerorum\ Archbishop's oratory, great oratory, clerk of the kitchen's room, cook's room, chandry (room for the candles and other lights), store- room, pantry, larder, great and little cloisters." His successor, John Stafford, is said to have built the stables. To Chicheley's Great Hall Cranmer sum- moned the London clergy to take the oath of the king's supremacy in 1534. Here "the Bishop's Book " (or "The Godly and Pious Institution of a Christian man ") was drawn up. Cranmer, as well as his suc- cessor, Pole, seems to have kept up the hospitality. Here is a list of Cranmer's palace officials given in an MS. in the Library : — " Steward, Treasurer, Comptroller, gamators (gamekeepers), clerk of the kitchen, caterer, clerk of the spicery, yeomen of the ewry (scullery), bakers, pantlcrs, yeomen of the horse, yeomen ushers, butlers of wine and ale, larderers, squillcrics ("dysshe wescherers "), ushers of the hall, porters, ushers

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of the chamber, daily waiters in the great chamber, gentlemen ushers, yeomen of the chamber, carver, server (head waiter), cup-bearer, grooms of the chamber, marshall, groom-ushers, almoner, cooks, chandler, butchers, masters of the horse, yeomen of the ward- robe, and harbingers (officers who attended on guests)."

But to return to the Great Hall. When the Puritan Commonwealth was followed by the Restoration of the Monarchy, and Juxon was made Archbishop of Canterbury, he restored the Great Hall, as nearly as possible after the old pattern. It is 93 feet in length, 38 in breadth, and has a very fine roof, and some interesting heraldic pictures in the windows. When Archbishop Howley made his great alterations in the Palace he turned this Hall into the Library, and the Library it remains. Previously the books had been stowed in galleries over the cloisters. The valuable MSS. which enriched those shelves in the days of Parker are now the property of Corpus College, Cambridge. The present library owes its origin to Bancroft, but Abbot, Tenison, and Seeker, all made large additions to it. Most of Laud's books are in the Bodleian, Sancroft gave his to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Wake his to Christchurch, Oxford. Sheldon and Cornwallis made some useful additions.

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Archbishop Sumner gave two volumes, and two only, to it during his fourteen years' primacy, one a book about butterflies, the other a treatise on the gout. Archbishops Tait and Benson made large additions. There are 1,200 volumes of MSS. among the registers of the see since Archbishop Peckham (1279). His predecessor, Kilwardby, having been made a Cardinal, is said to have carried off the previous ones as a present to the Pope. Nemesis fell upon him, for he had hardly settled down in Italy before he was poisoned. The library, thanks chiefly to Archbishop Tait, is now available for readers, and the courteous librarian is always ready to show his treasures. There are MSS. and autographs of famous men, and fine Caxtons ; there is a pane of glass brought from the old palace of Croydon, on which Laud has written with his signet ring, in his own beautiful hand : Memorand: Ecclesice de Michem, CJieme et Stone, cum aliis fulgure combustce sunt. Jan. 14, 1639. Omen avertat Deus." He was always somewhat superstitious about omens. We shall have another presently. While I was writing these notes, the following very interesting letter reached me : —

During Archbishop Howley's occupation of the See of Canterbury, some fishermen dredging in the river

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near Lambeth caught in their nets the original seal of Archbishop Laud, which the latter was reported to have thrown into the river whilst being rowed as a captive to the Tower. The seal was in good condition with the arms of Canterbury and Laud on either side, and, curiously enough, as the Christian names of Laud and Howley were the same, was appropriate to either Archbishop. The original seal is believed to be now in the possession of the Kingsmill family, Sydmonton Court, Newbury. The late Mr. Kingsmill married one of the three daughters of Archbishop Howley.

But we must mount upstairs into the " Guard Room." It used to be stocked with arms. It is now the principal dining-hall. Its special feature is the magnificent collection of portraits of the Archbishops from Warham (by Holbein) to the present day. The portrait of Laud is by Vandyck, and the Archbishop records in his Diary how, at the close of his last year in Lambeth, he found the picture one day " fallen down upon the face and lying on the floor, the string by which it was hanged against the wall being broken." And he adds, " God grant this is no omen."

1 897

October 8.

Five hundred and fifty years ago the awful pestilence, known in history as " The Black Death," carried off more than half the population of England. So terrific was the mortality in London that the Bishop, Ralph Stratford, finding -that the churchyards were all full and that corpses were being hurried away into unconsecrated ground, bought and consecrated a piece of land to the north of the City Wall of London. Sir Walter Manney, a brave soldier, whose name will be remembered in connexion with our Black Prince, added to the Bishop's gift. The new burial ground was known as " Pardon Churchyard," and speedily there lay buried in it 50,000 bodies. In 1371 the successor to Bishop Stratford, Northburgh, gave it to the Carthusians, a body of monks almost the strictest of the order, men devoted to a life of prayer and meditation, and on the site they built a monastery, which they called " The Convent of the House of the

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Salutation of the Mother of God of the Carthusian Order." And this house flourished for many a year before the evil days came. Sir Thomas More lived the monastic life there for four years, though he never took the vows. He felt that his energy for work and his acquirements and talents called him to go out into the busy world, and he therefore abandoned the monastic life. The assertion that he left the monastery because he was disgusted by the bad life of the monks is a gratuitous slander, for which there is no foundation whatever. That amongst the multitudes of brethren who lived in this seclusion, all the years that the monastery lasted, some were " black sheep " is probable enough, but the general charge of immorality is altogether false, if we may believe the common consent of their contemporaries, before the brutal greed of Henry Vlllth offered a shameful temptation to hirelings to slander them. One name is prominent in the annals of the house before the thunderbolt fell ; it is that of Andrew Boorde (he jocosely latinised it into "Andreas Perforatus "), a monk who found himself like a fish out of water, or, in other words, discovered that he had mistaken his vocation. So he got a dispensation from his vow, for he was " nott able to byd the rugorosite off ye religyon," and left England to practise physic on the

224 THE LETTERS OF

Continent. His jollity and buffoonery are said to have got him the original name, which has ever since become a synonym for such characters, of " Merry Andrew." There seems reason to believe that his jocosity, in and out of season, led outsiders to generalise upon it, and to suppose that all Carthusians were given to larking and mischievous jokes. He attained some eminence as a doctor and settled at Winchester, but late in life got into trouble for loose living, and died soon after.

When the wicked king at length dissolved the religious houses, the last prior was John Haughton, a learned and good man, who had been a Carthusian for twenty years before the troubles began. He is described as " in manner most modest, in eloquence most sweet, in chastity without stain " (Froude ii., 239). But he and his brethren took Queen Katherine's side on the divorce question, and in 1534 the storm fell. An act of Parliament was passed cutting off the Princess Mary from the succession, and requiring of all subjects of the realm an oath of allegiance to the Princess Elizabeth. Sir Thomas More and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, refused it, and were sent to the Tower ; the Carthusians also refused and four of them were at once executed for high

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treason ; one after another refusing to submit, as they saw their brethren mangled to death. Froude offers what justification he can, pleads that the times were critical and large numbers ready to rise in rebellion. A dozen more subsequently perished, some on the scaffold, some of gaol-fever ; the rest escaped abroad. So fell the monks of the London Charterhouse. When More saw Haughton and his companions set off from the Tower to their death, he said to his daughter, Margaret Roper, " Lo ! dost thou not see, Meg, that these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their death as bridegrooms to their marriage ? Wherefore thou mayest see, thereby, my good daughter, what a great difference there is between such as have in effect spent all their days in a straight, hard, penitential, and painful life, religiously, and such as have, like thy poor father, consumed all their time in pleasure and ease." The King at first used the despoiled monastery as a storehouse, then gave it to Sir Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor, who sold it to Sir Thomas North. It passed through several hands before it was bought by Thomas Sutton, May 9, i6n,for ^"13,000. It is a curious fact that two men who were successively possessed of it during the interval perished for high treason, the Duke of Northumberland under Queen Mary, and the Duke

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of Norfolk under Elizabeth. The latter Queen took up her residence here for five days on her accession to the throne.

Sutton's purchase marks a new departure. He was bent on undoing, as far as possible, the profana- tion of Henry VIII. He was a very rich man, both a brave soldier and a merchant. His natural benevolence found a spur in the counsel of his friend, Joseph Hall, afterwards Bishop of Norwich. Here is an extract from a letter which he wrote to Sutton, urging him on : —

The Christian, who must imitate the high pattern of his Creator, knows his best riches to be bounty. God, who hath all, gives all reserves nothing ; and for himself he well considers that God hath not made him an owner, but a servant ; and a servant of servants, not of his goods but of the giver ; not a treasurer, but a steward, whose praise is more to have laid out well than to have received much. . . . Blessed be God Who hath given you a heart to fore- think this, and in this dry and dead age, a will to honour Him with His own. ... I neither distrust nor persuade you, whose resolutions are happily fixed on purposes of good ; only give me leave to hasten your pace a little, and to excite your Christian forwardness to begin speedily what you have long and constantly vowed. You would not but do good, why not now ? I speak boldly. The more speed the

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more comfort; neither are the times in our disposal nor ourselves.

The exhortation was so successful that on the 22nd of June following Sutton signed the endowment calling it "the Hospital of King James," and providing " a hospital, a chapel, and a schoolhouse," for which he left £200,000. But in the following December he died, therefore he never saw his work completed. He had intended to become the first master of his new foundation. He lies buried in the chapel under a sumptuous monument. The will was disputed by his son, but ten judges against one decided in its favour, June, 161 3. In Bacon's collected works there is a treatise on the subject. Bacon does not much like it, and foretells abuses which are likely to spring from it. As a matter of fact so they did, but they have of late years been greatly remedied. He advised the King to direct the executors of the will to make suitable provision for young Sutton, which was done

The " hospital " thus founded was, and is, only a hospital in the sense of providing a home for a number of poor old men, " not rogues or common beggars, but persons of good behaviour and sound religion — soldiers, merchants, men fallen into decay through shipwreck, casualty of fire, or the like." They are to be fifty

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years of age or upwards at their admission, unless they have been maimed in the wars, in which case they shall be admissible at forty. The " Poor Brethren," as they are called, are not to exceed eighty in number. The arrangement remains unimpaired, though the number is reduced, and a very liberal provision is made for their comfort. They attend chapel daily in black livery gown, and dine together in the great hall. I have seen men who have deserved well for their literary and other labours among the " poor brethren," one of them, a great favourite with the late Master, died not long ago, the author of the famous " Box and Cox." One of the early brethren was Elkanah Settle, Dryden's rival, and, therefore, object of his fierce hate. Macbean, Johnson's assistant with his Dictionary. Yeowell, the last of the Nonjurors, Timbs, author of many laborious and readable volumes, are all good names. And shall we exclude fiction ? What nobler name in any of our books than that of Colonel Newcome !

The school was originally for the maintenance and education of forty boys not above fourteen nor under ten. The master was also allowed to take sixty more who paid fees. Since then the numberof foundation boys has been increased to sixty, and there is provision for

PETER LOMBARD 229

three hundred others. In 1872 the school was removed to the fine new building near Godalming, and the site of the old school is now occupied by the Merchant Taylors. Of the boys of this school a goodly list lies before me. Crashaw, the author of Steps to the Temple ; Isaac Barrow, prince among English preachers (he is said to have been a tremendous fighter as a boy) ; Blackstone, Addison, Steele, John Wesley, Unwin (friend of Cowper) ; the first Lord Ellenborough, who, at his own request, was buried in the chapel because of his love to the place ; Day, the author of Sandford and Merton, Archbishop Manners Sutton, Archdeacon Hare, Bishop Monk of Gloucester, and Thirwall of St. David's, Lord Liverpool (Prime Minister), Baron Alderson, Sir C. Eastlake, Thackeray, Leech, Sir H. Havelock, George Grote. I trust it is not out of order to name two living men whom I saw at Elwyn's funeral to-day, the present Attorney General and Professor Jebb, both pupils of the late Master, and both men of whom England is proud, as they both are of their Master. I have ventured to write this much, in order to lay this humble wreath of love and respect on Richard Elwyn's grave.

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October 22nd.

I went down last week into Hertfordshire to a Harvest Festival at the village of Flamstead, a place well known, and very dear to me forty years ago, but of which I have seen but little since. It is a place well worth description. The Great North Road (part of the Roman Watling Street from London to York and Edinburgh — what stories it could tell if it could speak, of royal progresses, of advancing armies, of highwaymen, of the romances of the carrier's wagons !) — passes from St. Albans through Markgate Street to Dunstable. - Here let me pause to explain Markgate Street is a long straggling hamlet of which the name signifies that it is the " street " of the " gate " or passage of the " mark " between the two counties of Bedford and Herts. As a matter of fact, the boundary between the two counties runs down the street. But to return. Just before reach- ing Markgate Street from St. Albans there is a steep rising ground, at the foot of which a little stream trickles along, the Ver. It goes away to the town which in old times we called in consequence Verulam, but took its present name from the British proto-martyr, St. Alban, whose shrine is there. The little river rises in the parish of which I am writing,

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which was called in consequence, Verulamstede, ue.t the Staithe or " bank " of the Verulam river. And this has in the course of years been knocked into Flamstead.

It formerly belonged to St. Alban's Abbey, but one of the Abbots in the days of Edward the Confessor gave the Manor to three knights, on condition of their protecting Watling Street from robbers. William the Conqueror gave it to Roger de Toni, who had been his standard-bearer at the battle of Hastings. His great grandson, also named Roger, founded a nunnery in the parish, which he dedicated to St. Giles. It was in the midst of a splendid wood of beeches, as the site is unto this day, and was known as St. Giles-in-the-Wood. More about it presently. His descendant in the 13th century, Robert de Tony, died childless in 1297, and the manor went to his sister, who married Guy de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and in the Warwick family it remained, until after the death of the famous Earl, " the King-maker," at the battle of Barnet. It was restored to his daughters, for he had no sons. Of these daughters, one married the Duke of Clarence the other Richard III.

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As they had no children it was given back to Warwick's widow, and she left it to Henry VII. Edward VI. gave it to George Ferrers, a writer of some eminence in his day. He was the author of some of the best pieces in the " Mirrour for Magistrates." He died in 1578, and was buried in Flamstead church, as the parish register testifies. Of the subsequent history we need not trouble ourselves, but let us turn to the church.

This church is well worth a visit ; but as it lies off the high road, it is not easily accessible. It is de- dicated to St. Leonard, has a nave, aisles, and chancel, a square tower with a light lead-covered spire. The nave has seven bays, the octagonal pillars of which have very richly carved capitals of the age of Edward I. It is in rather bad order. The tower has got shaky, the squire of the parish was long non-resident, the farmers were poor, and the result has been that they have built up a couple of ugly brick buttresses, one inside and one out, to keep all safe. But the south aisle is very shaky, and needs that the rain shall be tiled out, and the porch again be made practicable. I have hope which I shall presently express.

The monuments are interesting. First there is an

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altar tomb on which lie the figures of a man and his wife. There are no names, but the costume shows them to be of the date of Richard II. I assume that it is some member of the Warwick family ; probably a closer investigation than I have had the opportunity of making would identify more exactly. There is a beautiful brass on the chancel floor of a priest richly habited (John Oudeby). He was rector of this parish, a canon of the collegiate church of St. Mary, Warwick, and chaplain to the Earl of Warwick, and died in 1414. There are three shields. (1) A fess between six cross crosslets. (2) Cheeky, a chevron. (3) A chevron between three lapwings. On the easternmost of the nave pillars is incised the following : —

In the middle space at this seat's end There lieth buried our neighbour friend Old John Grigg of Cheverell's End. 1598.

CheverelFs End still exists. " End " is a favourite name for localities in Hertfordshire. I want to say more about the word in some future paper. On a pillar opposite is another : —

Within this isle where bricks are laide, There lieth buried a virgin mayde ; Francys Cordell was her name, She lived and died in godly fame. 1597-

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And on another pillar : —

Of this seat's end in the middle allay

There lieth buried John Pace of this valley. 1590.

It is quite evident that Flamstead must have rejoiced in a poet, native or imported, in the last decade of the sixteenth century. In the chancel is the kneeling figure of " Sir Bartholomew Fouke, Knt., who served Kinge Edward, Queene Marye, and was Master of ye Household to Queene Elizabeth for many yeares, and to Kinge James that now is." He died, as the epitaph goes on to say at some length, in 1604 at the age of 69.

1898

January 28.

With the Bishop of London as chairman, Sir Walter Besant gave a very interesting lecture the other day at the College of Preceptors on " the educational aspect of the History of London," from the newspaper report of which I shall quote a few sentences, as they are suggestive of a good deal of thought : —

In exchange for its recognition of William the Conqueror as king of England, the city obtained from him its first charter, which was merely a confirmation of all its former rights, and which contained simply three points. First, that every man was to have the rights of a freeman ; second, that every man should inherit his father's estate ; and third, that the king should suffer no man to do the citizens wrong. These three simple demands were admirably suited to become the foundation of the institutions of a free country. From the first was derived the right of trial by jury ; by the second the spirit of enterprise

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and adventure which had made the nation great was rendered possible ; and from the third proceeded the right, ever since enjoyed by the citizens of London, of direct audience with the sovereign.

The lecturer went on to say that the Londoners made it part of their very religion, so to speak, to hold to these liberties, and their resistance went even to the overthrow of the throne.

But, provided that they were protected in their rights, the citizens of London had always been most loyal and obedient ; and the wisest kings recognised that the prosperity of the city meant the prosperity of the State.

He might have illustrated this (perhaps he did, for the report is evidently much curtailed) by the fact that, though in the unhappy struggle of Charles I. with his Parliament, the citizens of London resisted the King, and protected " the five members " from being arrested by him, they were by no means disposed to acquiesce in the Parliamentary tyranny, which was harder than the King's, and during the latter part of the great struggle, their sympathies were with him rather than with Cromwell, and as Mr. Gardiner has shown, they were anxious to restore

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him ; Cromwell's iron hand had become too strong because of their short-sightedness.

It had been said that the struggles of the city represented one long fight for the money-bags. This was by no means true, though the mere pursuit of wealth would call forth enterprise and courage, and result in increasing the importance and extent of the country ; so that it need not be incompatible with the purest patriotism. But trade could not be carried on except by free men ; and this principle the citizens of London fought for until they secured it, not only for themselves, but for the whole country. The city had taken a great part in the political history of the country. To this there were many contributory causes besides the wealth and population of the city. The fact that the palace and the Houses of Parlia- ment were both outside the city limits removed it from Court influence and pressure. It was always in touch with the rest of the country, and this fact preserved it from becoming, like another Venice, separate and selfish. The city was bound to every town and village by innumerable bonds of kinship and memory. In the making and unmaking of kings London acted practically as one man, and conse- quently the side which London espoused became the winning side.

There is substantial truth in all this. The late J. R. Green, some years before he published his

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History, wrote an essay in which he pointed out how the importance of London was unmistakably shewn in the election of Stephen as king. It was the act of the citizens of London, and they were discerning here with remarkable instinct what were the needs and what was the will of the English nation. This point was further emphasised by the Bishop in summing up. Paris, he said, had been the home of the ideas that has regulated France, and in that respect was the opposite of London. I think it is in one of Sir James Stephens's essays that this aspect of history is forcibly dwelt on. Nearly all the burning events in French history have their scene in Paris, comparatively few of the English are in London. The Londoners were the exponents and agents of the national will, not the dictators of it. It is hardly too much to say that there is hardly a city in England (to say nothing of Runnymede) which has not some memorial of great events in our national history. But it is hardly so in France. The imagination at once flies to Paris.

But let us hear Sir Walter Bcsant once more: —

It was common to regard London as a mere trading city. On the contrary, London had always been a fighting city. The trade of London did not destroy

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her fighting powers ; and the admiration of the people was not bestowed on the rich and successful merchants, but on the fighting men. The hero of the London apprentice was the youth "who went forth to fight and came home a knight," though history related no particular instance of that ideal being realised. It was characteristic of such a restless race as ours to live in the present. But where did the thirst for new markets arise ? In London. The splendid courage of the Elizabethan freebooters represented but a small part of the magnificent burst of enterprise which seized our people in the sixteenth century.

While Drake was fighting and plundering the Spaniard, London merchants were sending the ships and cargoes in all directions. It was to London that we owed our colonies, our foreign trade and our Indian Empire, which would never have existed if London merchants had been as lethargic as those of Havre and Cadiz. All the so-called gifts of fortune were taken, not given. They waited for the eye that could realise them and the hand that could grasp them ; and such an eye and hand were the source of the real greatness of London. The close and constant connexion of the city with the rest of the country was shown by the history of its Lord Mayors, and of those only forty-one were born in London.

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The chairman's comments were such as might be looked for from so thorough a master of historical science. He quoted the dictum of his old teacher, the Bishop of Oxford, that London had " always been the purse, seldom the head, and never the heart of England," and interpreted the third point as mean- ing that London had "always been the seat of English industry, but had not produced a large number of persons intellectually distinguished. Evidently the report is much curtailed, but as it lies before me it certainly is not fair to London. The Bishop seems to say in it that Milton is the sole exception to the doctrine laid down. But only to mention Chaucer, Spenser, Ben Jonson, Pope, Keats, Byron is to claim for London a goodly contingent of our greatest poets. I name these offhand, but could find more if I searched the Biographical Dictionary. I cannot remember the painters so well, but at any rate Turner was born in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. The Bishop's comparison of Rome, London, and Paris, was very acute and brilliant.

Sir Walter (he said) has pointed out how few of those who ruled London were really Londoners. In that way, as a capital, London can be compared to only one other capital, Rome, for during the

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Renaissance it was not Romans, but persons coming from the rest of Italy who made Rome. There was a sort of sterility attaching to capitals ; they had to sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole commonwealth. It was the unfortunate position of a great man with so much to do that he could not be himself, but must be the sort of thing that was expected of him. He would suggest as a subject of study the comparison of European capitals, not in position and size, but in relation to their natural history. It was interesting to consider how the different capitals came into existence, and what influence they had had on the destinies of their countries. It was an insufferable burden to Italy to have a capital like Rome. The city was not a suitable capital for modern Italy, but it had, through its history, a hold on the mind which it was im- possible for the country ever to get rid of. Italy was saddled with a sort of Old Man of the Sea. England, on the other hand, had been remarkably fortunate in her capital, the position of which marked her out to be a great colonising and Imperial country. Between these two extremes, Italy cursed with Rome, and England blessed with London, there lay a great many other contrasts. Paris suggested itself at once. It came into existence owing to the fact that it was

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situated just at a sufficient distance up the river to make it a bulwark of resistance against the Normans ; it then gradually became a real power, and extended that power over the rest of France. During the whole of its existence Paris had been the home of the ideas which had regulated France, being in that respect the antipodes of London. The strong point of England had been that the popular character had remained so exactly the same.

April \st. " There was never such a place in the world as London for coincidences," said the enthusiastic Mr. Timothy Linkinwater. " I don't know about that," said the person addressed. Perhaps the same remark will be addressed to me when I vary Mr. Linkinwater's dictum and say, " There never was such a place as London for the study of history." I have just read Mr. Atkinson's recently published history of Aldgate and find it quite fascinating. He tells how far back, near upon a thousand years ago, thirteen Cnichten (how badly our ancestors spelt, these thirteen men were knights, i.e., servants of the king), seeing the land east of London lying barren and unpeopled besought it of the king with the liberty of a guild and obtained it. And so they formed a " Cnichten

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gild," and their boundary was from Aldgate to Whitechapel. Mr. Loftie thinks that this was the original governing body of London.

Matilda, wife of Henry I., who possessed a " soke " (tract of freehold land) in this district, founded here a religious house for canons regular of the order of St. Augustine, and made her confessor, Norman, its first head. It was named the Priory of Holy Trinity, and is said to have been at one time the richest conventual house in England. A small arch at the back of a shop in Leadenhall-street is the only relic of it at present known to exist. A part of the old gateway was pulled down as late as 1816. It lay in the parish of St. Catherine Cree, and had a frontage 300 feet long, and became so important that it was made the parish church. The parishioners at St. Catherine's resented this, and there were disputes. But they were smoothed over. Then came a strange step. The Union Guild made over their soke to that which Queen Maud had given to Norman, on condition of being admitted to the brotherhood. They swore allegiance on the Holy Gospels, Prince Norman administering the oath. And the amalgamated society became the soke of the Port and is known to this day as the Ward of Portsoken. And of this

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Ward the present Lord Mayor of London is the Alderman.

But this is anticipating. Let us give the original document confirming the union : —

Henrie, King of England, to Richard, Bishop of London, to the sheriffs and Provost, and to all his Barons and faithful people, French and English, of London and Middlesex greeting. Know ye that we have granted and confirmed to the Church and Canons of the Holy Trinitie of London, the Soke of the English Cnichten Guilde, and the land which pertaineth thereto ; and the Church of St. Buttolph, as the men of the same guilde have given and granted unto them.

But the charter was not relished by the authorities of the Tower of London, and there was a good deal of bitterness before the arrangement was acquiesced in. It was, however, accepted in the long run, and the " Cnichten Guild " was swallowed up in the Priory of Holy Trinity. The latter was destroyed by fire in 1 1 32, but was immediately rebuilt. The records are very curious, as, for instance, the evident collusion between the religious and the secular aspects of the Ward of Portsoken.

" The prior," says Stow, " sat and rode with the other Aldermen of London, in living like unto these, save that his habit was in shape, like as of a spiritual

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person." All through the middle ages the Priory flourished. Then came the downfall under Henry VIII. The rich Priory, at the dissolution, became part of the Parish of St. Botolph, Aldgate. The material part was given by the King to Sir Thomas Audley, afterwards Lord Chancellor. It kindles one's disgust and horror to read how the great church was pulled down, the workmen throwing it down stone by stone, beginning at the top ; whereby the most part of them were broken, and few remained whole ; and then were sold very cheap for all the buildings then made about the city were of brick and timber. Any man, the record goes on to say, could have a cartload of stone for sixpence, or brought to his own door for sevenpence, carriage included. Many a noble monument perished, including some with royal names, and that of Fitz Alwine, Lord Mayor in 12 13.

Blanche, Queen of Navarre, wife of Edward, Earl of Lancaster, founded the nunnery of St. Clare in 1293. The nuns were known as the " Sorores Minores." And from them the thoroughfare known as the Minories takes its name. In 1515, twenty-seven of these nuns died of the plague. At the dissolution Henry granted the nunnery to John Clark, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and sent him to the Duke of Cleves

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to arrange the divorce from Anne of Cleves comfort- ably. The Bishop, it is said, was poisoned. Whether or not, he came back to the Minories and died. The church is still there, " Holy Trinity, Minories." But it is doomed, and will eventually be incorporated with St. Botolph's.

1902

May i^rd.

The Coronation. — I fear every reader's heart will sink within him at the heading, for " Coronation " meets one at every turn, and I have nothing new to say about it, but take the route by which their Majesties will go to the Abbey. They will start from Buckingham Palace, so let me do likewise. In the days of the early Stuarts, there was a great movement to settle the silk manufacture in England, as the Huguenot workers in it had been expelled from France. I well remember a great grove of mulberry trees in the Fulham Road, where Elm Park is now ; they had been planted for the cultivation of silk worms. And it was with this object in view that King James I. in 1609 "embanked a piece of ground for planting of mulberry trees near his Palace of Westminster." It was about the same time, let us note, that Shakespeare planted his mulberry tree at Stratford-on-Avon. King James's trees flourished,

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and Charles I. gave the custody of them, and of the house attached to them, to his friend Lord Aston for two lives. The place was then known as the " Mulberry Garden." In the time of the Common- wealth, Speaker Lenthall lived in the house, and the garden became a place of public entertainment.

Cromwell was at this time living at Spring Gardens, and giving rather jolly parties, according to Carlyle ; and whereas the London Upper Ten had previously used this last for their fashionable resort, they went off now to Mulberry Gardens, of which Evelyn speaks in a tone half piqued and half amused. Pepys says, " it is a very silly place."

After the Restoration it reverted to the Crown, and was conferred on Bennett, Earl of Arlington, at a rent of £i a year. Evelyn says that the house was ill- built, but capable of being made very pretty. In 1674, it was burnt down while Arlington was at Bath, and the Mulberry Garden was closed. John Dryden had been fond of going there to eat tarts, and it was a favourite place with the dramatists of those days.

Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, whose sumptuous monument is on the north side of Henry Vllth's chapel in the Abbey took a lease, in 1703, of the place to expire in seventy-two years.

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He gave £13,000 for it, and employed a Captain Wynne to build him a new house, and this was called after him Buckingham House. Here is his own account of it. " The Avenues to this house are along St James's Park, through rows of goodly elms on one hand, and gay flourishing limes on the other ; that for coaches, this for walking ; with the Mall lying between them.

"This reaches to my iron pallisade, that encom- passes a square court, which has in the midst a great basin, with statues and water works, and from its en- trance rises, all the way imperceptibly, till we mount to a terrace in front of a large hall, paved with square white stones mixed with a dark coloured marble. Out of this we go into a parlour 33 ft. by 39 ft, with a niche 15 ft. broad for a buffet, placed within an arch. . . . Under the windows is a little wilderness, full of blackbirds, and nightingales."

The Duke of Buckingham died in 1721, leaving his house to his widow, " upon the express condition that she does not marry again." She was the illegitimate daughter of James II. and Catherine Sedley. In 1723 the Prince of Wales (afterwards George II) wanted to buy it of her, but she asked too much money for it, £60,000, and the purchase did not come off. On her

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death, it went to the Duke's natural son, Sir Charles Sheffield, and he sold it to George III., who settled it on Queen Charlotte. Here it was, in the Library, that the King had his interview with Dr. Johnson, which all readers of the old philosopher's life will remember. Here all his children were born, except George IV., who was born at St. James's. Such was old Buckingham House ; under George IV. it became Buckingham Palace. He employed John Nash to enlarge it, but did not live to see it finished. It was completed in the reign of William IV., but he disliked the place, and never lived there. Queen Victoria entered into possession of it on July 13, 1837.

Then Blore built the present East Front, and the Marble Arch, which George IV. had placed before it in utterly unmeaning fashion, was carried up to its present site on the top of Hyde Park in 1850. Another curious change was made by the late Queen and Prince Albert. The grounds of the old Mulberry Gardens were very pretty, and in their early days the royal pair were very fond of them, and there were pleasant nooks and trees and a richly ornamented summer-house by the lakeside. But the owners of the houses in Buckingham Palace Road raised their houses to a prodigious height, which gave the upper windows command of a view of the Royal Gardens.

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Thereupon an immense mound of earth was run up by the royal occupants, and planted with trees, as may be seen by anybody who passes along the road.

George III.'s Library was presented by George IV. to the nation, and is known to all visitors to the British Museum as the King's Library. During the Great Exhibition of 1 851 the public were admitted to see the Palace by tickets ; I went through it then ; there are some very fine pictures there, but I don't remember much about them.

Starting then from this Palace, the Royal Procession will emerge into the Mall, which I postpone for the present, and on the left, will pass St. James's Palace. This was one of the religious houses suppressed by Henry VIII. It had been a hospital dedicated to St. James for the maintenance and nursing of poor leprous women. The King took it for a royal residence, closed the neighbourhood round with a brick wall, and called it St. James's Park. A story is told, but I can- not vouch for it, that Queen Charlotte viewing it from Buckingham Palace, wished to reclaim it for exclusive royal use, and asked her prime minister what it would cost to do so. " Only a crown, madam," was the reply.

Of King Henry's work, the royal gateway still

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remains. In this palace, the first Queen Mary died on the 17th of November, 1558. So did Henry, Prince of Wales, elder brother of Charles I., November 6th, 161 2, " taken from the evil to come." It was here that Charles I., received his Communion, from the hands of Bishop Juxon, Jan. 30th, 1649, previous to his walk to his death at Whitehall. It is said that as he walked along, guarded by the soldiery, he pointed to a tree and said to the Bishop by his side, " My brother Henry planted that tree." Here, too, Charles II. was born, scwas the son of James II., James "the old Pretender " as he was called. The story that he was conveyed into the bedroom in a warming pan is perfectly well known to be a lie, but it was a lie which had vitality enough to fix the name Pretender on the King's lawful son. Poor little fellow, who does not remember the pathetic story of his mother, Mary of Modena, screening him from the cold, under the arch- way of Morton's tower, at Lambeth, on that wet November night in 1688?

It is very sad to have to note that Queen Anne, when a princess, encouraged the foul slander about her little brother. William III. took up his residence here after the Revolution. But he hated London, and declared that owing to his asthma he could not live in it, and so insisted on Parliament buying Kensington

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as a royal residence. As for the first two Georges, and the vile lives they led, we may drop the veil. There is, however, a dash of comedy in one instance. George I. kept two mistresses at St. James's at the same time, one German, one English. Whilst he was away at Hanover, the English creature ordered a wall to be broken out of her room into the Palace Garden. The King's grand-daughter, who was dwelling there, resented this order as a liberty, and commanded the broken wall to be restored. The breaker reversed this command, and so they went on day after day, and puzzling work it must have been for the bricklayers.

It was settled by the news that the King had died suddenly, and the dominion of the parvenue was at an end.

I have an old map of St. James's Park, as it was early in the 18th century. It comprises nearly sixty acres, and, as I have said, was enclosed by Henry VIII. It was Charles II. who gave it much of its present beauty, and he was constantly seen there playing with his dogs. I once, when the park was almost empty, met Disraeli there, evidently deeply in thought, and unconscious of everything about him, but accompanied by an enormous mastiff. George IV.

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did much in the way of ornament. Milton's old house on the south side, which I remember well fifty years ago (it was afterwards inhabited by Jeremy Bentham)' has quite gone, and the great buildings round Queen Anne's Mansions occupy the site. Judge Jeffreys lived close to where the S.P.G. House now is, and in the days of his unpopularity, in order to avoid the crowd, he used to slip down a flight of stone steps into the Park.

The steps are there still. He lies buried in the city, in the Church of St. Mary Aldermanbury. On the upper side of the parade ground, towards the Duke of York's steps, Cromwell walked with Whitlocke and asked his advice whether he should take upon him the title of King, and got, according to Whitlocke's account, a most discourag- ing answer.

June 13///.

Let us resume our walk over the ground of the Coronation procession. We started last time from Buckingham Palace, and got as far as St James's Palace. We next go by Marlborough House. The name at once carries us back to the days of Queen Anne, her famous General, and his hardly less famous wife. John Churchill's sister was the mistress of

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James, Duke of York, afterwards king. That con- nexion and his handsome presence gave him a start which he would not otherwise have got. But having got it, he knew how to use it, and turned his splendid military genius into account. He married a pretty girl, Sarah Jennings, who was attached to the suite of Mary of Modena, because he was passionately enamoured of her, though he knew that his prospects were thereby endangered. And passionately he loved her all his life. The only objects he seems ever to have cared for in his heart were his wife and riches. He defended King James's cause at Sedgemoor, but failed to win his confidence because he would not turn Papist, and then in disgust joined in the plot against him. Then he plotted against King William in favour of Anne, and had to leave England, until the dying King, recognising his great ability, fetched him back. So he once more came to the front under Queen Anne, and the poor foolish Queen was completely dominated by Marlborough through his wife, who was " Mrs. Freeman " in her intimacy with the Queen, the latter being " Mrs. Morley." There are few chapters of English history to me more tire- some than all that feminine domination, and the intrigues of Harley against Marlborough, carried on through a new feminine favourite, whom he managed

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to thrust in, Abigail Hill. If I mistake not, the rude designation of old ladies as " Old Tabbies " is derived from the popular dislike in those days of Abigail Hill, just as a hangman is still called " Jack Ketch," because that was the name of the fellow who hanged such a multitude of poor wretches in the " Bloody Assize " after the battle of Sedgemoor.

Well, " Mrs. Freeman," alias Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, coaxed Queen Anne, after the death of Queen Catharine, widow of Charles II., to make over to her the house in which that Queen had lived. The old Duchess afterwards declared bitterly that she had had to pay too much for it, no less than ;£ 10,000. The Duke then employed Wren to design a new house for him, and so arose Marlborough House. The walls were decorated by the French artist Laguerre with pictures of the Duke's victories. They covered 500 square yards. The Duke died at the Lodge in Windsor Great Park in 1722, but lay in state at Marlborough House before he was tempo- rarily buried in the Abbey. His bones now lie at Blenheim. The old Duchess spent the rest of her life in a series of furious quarrels, and published her auto- biography in 1742. There is plenty of romance about it all, but it leaves a most disagreeable impression when you have finished it. Congreve, the clever but

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licentious playvvriter, left her his money, and she in acknowledgment set up the monument to him in the south aisle of Westminster Abbey. He died of the gout, and the old Duchess after his death had an image of him made, and used to foment its legs with warm water.

Marlborough House reverted to the Crown in 1817, and was allotted to the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. But the hapless Princess never inhabited it. She died at Claremont on the 6th of November that year, but her widowed husband lived here for a long time. The next tenant was Queen Adelaide, and on her death in 1849 it was lent to the Govern- ment School of Design, the forerunner of the South Kensington Museum. The Vernon and Turner pic- tures were placed in it, and it remained open to the public till 1859. Then it was put in order for the Prince of Wales, and he inhabited it until his accession to the throne.

We pass on down the Mall, and a little care is needed to make certain distinctions clear. Pall Mall, as all Londoners know, runs parallel with the Mall, and is a street with handsome clubs and fine houses, whereas the Mall is a broad gravel walk among trees

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along the north side of St. James's Park. In the days of James I. there was a game introduced into England, something like croquet. " A paille malle," says a writer of 1621, "is a wooden hammer set to the end of a long staff to strike a bowl with." And it had to be knocked through an iron arch at each end of an alley, the winner being he who could do it in fewest strokes. This game was played on ground among some apple-trees where now is St. James's-square. This ground seems to have been leased by the Crown, to which it belonged, to a specu- lator, and the game became very fashionable among the courtiers. After the Restoration Charles II. had a ground made for himself in what we call the Mall, in St. James's Park, and thus the two names are accounted for. An attempt was made to supersede the name, Pall Mall, for the first spot, and to call the street Catharine-street, in honour of Charles II.'s Queen, but it came to nothing. The street which had now grown up was, and still remains, Pall Mall. It sounds like a pun to speak of the clubs in Pall Mall in connexion with the wooden mallets. But it is a curious coincidence that perhaps the earliest use of the word in its present signification is in Pepys's Diary, who writes that " Wood's House in Pall Mall is our house for clubbing." Perhaps I had better not

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anticipate our return through Pall Mall now, but pass on.

The " Duke of York's steps " lead up to the site of Carlton House, a place well enough known a century ago. It was built by Henry Boyle, Baron Carleton, in 1709 on ground leased to him for 31 years by Queen Anne. This explains the name. The house stood between the site of the York Column and the foot of Regent-street, and had one front to the street and another to the Park. The remainder of the lease was sold to Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of George III. He used it only for purposes of cere- mony, balls, and receptions. His usual dwelling place, it will be remembered, was in Leicester-square. His widow, however, dwelt in Carlton House until her death in 1772. The Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., began to reside in it in 1783, and here he began his wretched, most wretched, married life. A very clever account of the royal doings on the un- objectionable side will be found in Lever's novel Charles (JMalley. Here the Princess Charlotte was born in 1796, and was married "in the Great Crimson room, Carlton House," May 2, 18 16. It was pulled down in 1826, and portions of it are now built into the National Gallery.

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It will be seen that all this row of houses and build- ings, which will be on the King's left as he goes to the Coronation along the Mall, were Crown property. There is one other locality which claims mention — to wit, Spring Gardens. They once were gardens, reaching from Carlton House to Whitehall, and contained a bowling green, archery butts, and a bathing pond. The spring was a jet of water, which, when you trod on it inadvertently, sprang up and squirted all over you. There was also an aviary, chiefly stocked with pheasants, and a gallery from which spectators beheld the tilting which went on down in the great enclosure. These surprise jets were not uncommon in gentlemen's parks in olden times. There used to be a " tree " at Chatsworth made of leaden pipes, and if you inadvertently went under it, every bough was capable of dropping water on you. It may, for aught I know, be there still. After the Restoration, the land, being much sought after, was built upon, and the entertainments, being thus curtailed, were removed to Vauxhall, which at first was known as "the New Spring Gardens." The new houses which were built on the spot became favourite residences of literary men and artists. It has now been almost swallowed up in Government offices. When the Royal Academy was established in 1768,

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the " Society of Artists " set up something of a rival in Spring Gardens. I once, fifty years ago this very year in which I write, went into a curious old public- house with a Westminster man well known in his time, who knew more of the local history than any man in England, Edward Draper of Vincent-square. He took me into the room where the Society of Artists held its first exhibition, and showed me a picture still preserved there, which he assured me was by Hogarth. I went one day, not long ago, to try to find the old house, but did not succeed. I think it must have been pulled down. Certainly the change between what I remember it, and what it is to-day, is more than can be imagined. But I must leave off now. Whitehall calls for a number to itself.

June 20th. Now I must go back to my Coronation Procession. Whitehall, there is no need to say, is a place of vast historical interest. I have before me, my friend Mr. Edgar Sheppard's history, just published, and if the reader can get an opportunity he should read it right through. The place as far as can be traced back, belonged to the famous Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, who built a fine mansion here in the reign of Henry III. Then it became the property of the Black Friars (Dominican), but whether he gave it or sold it

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to them is uncertain. He died in 1242; in 1248 the Friars sold it to the Archbishop of York, and for nearly three centuries it was the London residence of the northern Primate, and was called York House. It was such a noble residence, that Royalty not unfre- quently resided in it, and sometimes it was the meeting place of Parliament.

When Cardinal Wolsey added the Archbishopric of York to the great number of preferments which he had secured to himself, he greatly enlarged and beautified the house ; so much so that Charles Knight says, " it was distingushed by a sumptuous magnificence that most probably has never been equalled in the house of any other English subject, or surpassed in the palaces of many of its kings."

However, Wolsey, as we know, fell in 1529; and Henry VIII. seized York House, and it was annexed to the ancient Palace of Westminster. This was a con- venient arrangement, for the old Palace, on the site of the present Houses of Parliament which had been the Royal abode from Anglo-Saxon times, was now fallen into utter decay. A few years passed, and King Henry took up his residence at Whitehall and it continued to be a Royal residence until a great fire destroyed it 160 years later.

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Now it requires a very strong effort of the imagina- tion to realise what Whitehall was like in those days. And first let the reader remember that the fine building in Parliament Street which we call Whitehall had no existence then. The old palace fronted the river, all the way from Scotland Yard, to the present house of the Duke of Buccleuch. Needless to add, there was no Thames Embankment ; the river came up to the front of the Palace.

Just the same ground is now covered by the handsome pile which we call Whitehall Court. In the very middle, facing the river, were the King's private apartments.

On the east side was the chapel, the altar being exactly at the north corner of the present police headquarters.

On the other side was the private garden, reaching right away half across what is now Parliament Street.

It was laid out in fine squares, with a sun-dial in the middle. Every bit of the House of the Charity Commission lies within the area of that garden. South of the private garden was the bowling green, taking in the present Richmond Terrace.

Opposite, across the road, was another group of buildings reaching from our Downing Street to the Horse Guards. That block contained houses of

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several courtiers, as well as the Tennis Court and the Cockpit. It will thus be understood that between these buildings and the Privy Garden, there ran as now a street, but it was not half the width of the present Parliament Street ; on the garden side was a wall, like that between Buckingham Palace-Gardens and Constitution Hill. Now let the reader fix his attention on that narrow street.

On the north side, where the private garden ended, it was as wide as it is now, in fact wider, for it opened right into St. James's Park, but at the contraction, Henry VIII. commissioned Holbein to build a gate leading into the narrow part. This was known as " Holbein's Gate," and the fine temporary gateway which is being constructed by the Canadians for the Coronation nearly occupies its site. At the other end of this contracted street just where you turn into Downing Street was another gate, and then came King Street leading down to the Abbey.

Such was the original mass of buildings known as old Whitehall, most irregular, but covering a very large area, no less than twenty-three acres. Hampton Court covers between eight and nine, St. James's Palace four, Buckingham Palace not quite three.

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Henry VIII. intended many more buildings ; so did Queen Elizabeth, but it was James I. who really set to work. Inigo Jones designed for him the building which we now have facing the street. It is the only part of the palace now standing, and was intended for the Banqueting House.

This in his plan was one of the corners of a magnificent quadrangle. Mr. Sheppard's book gives a copy of the drawing (p. 22), but the design never got beyond good intentions.

Charles I. had not money enough to go on, though he employed Rubens to paint the roof of the Banqueting Hall, as we see it still. Charles II. planned a vast outlay at Winchester, a palace which should surpass Versailles, and so Whitehall was left as it was. The godless King kept up his revels there till death suddenly laid hands on him, in the midst of his shame- less and debauched life, on the 2nd of February, 1685. James II. fled from Whitehall, on the 28th of November, 1688.

Whitehall Palace was finally destroyed by fire, on the 4th of January, 1698. A Dutch woman had left some linen to dry before the fire, it caught, and after a seventeen hours blaze the palace was a thing of the past. The poor woman perished in the flames. The

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Banqueting Hall alone survived, the sole relic of a Whitehall that never rose out of the ground, the sole relic of the Whitehall that was.

Of course the absorbing interest of this building lies in its being the scene of the death of King Charles I. * In the public street before Whitehall," was specified in the death-warrant.

And though there is some doubt as to the exact spot it is certain that the street in question was what we call Parliament Street, and the probability is, that the King came out of the middle window, on to the scaffold. When he was brought there from St. James's Park, on the fatal morning, he entered by the present entrance on the north side, but was kept in a room at the back for some time as the scaffold was not ready. At the back of the building there stood a few years ago a statue of James II., pointing with a baton to the ground. It was the popular tradition that he ordered this to be made, and purposely ordered that he should be represented weeping, and that the statue should be placed so that the baton should be pointing to the place on which his father's hood had fallen.

For many years I felt assured of the truth of that tradition, and I claim for myself, that I urged this

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upon Mr. Shaw Lefevre, in a conversation which I had with him at the London Institution.

I think I may venture to say, that in consequence of this, the statue was moved round to its present position. It is as near the spot as it could be placed under present conditions of the traffic. There used to be a memorial stone on the spot under the scaffold, but it disappeared more than a hundred years since.

In the reign of George I. (1724) the Banqueting Hall was turned into a chapel, and was a "fashionable " place of worship for many years. In 1890 it ceased to be used, and Queen Victoria handed it over for the United Service Museum, which purpose it still serves. But I must yet take one more paper to bring our procession down to the Abbey.

Tune 2Jth, 1902.

The rest of our Coronation perambulation is almost over a desert. We had last time " Holbein's Gateway," on the left hand the wall of the Whitehall Garden, and then another gateway leading into King Street. King Street indeed, where is it now ? I can see King Street with the eye of memory, as clearly as I see to-day's Cheapside. But King Street is as clean gone as Prospero's vision. They are building over the site but haven't got above ground yet !

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It is all Parliament Street now. But Parliament Street is a new creation. When George II. ruled the land, King Street was still the only road down to Westminster. When His Majesty went to open Parliament, he went down King Street, and Goldsmith in his Citizen of the World tells how that it was in such a disgraceful condition that they had to fill up ruts in the roads with faggots, in order to allow His Majesty's carriage to get along.

Parliament Street was made by Act of Parliament in 1756. The site of that street previously was covered with a labyrintrrof close, narrow lanes. Let me give another personal reminiscence or two of even this Parliament-street, which will show what differ- ences can be made in one's own lifetime. One autumn evening in 1856 I was passing a little watch- maker's shop at the lower end of Parliament Street, about a third of the size of the small room I am writing in. I think the owner used to bring his wares, or some of them, from home every day. Big houses now cover the site of that little shop. On this occasion a policeman was strictly guarding the door, and there was a little crowd, but I didn't take much notice. It was only the next morning that I learned that a ruffian had entered the shop, knocked the poor

PETER LOMBARD 269

man on the head with a life-preserver, and helped himself to jewellery. He was making off when a passer-by happened to hear a groan inside, took in the situation, and followed the robber. The latter seeing this rushed down the ganglion of streets on the left — they have nearly all gone now — for he was in hopes that his knowledge of the neighbourhood would favour his escape. But the pursuer stuck to him, and when at length the hunted man emerged into Great George Street, the other shouted to the passers-by to seize him, and seized he was under Canning's statue. Then the other had leisure to go back and look after the poor victim. The latter died but not for some days, and the murderer was hanged just before Christmas.

There used to be a number of lateral streets lying off Cannon-row, and reaching to the river bank, where the Underground Railway is now. One of these was Manchester Buildings. It was largely inhabited by Members of Parliament, for living out of town had not become so easy as it is now. Dickens tells how Nicholas Nickleby went there to interview Mr. Gregsbury, and offer himself as his secretary. Man- chester Buildings, too, is gone. The National Society had the living rooms of their Sanctuary students

270 THE LETTERS OF PETER LOMBARD

there for several years. Then they went in for new buildings in Victoria Street, and Prince Albert laid the first stone in 1852. But difficulties arose, and not another stone was ever placed. It stood there, a solitary spectacle for months, and then at last was removed. Victoria Street was opened in 185 1 ; it was a long time before any houses were built in it.

But let us get back to King Street. On our right first comes Downing Street, so called after Sir George Downing, who was Secretary to the Treasury in the reign of Charles II. There were a few houses in it then with gardens at the back looking into the Park. These houses belonging to the Downing family fixed the name, but they were chiefly rented by Government officials. They came at length to the Crown, and George II. offered one to Sir Robert Walpole, who would only accept it on the understanding that it should be permanently attached to the Treasury. It was in comparatively late years that the other houses were merged in the Foreign and Colonial offices. Smollett once practised as a surgeon here.

And so we leave the King at the Abbey.

IN MEMORIAM.

Church Times, ^th August \ 1910.

For more than twenty years, with but few breaks, this column has contained, week by week, the varied and entertaining notes bearing the now familiar signature " Peter Lombard." That pen of a ready writer, so apt to set down on paper the outpourings of a richly furnished mind, is laid aside. " Peter Lombard " is dead. Dr. Benham, to give him his own name, had been failing of late. The weight of all but four-score years, to which was added a few years ago the tragic death of a daughter, a Missionary of the S.P.G., visibly pressed upon his bodily frame, and the end came last Saturday. Yet, as our readers know, in spite of failing health, his Varia went on. Last week, however, we had to announce that he was not well enough to send his weekly tale of Notes, but he sent this message : — " Please give my loving regards to all

272 IN MEMORIAM

my readers. I hope they will join me in a prayer for God's blessing on the Church." It was a beautiful message. His thoughts were not for himself, but for the Church which he had served faithfully with pen, with voice, and with the active work of a priest.

K. Cl.AY AND SONS, LTD. HRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.B., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK

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