ing point of its earlier magnificence under the reign | the famine-stricken people pining on the walls, or of Ahab, though being, from the first, one of " the thrones of wickedness," it was a hollow and shortlived greatness; for, as Isaiah had also foretold, "its glorious beauty was as a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before summer." At the instigation of Jezebel, his Zidonian princess, Ahab erected a temple to Baal, and richly endowed a numerous retinue of idol-priests; and this was followed by the rearing of an ivory palace for himself and his imperious queen. It is doubtful whether the baleful influence of this woman upon Ahab and the fortunes of his kingdom has usually been measured at its full extent. That she was a woman of "unconquerable will and immortal hate" like Lady Macbeth, that she was voluptuous and vain of her charms like Cleopatra, and that in the use of her powers she turned her weak and wicked husband into the veriest slave of her ambition, is seen by every one. But we doubt whether it is generally seen that her malign dominion marked a fatal stage of transition on the part of Ahab's people from the impure worship of the true God to the worship of false gods, from superstition to idolatry, from rebellion to apostasy. It is only in this view that we read aright those words in which the inspired pen places a double brand over Ahab's name. "There was none like unto Ahab which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up. And he did very abominably in following idols, according to all things as did the Amorites." Even after this, indeed, when there were gleams of penitence and partial reformation, there seemed a merciful reluctance to give the people over to the will of their enemies—“ How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?"—as when, after the three years of siege by Benhadad, the Syrian king, they were reduced to the last terrible extremity of famine, and by a miraculous interposition, according to Elisha's almost incredible words, they passed from gaunt hunger to overflowing plenty in a day. We obtained a new impression of that most dramatic picture which the inspired writer has given us of the famine in Samaria, when we looked round on the contiguous mountains and imagined them covered by Benhadad's soldiers, who could look down from those heights into the city and see walking like skeletons on the streets. And we Eight hundred years afterwards, Samaria rebuilt, and recovered a temporary splende under Herod, commonly called the Great. Th cruel and crafty Idumean had an artist's eye, a was a man of magnificent schemes, and seen what a noble site the place offered, built on it palatial city rich in architecture, whose chi ornament was a temple in honour of his patr Augustus. In this favourite city he lived wicked splendour, delighting in song, and festiv and riot, and in the dance of the wanton woma on horseback, and it now became evident that our route for the day must be greatly shortened. As we proceeded along the narrow valley which led northward from Samaria, we more than ever appreciated its admirably chosen position for resisting the approach of invading armies, and our imagination called up other companies that so many thousand years before must have crowded those very glens. The myriads of Israelitish captives that were carried away in the last deportation by Shalmaneser, when Samaria was made a ruin, must have been driven along these very defiles, weeping and lamenting, wrung by a sorrow worse than the bitterness of death. "Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country.” But its meretricious glory almost vanished with | ruins that it was past noon before we were again himself. There is no Samaria now. Hanging on the eastern brow of the hill, every part of which was once covered with the city, there is a miserable Arab mud-village of about sixty houses, the only redeeming feature in which is a church built by the Crusaders over the reputed grave of John the Baptist. But nowhere else could we trace either house or inhabitant. We imagined that we could see down in the valley the marks of what might once have been Herod's royal garden, laid out in plots, and with channels for irrigation. On one part of the hill itself we followed with interest a long line of columns, a few of which were still standing, some broken, many prostrate on the earth, and others half buried in the soil or hidden in the rank grass; and these are not improbably the remains of a magnificent colonnade that lined on either side the principal street of Herod's city, that led up to the temple of the Cæsar, such as we saw a few weeks afterwards in one of the oldest streets of Damascus. But this was all that remained of what had once been Samaria. Those words had been written by the prophet Micah not only before the days of Herod, but while Israel was still a kingdom and Samaria its capital: "Therefore will I make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard: and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof." We confess to our having been startled when we read those ancient prophetic words, and saw with what minuteness they had photographed the living picture that lay before us. The features were complete in their correspondence in every part. The upper portion of the mountain is rudely terraced by stones which had evidently been taken from the walls and foundations of the ancient city, and the intervening spaces are occupied by narrow corn-fields, or strips of garden, from which the vine is not absent. The earth has been carefully ploughed or dug up in every place; and those stones which have not been used for terraces are either gathered together in heaps, or tumbled down into the valley far beneath, where we could see them "in multitudes confusedly hurled," like boulders left after the sweep and fury of an inundation. To-day we were especially tantalized by passing near to places rich in scriptural associations, whose very names had a fascination in them, but which we were constrained to leave unvisited. About six miles to the eastward of our path was Tirzah, the rural residence of the earlier kings of Israel, proverbial for its beauty, and the emblem of the Church even in the days of Solomon,-"Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah." Beautiful even now as it rises from the midst of corn-fields and fragrant gardens, and looks down as from a queenly throne upon scenes of verdure that descend to the Jordan's wave. That large mound of ruins, again, to the westward, surrounded by a little circlet of hills, with a lively fountain near it pouring out its waters and making the grassy plot around it so beautifully green, is Dothan, one of the favourite pasture-grounds of Jacob's sons-the spot where Joseph was first cast by his brethren into the pit, and afterwards taken up and sold to the travelling merchants from Gilead. How every feature harmonizes to this day with the old immortal story! Old Jacob and his sons must have had a good eye for choice grazingfields, as that lingering verdure around the old "Tell" sufficiently proves. There are many natural pits, too, and empty cisterns around the spot, in which envious sons might still dispose of a brother against whom jealousy had made them more cruel We had lingered so long among these historic than the grave; nor is it less noticeable that the caravan road from Gilead down to Egypt winds past those ruins still. Many a century afterwards, Dothan became the residence of the prophet Elisha. In the quaint words of an old historian, he became "the picklock of the cabinet council" of the king of Syria, and being able to reveal his most hidden designs to the Israelitish king, made it easy for him to anticipate and baffle all his movements. An army was sent by night to surround Dothan and seize the person of the patriot-seer, so that when the prophet's servant looked out in the morning, he saw, to his dismay, the whole city encompassed by Syrian chariots and horsemen. "Fear not," said the prophet to his terrified attendant, "for they that be with us are greater than they that be with them." Immediately, in answer to Elisha's prayer, his servant's eyes were opened to look into the spirit-world, and he beheld every eminence around Dothan covered with a fiery guard of angels, with chariots of fire and horses of fire, the Heaven-sent protectors of the solitary man of God. What a sacredness lingers over spots that have been trodden by such visitants! A little before sunset our tents were pitched near to the entrance of the vast plain of Esdraelon, not far from Jenin, the Engannim of Joshua's times, a town even now of considerable size for modern Palestine, whose minarets and domes we could see rising above the forest of olives and other trees, that helped to justify its old name as the "fountain of gardens." It was some hours after the lights were extinguished, and we had lain down on our little iron bed, before sleep came. The dogs in the neighbouring town barked and howled incessantly, and troops of jackals answered in hideous responses further off, some of their cries too vividly reminding us of those of little children in distress. When they became silent our fancy grew active in the darkness, and we imagined that we heard some of those foul creatures sniffing beneath the canvas of our tent, and burrowing away to effect an entrance. But simple weariness at length brought rest, and we rose in the morning quite refreshed. It was delightfully exhilarating in the early morning, when the air was yet fresh and cool, to canter along for miles on the comparatively smooth and level ground of the now rapidly expanding valley. We were surprised to meet a company of Turkish cavalry, some hundreds in number, travelling southward in military order. They were a sort of mounted police, with vaguely-defined powers, ready to inflict prompt punishment upon offenders without troubling themselves with the formalities of legal proceedings, and especially in tended to be a terror to Bedouin evil-doers. Gradually one mountain after another rose up before us. Nearest us was Gilboa, the scene of Saul's last conflict with the Philistine hosts, and of his own and Jonathan's tragic death, where "the shield of the mighty was vilely cast away, the shield of him that had been anointed with oil." The literature of antiquity boasts no elegy so magnanimous and tender as that of David over the fallen king and the nobly chivalrous Jonathan, whose "love to him had been wonderful, passing the love of women." Gilboa was brown and parched, as if the curse of David still rested on it. "Let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you." Little Hermon, rising about three miles beyond, was green to its summit, as if it were a pasture-ground for flocks. Further to the north-east there came into view at length the beautifully cone-shaped Tabor, not the true scene of the Transfiguration-the haunt to this day of wolves and panthers, thickly wooded to its summit; while in front of us, across the plain, there rose a range of Galilean hills, far up in the bosom of which, somewhere, we knew was Nazareth. As we rode slowly onward we were able to take in, almost at a glance, the whole of the magnificent plain of Esdraelon. From the shores of the Mediterranean, where it is guarded on one side by the noble promontory of Carmel, and on the other by the less lofty headland of Akka, it extends over a space of more than twenty miles to the banks of the Jordan, being separated into minor valleys by the mountains we have named as it approaches towards the river. Its average width is between ten and twelve miles, the richlywooded range of Carmel, and the less bold moun tains of Samaria, bounding it on the south, while on the north it is hemmed in by the green his of Galilee. It possesses an extraordinary natural fertility, and is so level that every inch of it is as capable of culture as the plains of Lombardy. | of Tabor," how many armies have met on those Men competent to judge have declared that, if peaceful fields in deadly struggle, and the foamthis single plain were brought under the hand of ing Kishon swept away their slain to the seaskilled agriculture, it would yield grain enough to Philistine archers, Syrian horsemen, Midianites support the entire population within the present with their deadly javelins, Bedouins with their limits of the Holy Land. But at present not more quivering lances, Saracens with their crescentthan one-sixth of it is under even the rudest form ensigns, Crusaders with their red-cross banners. of cultivation, and the greater part of what looks The accomplished Dr. Clark scarcely exceeded so beautifully verdant when seen from a distance, the fact when he said that "warriors out of every is either the rank luxuriance of thistles and other nation which is under heaven have pitched their weeds, or swampy ground, in which the stork de- tents in the plain of Esdraelon, and have beheld lights; though "that ancient river, the river Kishon," the various banners of their nations wet with the winds through it, and affords the means of natural dews of Tabor and Hermon." It is a circumdrainage all the way to the sea. We searched stance not without interest, that this plain is with our glass in all directions, and while here spoken of in the Apocalypse of John as the scene and there we could see a solitary mound of ruins of the last great decisive contest between the rising in the midst of that sea of verdure, we powers of good and evil; for the battle of Armacould not discover a single village or human habi- geddon is just the battle of "Megiddo," which is tation, except towards the east, at the base of the ancient name of the plain of Esdraelon. Is Tabor, or on the slopes of Little Hermon. We this name merely symbolical? or is this very plain afterwards learned at Nazareth that a company destined to become the actual field of one of those of European merchants at Beyrout had purchased battles which influence the history of the world, the entire plain from the Turkish Government for and which is to turn the balance on the side of £18,000, with the intention of developing its im- freedom, humanity, the rights of conscience, and mense resources in the employment of native Christian truth? industry. This is important even as a recognition of the right of private propety in this Laiserably-governed country, and, if carried out with energy and prudence, it will be one of the best means of education for the people, and will tamn this spacious territory once more into a garden of the Lord. But the native hands will need to be guided by European heads, and the Gelds will need to be strongly fenced and vigorously protected against the bands of lawless Belouin from across the Jordan, to whom plunder and pillage are as the air they breathe. But here we are at Jezreel, which stands on a spur of Gilboa that projects far into the plain. A lofty square tower and some twenty ruined houses are all that now remain of what was once the favourite regal residence of Ahab and his Phenician queen; for Eastern despots in those times, as in our own, took pride in building and multiplying palaces. Of what wild riot and Heaven-defying lasciviousness was this place, looking out upon one of the grandest pictures of beauty and plenty in the world, for a time the scene! What bloody plots were conceived here, in the active But while this noble plain appears to have been brain of the woman Jezebel, against the prophets brmed by a bounteous Heaven to be the granary and the saints of God! It is one of those places of a kingdom, how often has it been the chosen which teem only with associations of violence and battle-field of contending tribes and nations. Per- wickedness. Down on that level ground, stretchhaps there is no other place on earth that has ing eastward, there may have been the pleasureso often echoed the terrible shouts of war. From From garden of Ahab; and adjoining it, Naboth's little the days of Barak and Deborah, three thousand patch of ground, a patrimony which had come years ago, when the war-chariots of Sisera swept down through six centuries from his fathers, and the plain, down to those of Kleber and Napoleon, which the sturdy citizen refused to yield up at in the end of the last century, when the Turks any price to the exacting despot, pettish as a were mown down in thousands by the artillery of spoiled child. On yonder spot, in Naboth's France, in what was proudly termed "the battleground, Elijah may have confronted him when he had come down to gloat over his new possession, | bier, and given back to his grateful mother, who the price of innocent blood, and had made him quail beneath the prediction of that dread Nemesis in which the punishment would be made to bear the image of the sin, as face answereth to face in a glass. From such a watch-tower as this which overlooks the plain, the watchman may have descried, coming up by the way from the Jordan, amid the clouds of dust raised by his furious driving, the approach of Jehu, the avenger of God. And from a window in some tower like this the painted Jezebel may have been flung, at Jehu's command, by her crouching eunuchs, and her mangled body dragged to the mound where the offal of the city was heaped together, to be torn and devoured by such mongrel dogs as we saw at that moment prowling among the ruins. There is even a large pool at no great distance from the watch-tower, where Ahab's blood-stained chariot may have been washed, and the dogs, according to Elijah's prophecy, no word of which fell to the ground, have drank Ahab's blood. We now began in good earnest to cross the plain for those grassy Galilean hills, which we knew somewhere imprisoned Nazareth. It was a ride in which we found the advantage of trusting a good deal to the sagacity of our horses, for the ground was in many places swampy and deceiving, and they knew far better where to obtain solid footing than we did. When we had got across and were a considerable way up the mountain, we halted, and began to search with our glasses for Nain, for we knew by our map that it must be somewhere not far off. Our eye rested on it at length, about three miles distant, hanging on the western side of the Little Hermon, not very far from its base. Our glass brought it very near, and with the little hamlet so distinctly before us, we could imagine the touching scene which has shed so imperishable an interest around the place: the funeral-procession coming forth from the gate of Nain—the bier, with its shrouded but uncoffined body, silently borne by a few men-weeping women behind doing their best to comfort the widowed mother of that only son-a smaller company, with Jesus at their head, meeting the congregation of mourners--the solemn, hopeful pause the word spoken by Jesus, which instantly leaps forth into effect the young man rising up from his can scarcely believe for joy. We searched also for Endor, but it lay too far round to the north of Little Hermon to be visible from our halting-place. We turned away, musing on Saul, whose midnight visit to that remote mountain village gave occasion to one of the most strangely dramatic scenes in Old Testament history. There are few men whose character is less worthy of imitation, and yet whose history is more instructive. Not incapable of virtuous inpulses and generous affections, yet nursing the passion of jealousy until it poisoned and embittered his whole being; great in physical courage, tt: without moral strength; with a keen consciousness of moral debasement and divine abandonment, becoming moody, melancholy, vindictive, and yielding to ungovernable bursts of passion that carry him to the verge of madness; betakin himself to superstition when he has cast off the last influences of religion, and skulking away across the mountain on the eve of his last batt' to the cave of a sorceress, to obtain counsel, in his extremity, through the tricks of necromancy Yet, even at his worst and lowest, having some thing of kingly dignity clinging to him, like th crown upon his head and the bracelet on his arm, which were found the next day on his lifless body on the battle-ground of Mount Gilbon We were consoled, however, for our not seein Endor, by our soon after entering the beautifullysituated village of Shunem. The villagers looke down upon us, as we passed along, with kindly curiosity from the top of their mud-walls, an we were soon seated in a rich garden of lem and orange-trees, and comfortably shaded fr the noon-day sun, at our mid-day meal. They were hospitable villagers, contrasting favoursby with the scowling men of Sychar. In a fe minutes, half the population of Shunem were gathered round us; but their behaviour was excellent. We looked up to the loaded branch of a lemon-tree immediately above our head, when a friendly Shunamite, guessing our wish, cut down the branch with one stroke of his sword a made it fall at our feet, supplying a lemon or two to each of our party. A revolver, belonging to one of our number, was handed round an explained to his fellow-villagers by one of the |