Jerusalem by Moonlight
THE broad moon lingers on the summit of Mount Olivet, but its beam has long left the garden of Gethsemane and the tomb of Absalom, the waters of Kedron and the dark abyss of Jehoshaphat. Full falls its splendour, however, on the opposite city, vivid and defined in its silver blaze. A lofty wall, with turrets and towers and frequent gates, undulates with the unequal ground which it covers, as it encircles the lost capital of Jehovah. It is a city of hills, far more famous than those of Rome: for all Europe has heard of Sion and of Calvary, while the Arab and the Assyrian, and the tribes and nations beyond, are as ignorant of the Capitolian and Aventine Mounts as they are of the Malvern or the Chiltern Hills.
The broad steep of Sion crowned with the tower of David; nearer still, Mount Moriah, with the gorgeous temple of the God of Abraham, but built, alas! by the child of Hagar, and not by Sarah’s chosen one; close to its cedars and its cypresses, its lofty spires and airy arches, the moonlight falls upon Bethesda’s pool; further on, entered by the gate of St. Stephen, the eye, though ‘tis the noon of night, traces with ease the Street of Grief, a long winding ascent to a vast cupolaed pile that now covers Calvary, called the Street of Grief because there the most illustrious of the human, as well as of the Hebrew, race, the descendant of King David, and the divine Son of the most favoured of women, twice sank under that burden of suffering and shame which is now throughout all Christendom the emblem of triumph and of honour; passing over groups and masses of houses built of stone, with terraced roofs, or surmounted with small domes, we reach the hill of Salem, where Melchisedek built his mystic citadel; and still remains the hill of Scopas, where Titus gazed upon Jerusalem on the eve of his final assault. Titus destroyed the temple. The religion of Judaea has in turn subverted the fanes which were raised to his father and to himself in their imperial capital; and the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob is now worshipped before every altar in Rome.
Jerusalem by moonlight! ‘Tis a fine spectacle, apart from all its indissoluble associations of awe and beauty. The mitigating hour softens the austerity of a mountain landscape magnificent in outline, however harsh and severe in detail; and, while it retains all its sublimity, removes much of the savage sternness of the strange and unrivalled scene. A fortified city, almost surrounded by ravines, and rising in the centre of chains of far-spreading hills, occasionally offering, through their rocky glens, the gleams of a distant and richer land!
The moon has sunk behind the Mount of Olives, and the stars in the darker sky shine doubly bright over the sacred city. The all-pervading stillness is broken by a breeze that seems to have travelled over the plain of Sharon from the sea. It wails among the tombs, and sighs among the cypress groves. The palm-tree trembles as it passes, as if it were a spirit of woe. Is it the breeze that has travelled over the plain of Sharon from the sea?
Or is it the haunting voice of prophets mourning over the city that they could not save? Their spirits surely would linger on the land where their Creator had deigned to dwell, and over whose impending fate Omnipotence had shed human tears. From this Mount! Who can but believe that, at the midnight hour, from the summit of the Ascension, the great departed of Israel assemble to gaze upon the battlements of their mystic city? There might be counted heroes and sages, who need shrink from no rivalry with the brightest and the wisest of other lands; but the lawgiver of the time of the Pharaohs, whose laws are still obeyed; the monarch, whose reign has ceased for three thousand years, but whose wisdom is a proverb in all nations of the earth; the teacher, whose doctrines have modelled civilised Europe; the greatest of legislators, the greatest of administrators, and the greatest of reformers; what race, extinct or living, can produce three such men as these?
The last light is extinguished in the village of Bethany. The wailing breeze has become a moaning wind; a white film spreads over the purple sky; the stars are veiled, the stars are hid; all becomes as dark as the waters of Kedron and the valley of Jehosha-phat. The tower of David merges into obscurity; no longer glitter the minarets of the mosque of Omar; Bethesda’s angelic waters, the gate of Stephen, the street of sacred sorrow, the hill of Salem, and the heights of Scopas can no longer be discerned. Alone in the increasing darkness, while the very line of the walls gradually eludes the eye, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a beacon light.
And why is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre a beacon light? Why, when is it already past the noon of darkness, when every soul slumbers in Jerusalem, and not a sound disturbs the deep repose, except the howl of the wild dog crying to the wilder wind; why is the cupola of the sanctuary illumined, though the hour has long since been numbered when pilgrims there kneel and monks pray?
An armed Turkish guard are bivouacked in the court of the Church; within the Church itself, two brethren of the convent of Terra Santa keep holy watch and ward; while, at the tomb beneath, there kneels a solitary youth, who prostrated himself at sunset, and who will there pass unmoved the whole of the sacred night.
Yet the pilgrim is not in communion with the Latin Church; neither is he of the Church Armenian, or the Church Greek; Maronite, Coptic, or Abyssinian; these also are Christian churches which cannot call him child.
He comes from a distant and a northern isle to bow before the tomb of a descendant of the kings of Israel, because he, in common with all the people of that isle, recognises in that sublime Hebrew incarnation the presence of a Divine Redeemer. Then why does he come alone? It is not that he has availed himself of the inventions of modern science to repair first to a spot which all his countrymen may equally desire to visit, and thus anticipate their hurrying arrival. Before the inventions of modern science, all his countrymen used to flock hither. Then why do they not now? Is the Holy Land no longer hallowed? Is it not the land of sacred and mysterious truths? The land of heavenly messages and earthly miracles? The land of prophets and apostles? Is it not the land upon whose mountains the Creator of the Universe parleyed with man, and the flesh of whose anointed race He mystically assumed, when He struck the last blow at the powers of evil? Is it to be believed that there are no peculiar and eternal qualities in a land thus visited, which distinguish it from all others? That Palestine is like Normandy or Yorkshire, or even Attica or Rome.
There may be some who maintain this; there have been some, and those, too, among the wisest and the wittiest of the northern and western races, who, touched by a presumptuous jealousy of the long predominance of that oriental intellect to which they owed their civilisation, would have persuaded themselves and the world that the traditions of Sinai and Calvary were fables. Half a century ago, Europe made a violent and apparently successful effort to disembarrass itself of its Asian faith. The most powerful and the most civilised of its kingdoms, about to conquer the rest, shut up its churches, desecrated its altars, massacred and persecuted their sacred servants, and announced that the Hebrew creeds which Simon Peter brought from Palestine, and which his successors revealed to Clovis, were a mockery and a fiction. What has been the result? In every city, town, village, and hamlet of that great kingdom, the divine image of the most illustrious of Hebrews has been again raised amid the homage of kneeling millions; while, in the heart of its bright and witty capital, the nation has erected the most gorgeous of modern temples, and consecrated its marble and golden walls to the name, and memory, and celestial efficacy of a Hebrew woman.
The country of which the solitary pilgrim, kneeling at this moment at the Holy Sepulchre, was a native, had not actively shared in that insurrection against the first and second Testament which distinguished the end of the eighteenth century. But, more than six hundred years before, it had sent its king, and the flower of its peers and people, to rescue Jerusalem from those whom they considered infidels! and now, instead of the third crusade, they expend their superfluous energies in the construction of railroads.
The failure of the European kingdom of Jerusalem, on which such vast treasure, such prodigies of valour, and such ardent belief had been wasted, has been one of those circumstances which have tended to disturb the faith of Europe, although it should have carried convictions of a very different character. The Crusaders looked upon the Saracens as infidels, whereas the children of the desert bore a much nearer affinity to the sacred corpse that had, for a brief space, consecrated the Holy Sepulchre, than any of the invading host of Europe. The same blood flowed in their veins, and they recognised the divine missions both of Moses and of his great successor. In an age so deficient in physiological learning as the twelfth century, the mysteries of race were unknown. Jerusalem, it cannot be doubted, will ever remain the appanage either of Israel or of Ishmael; and if, in the course of those great vicissitudes which are no doubt impending for the East, there be any attempt to place upon the throne of David a prince of the House of Coburg or Deuxponts, the same fate will doubtless await him as, with all their brilliant qualities and all the sympathy of Europe, was the final doom of the Godfreys, the Baldwins, and the Lusignans.
Like them, the ancestor of the kneeling pilgrim had come to Jerusalem with his tall lance and his burnished armour; but his descendant, though not less daring and not less full of faith, could profit by the splendid but fruitless achievements of the first Tancred de Montacute. Our hero came on this new crusade with an humble and contrite spirit, to pour forth his perplexities and sorrows on the tomb of his Redeemer, and to ask counsel of the sacred scenes which the presence of that Redeemer and his great predecessors had consecrated.
A Gathering of Sages
NEAR the gate of Sion there is a small, still, hilly street, the houses of which, as is general in the East, present to the passenger, with the exception of an occasional portal, only blank walls, built, as they are at Jerusalem, of stone, and very lofty. These walls commonly enclose a court, and, though their exterior offers always a sombre and often squalid appearance, it by no means follows that within you may not be welcomed with cheerfulness and even luxury.
At this moment a man in the Syrian dress, turban and flowing robe, is passing through one of the gateways of this street, and entering the large quadrangle to which it leads. It is surrounded by arcades; on one side indications of commerce, piles of chests, cases, and barrels; the other serving for such simple stables as are sufficient in the East. Crossing this quadrangle, the stranger passed by a corridor into a square garden of orange and lemon trees and fountains. This garden court was surrounded by inhabited chambers, and, at the end of it, passing through a low arch at the side, and then mounting a few steps, he was at once admitted into a spacious and stately chamber. Its lofty ceiling was vaulted and lightly painted in arabesque; its floor was of white marble, varied with mosaics of fruit and flowers; it was panelled with cedar, and in six of the principal panels were Arabic inscriptions emblazoned in blue and gold. At the top of this hall, and ranging down its two sides, was a divan or seat, raised about one foot from the ground, and covered with silken cushions; and the marble floor before this divan was spread at intervals with small bright Persian carpets.
In this chamber some half dozen persons were seated in the Eastern fashion, and smoking either the choice tobaccoes of Syria through the cherry-wood or jasmine tube of a Turkish or Egyptian chibouque, or inhaling through rose-water the more artificial flavour of the nargileh, which is the hookah of the Levant. If a guest found his pipe exhausted, he clapped his hands, and immediately a negro page appeared, dressed in scarlet or in white, and, learning his pleasure, returned in a few moments, and bowing presented him with a fresh and illumined chibouque. At intervals, these attendants appeared without a summons, and offered cups of Mocha coffee or vases of sherbet.
The lord of this divan, who was seated at the upper end of the room, reclining on embroidered cushions of various colours, and using a nargileh of fine workmanship, was a man much above the common height, being at least six feet two without his red cap of Fez, though so well proportioned, that you would not at the first glance give him credit for such a stature. He was extremely handsome, retaining ample remains of one of those countenances of blended regularity and lustre which are found only in the cradle of the human race. Though he was fifty years of age, time had scarcely brought a wrinkle to his still brilliant complexion, while his large, soft, dark eyes, his arched brow, his well-proportioned nose, his small mouth and oval cheek presented altogether one of those faces which, in spite of long centuries of physical suffering and moral degradation, still haunt the cities of Asia Minor, the isles of Greece, and the Syrian coasts. It is the archetype of manly beauty, the tradition of those races who have wandered the least from Paradise; and who, notwithstanding many vicissitudes and much misery, are still acted upon by the same elemental agencies as influenced the Patriarchs; are warmed by the same sun, freshened by the same air, and nourished by the same earth as cheered and invigorated and sustained the earlier generations. The costume of the East certainly does not exaggerate the fatal progress of time; if a figure becomes too portly, the flowing robe conceals the incumbrance which is aggravated by a western dress; he, too, who wears a turban has little dread of grey hairs; a grizzly beard indeed has few charms, but whether it were the lenity of time or the skill of his barber in those arts in which Asia is as experienced as Europe, the beard of the master of the divan became the rest of his appearance, and flowed to his waist in rich dark curls, lending additional dignity to a countenance of which the expression was at the same time grand and benignant.
Upon the right of the master of the divan was, smoking a jasmine pipe, Scheriff Effendi, an Egyptian merchant, of Arab race, a dark face in a white turban, mild and imperturbable, and seated as erect on his crossed legs as if he were administering justice; a remarkable contrast to the individual who was on the left of the host, who might have been mistaken for a mass of brilliant garments huddled together, had not the gurgling sound of the nargileh occasionally assured the spectator that it was animated by human breath. This person was apparently lying on his back, his face hid, his form not to be traced, a wild confusion of shawls and cushions, out of which, like some wily and dangerous reptile, glided the spiral involutions of his pipe. Next to the invisible sat a little wiry man with a red nose, sparkling eyes, and a white beard. His black turban intimated that he was a Hebrew, and indeed he was well known as Barizy of the Tower, a description which he had obtained from his residence near the Tower of David, and which distinguished him from his cousin, who was called Barizy of the Gate. Further on an Armenian from Stamboul, in his dark robes and black protuberant head-dress, resembling a colossal truffle, solaced himself with a cherry stick which reminded him of the Bosphorus, and he found a companion in this fashion in the young officer of a French brig-of-war anchored at Beiroot, and who had obtained leave to visit the Holy Land, as he was anxious to see the women of Bethlehem, of whose beauty he had heard much.
As the new comer entered the hall, he shuffled off his slippers at the threshold, and then advancing, and pressing a hand to his brow, his mouth and his heart, a salutation which signifies that in thought, speech, and feeling he was faithful to his host, and which salutation was immediately returned, he took his seat upon the divan, and the master of the house, letting the flexible tube of his nargileh fall on one of the cushions, and clapping his hands, a page immediately brought a pipe to the new guest. This was Signor Pasqualigo, one of those noble Venetian names that every now and then turn up in the Levant, and borne in the present case by a descendant of a family who for centuries had enjoyed a monopoly of some of the smaller consular offices of the Syrian coast. Signor Pasqualigo had installed his son as deputy in the ambiguous agency at Jaffa, which he described as a vice-consulate, and himself principally resided at Jerusalem, of which he was the prime gossip, or second only to his rival, Barizy of the Tower. He had only taken a preliminary puff of his chibouque, to be convinced that there was no fear of its being extinguished, before he said,
‘So there was a fine pilgrimage last night; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre lighted up from sunset to sunrise, an extra guard in the court, and only the Spanish prior and two brethren permitted to enter. It must be 10,000 piastres at least in the coffers of the Terra Santa. Well, they want something! It is a long time since we have had a Latin pilgrim in El Khuds.’
‘And they say, after all, that this was not a Latin pilgrim,’ said Barizy of the Tower.
‘He could not have been one of my people,’ said the Armenian, ‘or he never would have gone to the Holy Sepulchre with the Spanish prior.’
‘Had he been one of your people,’ said Pasqualigo, ‘he could not have paid 10,000 piastres for a pilgrimage.’
‘I am sure a Greek never would,’ said Barizy, ‘unless he were a Russian prince.’
‘And a Russian does not care much for rosaries unless they are made of diamonds,’ said Pasqualigo.
‘As far as I can make out this morning,’ said Barizy of the Tower, ‘it is a brother of the Queen of England.’
‘I was thinking it might be that,’ said Pasqualigo, nettled at his rival’s early information, ‘the moment I heard he was an Englishman.’
‘The English do not believe in the Holy Sepulchre,’ said the Armenian, calmly.
‘They do not believe in our blessed Saviour,’ said Pasqualigo, ‘but they do believe in the Holy Sepulchre.’
Pasqualigo’s strong point was theology, and there were few persons in Jerusalem who on this head ventured to maintain an argument with him.
‘How do you know that the pilgrim is an Englishman?’ asked their host.
‘Because his servants told me so,’ said Pasqualigo.
‘He has got an English general for the principal officer of his household,’ said Barizy, ‘which looks like blood royal; a very fine man, who passes the whole day at the English consulate.’
‘They have taken a house in the Via Dolorosa,’ said Pasqualigo.
‘Of Hassan Nejed?’ continued Barizy of the Tower, clutching the words out of his rival’s grasp; ‘Hassan asked five thousand piastres per month, and they gave it. What think you of that?’
‘He must indeed be an Englishman,’ said Scheriff Effendi, taking his pipe slowly from his mouth. There was a dead silence when he spoke; he was much respected.
‘He is very young,’ said Barizy of the Tower; ‘younger than the Queen, which is one reason why he is not on the throne, for in England the eldest always succeeds, except in moveables, and those always go to the youngest.’
Barizy of the Tower, though he gave up to Pasqualigo in theology, partly from delicacy, being a Jew, would yield to no man in Jerusalem in his knowledge of law.
‘If he goes on at this rate,’ said the Armenian, ‘he will soon spend all his money; this place is dearer than Stamboul.’
‘There is no fear of his spending all his money,’ said their host, ‘for the young man has brought me such a letter that if he were to tell me to rebuild the temple, I must do it.’
‘And who is this young man, Besso?’ exclaimed the Invisible, starting up, and himself exhibiting a youthful countenance; fair, almost effeminate, no beard, a slight moustache, his features too delicate, but his brow finely arched, and his blue eye glittering with fire.
‘He is an English lord,’ said Besso, ‘and one of the greatest; that is all I know.’
‘And why does he come here?’ inquired the youth. ‘The English do not make pilgrimages.’ ‘Yet you have heard what he has done.’ ‘And why is this silent Frenchman smoking your Latakia,’ he continued in a low voice. ‘He comes to Jerusalem at the same time as this Englishman. There is more in this than meets our eye. You do not know the northern nations. They exist only in political combinations. You are not a politician, my Besso. Depend upon it, we shall hear more of this Englishman, and of his doing something else than praying at the Holy Sepulchre.’
‘It may be so, most noble Emir, but as you say, I am no politician.’
‘Would that you were, my Besso! It would be well for you and for all of us. See now,’ he added in a whisper, ‘that apparently inanimate mass, Scheriff Effendi—that man has a political head, he understands a combination, he is going to smuggle me five thousand English muskets into the desert, he will deliver them to a Bedouin tribe, who have engaged to convey them safely to the Mountain. There, what do you think of that, my Besso? Do you know now what are politics? Tell the Rose of Sharon of it. She will say it is beautiful. Ask the Rose what she thinks of it, my Besso.’
‘Well, I shall see her to-morrow.’
‘I have done well; have I not?’
‘You are satisfied; that is well.’
‘Not quite, my Besso; but I can be satisfied if you please. You see that Scheriff Effendi there, sitting like an Afrite; he will not give me the muskets unless I pay him for them; and the Bedouin chief, he will not carry the arms unless I give him 10,000 piastres. Now, if you will pay these people for me, my Besso, and deduct the expenses from my Lebanon loan when it is negotiated, that would be a great service. Now, now, my Besso, shall it be done?’ he continued with the coaxing voice and with the wheedling manner of a girl. ‘You shall have any terms you like, and I will always love you so, my Besso. Let it be done, let it be done! I will go down on my knees and kiss your hand before the Frenchman, which will spread your fame throughout Europe, and make Louis Philippe take you for the first man in Syria, if you will do it for me. Dear, dear Besso, you will pay that old camel Scheriff Ef-fendi for me, will you not? and please the Rose of Sharon as much as me!’
‘My prince,’ said Besso, ‘have a fresh pipe; I never can transact business after sunset.’
The reader will remember that Sidonia had given Tancred a letter of credit on Besso. He is the same Besso who was the friend at Jerusalem of Contarini Fleming, and this is the same chamber in which Contarini, his host, and others who were present, inscribed one night, before their final separation, certain sentences in the panels of the walls. The original writing remains, but Besso, as we have already seen, has had the sentences emblazoned in a manner more permanent and more striking to the eye. They may, however, be both seen by all those who visit Jerusalem, and who enjoy the flowing hospitality and experience the boundless benevolence of this prince of Hebrew merchants.
Gethsemane
THE Christian convents form one of the most remarkable features of modern Jerusalem. There are three principal ones; the Latin Convent of Terra Santa, founded, it is believed, during the last crusade, and richly endowed by the kings of Christendom; the Armenian and the Greek convents, whose revenues are also considerable, but derived from the numerous pilgrims of their different churches, who annually visit the Holy Sepulchre, and generally during their sojourn reside within the walls of their respective religious houses. To be competent to supply such accommodation, it will easily be apprehended that they are of considerable size. They are in truth monastic establishments of the first class, as large as citadels, and almost as strong. Lofty stone walls enclose an area of acres, in the centre of which rises an irregular mass of buildings and enclosures; courts of all shapes, galleries of cells, roofs, terraces, gardens, corridors, churches, houses, and even streets. Sometimes as many as five thousand pilgrims have been lodged, fed, and tended during Easter in one of these convents.
Not in that of Terra Santa, of which a Protestant traveller, passing for a pilgrim, is often the only annual guest; as Tancred at present. In a whitewashed cell, clean, and sufficiently airy and spacious, Tancred was lying on an iron bedstead, the only permanent furniture of the chamber, with the exception of a crucifix, but well suited to the fervent and procreative clime. He was smoking a Turkish pipe, which stretched nearly across the apartment, and his Italian attendant, Baroni, on one knee, was arranging the bowl. ‘I begin rather to like it,’ said Tancred. ‘I am sure you would, my lord. In this country it is like mother’s milk, nor is it possible to make way without it. ‘Tis the finest tobacco of Latakia, the choicest in the world, and I have smoked all. I begged it myself from Signor Besso, whose divan is renowned, the day I called on him with your lordship’s letter.’
Saying this, Baroni quickly rose (a man from thirty-two to thirty-five); rather under the middle height, slender, lithe, and pliant; a long black beard, cleared off his chin when in Europe, and concealed under his cravat, but always ready for the Orient; whiskers closely shaved but strongly marked, sallow, an aquiline nose, white teeth, a sparkling black eye. His costume entirely white, fashion Mamlouk, that is to say, trousers of a prodigious width, and a light jacket; a white shawl wound round his waist, enclosing his dagger; another forming his spreading turban. Temperament, remarkable vivacity modified by extraordinary experience.
Availing himself of the previous permission of his master, Baroni, having arranged the pipe, seated himself cross-legged on the floor.
‘And what are they doing about the house?’ inquired Tancred.
‘They will be all stowed to-day,’ replied Baroni. ‘I shall not quit this place, ‘said Tancred; ‘I wish to be quite undisturbed.’
‘Be not alarmed, my lord; they are amused. The colonel never quits the consulate; dines there every day, and tells stories about the Peninsular war and the Bellamont cavalry, just as he did on board. Mr. Bernard is always with the English bishop, who is delighted to have an addition to his congregation, which is not too much, consisting of his own family, the English and Prussian consuls, and five Jews, whom they have converted at twenty piastres a-week; but I know they are going to strike for wages. As for the doctor, he has not a minute to himself. The governor’s wife has already sent for him; he has been admitted to the harem; has felt all their pulses without seeing any of their faces, and his medicine chest is in danger of being exhausted before your lordship requires its aid.’
‘Take care that they are comfortable,’ said Tancred. ‘And what does your lordship wish to do today?’
‘I must go to Gethsemane.’
‘’Tis the shot of an arrow; go out by the gate of Sion, pass through the Turkish cemetery, cross the Kedron, which is so dry this weather that you may do so in your slippers, and you will find the remnant of an olive grove at the base of the mount.’
‘You talk as if you were giving a direction in London.’
‘I wish I knew London as well as I know Jerusalem! This is not a very great place, and I think I have been here twenty times. Why, I made eight visits here in ‘40 and ‘41; twice from England, and six times from Egypt.’
‘Active work!’
‘Ah! those were times! If the Pasha had taken M. de Sidonia’s advice, in ‘41, something would have happened in this city——’ And here Baroni pulled up: ‘Your lordship’s pipe draws easy?’
‘Very well. And when was your first visit here, Baroni?’
‘When M. de Sidonia travelled. I came in his suite from Naples, eighteen years ago, the next Annunciation of our blessed Lady,’ and he crossed himself.
‘You must have been very young then?’
‘Young enough; but it was thought, I suppose, that I could light a pipe. We were seven when we left Naples, all picked men; but I was the only one who was in Paraguay with M. de Sidonia, and that was nearly the end of our travels, which lasted five years.’
‘And what became of the rest?’
‘Got ill or got stupid; no mercy in either case with M. de Sidonia, packed off instantly, wherever you may be; whatever money you like, but go you must. If you were in the middle of the desert, and the least grumbling, you would be spliced on a camel, and a Bedouin tribe would be hired to take you to the nearest city, Damascus or Jerusalem, or anywhere, with an order on Signor Besso, or some other signor, to pay them.’
‘And you were never invalided?’
‘Never; I was young and used to tumble about as long as I can remember day; but it was sharp practice sometimes; five years of such work as few men have been through. It educated me and opened my mind amazingly.’
‘It seems to have done so,’ said Tancred, quietly.
Shortly after this, Tancred, attended by Baroni, passed the gate of Sion. Not a human being was visible, except the Turkish sentries. It was midsummer, but no words and no experience of other places can convey an idea of the canicular heat of Jerusalem. Bengal, Egypt, even Nubia, are nothing to it; in these countries there are rivers, trees, shade, and breezes; but Jerusalem at midday in midsummer is a city of stone in a land of iron with a sky of brass. The wild glare and savage lustre of the landscape are themselves awful. We have all read of the man who had lost his shadow; this is a shadowless world. Everything is so flaming and so clear, that it would remind one of a Chinese painting, but that the scene is one too bold and wild for the imagination of the Mongol race.
‘There,’ said Baroni, pointing to a group of most ancient olive trees at the base of the opposite hill, and speaking as if he were showing the way to Kensington, ‘there is Gethsemane; the path to the right leads to Bethany.’
‘Leave me now,’ said Tancred.
There are moments when we must be alone, and Tancred had fixed upon this hour for visiting Gethsemane, because he felt assured that no one would be stirring. Descending Mount Sion, and crossing Kedron, he entered the sacred grove.
The Lady of Bethany
THE sun had been declining for some hours, the glare of the earth had subsided, the fervour of the air was allayed. A caravan came winding round the hills, with many camels and persons in rich, bright Syrian dresses; a congregation that had assembled at the Church of the Ascension on Mount Olivet had broken up, and the side of the hill was studded with brilliant and picturesque groups; the standard of the Crescent floated on the Tower of David; there was the clang of Turkish music, and the governor of the city, with a numerous cavalcade, might be discerned on Mount Moriah, caracoling without the walls; a procession of women bearing classic vases on their heads, who had been fetching the waters of Siloah from the well of Job, came up the valley of Jehosha-phat, to wind their way to the gate of Stephen and enter Jerusalem by the street of Calvary.
Tancred came forth from the garden of Gethsemane, his face was flushed with the rapt stillness of pious ecstasy; hours had vanished during his passionate reverie, and he stared upon the declining sun.
‘The path to the right leads to Bethany.’ The force of association brought back the last words that he had heard from a human voice. And can he sleep without seeing Bethany? He mounts the path. What a landscape surrounds him as he moves! What need for nature to be fair in a scene like this, where not a spot is visible that is not heroic or sacred, consecrated or memorable; not a rock that is not the cave of prophets; not a valley that is not the valley of heaven-anointed kings; not a mountain that is not the mountain of God!
Before him is a living, a yet breathing and existing city, which Assyrian monarchs came down to besiege, which the chariots of Pharaohs encompassed, which Roman Emperors have personally assailed, for which Saladin and Coeur de Lion, the desert and Christendom, Asia and Europe, struggled in rival chivalry; a city which Mahomet sighed to rule, and over which the Creator alike of Assyrian kings and Egyptian Pharaohs and Roman Caesars, the Framer alike of the desert and of Christendom, poured forth the full effusion of His divinely human sorrow.
What need of cascade and of cataract, the deep green turf, the foliage of the fairest trees, the impenetrable forest, the abounding river, mountains of glaciered crest, the voice of birds, the bounding forms of beauteous animals; all sights and sounds of material loveliness that might become the delicate ruins of some archaic theatre, or the lingering fanes of some forgotten faith? They would not be observed as the eye seized on Sion and Calvary; the gates of Bethlehem and Damascus; the hill of Titus; the Mosque of Mahomet and the tomb of Christ. The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.
The path winding round the southern side of the Mount of Olives at length brought Tancred in sight of a secluded village, situate among the hills on a sunny slope, and shut out from all objects excepting the wide landscape which immediately faced it; the first glimpse of Arabia through the ravines of the Judæan hills; the rapid Jordan quitting its green and happy valley for the bitter waters of Asphaltites, and, in the extreme distance, the blue mountains of Moab.
Ere he turned his reluctant steps towards the city, he was attracted by a garden, which issued, as it were, from a gorge in the hills, so that its limit was not perceptible, and then spread over a considerable space, comparatively with the inclosures in its vicinity, until it reached the village. It was surrounded by high stone walls, which every now and then the dark spiral forms of a cypress or a cedar would overtop, and in the more distant and elevated part rose a tall palm tree, bending its graceful and languid head, on which the sunbeam glittered. It was the first palm that Tancred had ever seen, and his heart throbbed as he beheld that fair and sacred tree.
As he approached the garden, Tancred observed that its portal was open: he stopped before it, and gazed upon its walks of lemon trees with delight and curiosity. Tancred had inherited from his mother a passion for gardens; and an eastern garden, a garden in the Holy Land, such as Gethsemane might have been in those days of political justice when Jerusalem belonged to the Jews; the occasion was irresistible; he could not withstand the temptation of beholding more nearly a palm tree; and he entered.
Like a prince in a fairy tale, who has broken the mystic boundary of some enchanted pleasaunce, Tancred traversed the alleys which were formed by the lemon and pomegranate tree, and sometimes by the myrtle and the rose. His ear caught the sound of falling water, bubbling with a gentle noise; more distinct and more forcible every step that he advanced. The walk in which he now found himself ended in an open space covered with roses; beyond them a gentle acclivity, clothed so thickly with a small bright blue flower that it seemed a bank of turquoise, and on its top was a kiosk of white marble, gilt and painted; by its side, rising from a group of rich shrubs, was the palm, whose distant crest had charmed Tancred without the gate.
In the centre of the kiosk was the fountain, whose alluring voice had tempted Tancred to proceed further than he had at first dared to project. He must not retire without visiting the waters which had been speaking to him so long. Following the path round the area of roses, he was conducted to the height of the acclivity, and entered the kiosk; some small beautiful mats were spread upon its floor, and, reposing upon one of them, Tancred watched the bright clear water as it danced and sparkled in its marble basin.
The reader has perhaps experienced the effect of falling water. Its lulling influence is proverbial. In the present instance, we must remember that Tancred had been exposed to the meridian fervour of a Syrian sun, that he had been the whole day under the influence of that excitement which necessarily ends in exhaustion; and that, in addition to this, he had recently walked some distance; it will not, therefore, be looked upon as an incident improbable or astonishing, that Lord Montacute, after pursuing for some time that train of meditation which was his custom, should have fallen asleep.
His hat had dropped from his head; his rich curls fell on his outstretched arm that served as a pillow for a countenance which in the sweet dignity of its blended beauty and stillness might have become an archangel; and, lying on one of the mats, in an attitude of unconscious gracefulness, which a painter might have transferred to his portfolio, Tancred sank into a deep and dreamless repose.
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He woke refreshed and renovated, but quite insensible of all that had recently occurred. He stretched his limbs; something seemed to embarrass him; he found himself covered with a rich robe. He was about to rise, resting on his arm, when turning his head he beheld the form of a woman.
She was young, even for the East; her stature rather above the ordinary height, and clothed in the rich dress usual among the Syrian ladies. She wore an amber vest of gold-embroidered silk, fitting closely to her shape, and fastening with buttons of precious stones from the bosom to the waist, there opening like a tunic, so that her limbs were free to range in her huge Mamlouk trousers, made of that white Cashmere a shawl of which can be drawn through a ring. These, fastened round her ankles with clasps of rubies, fell again over her small slippered feet. Over her amber vest she had an embroidered pelisse of violet silk, with long hanging sleeves, which showed occasionally an arm rarer than the costly jewels which embraced it; a many-coloured Turkish scarf inclosed her waist; and then, worn loosely over all, was an outer pelisse of amber Cashmere, lined with the fur of the white fox. At the back of her head was a cap, quite unlike the Greek and Turkish caps which we are accustomed to see in England, but somewhat resembling the head-dress of a Mandarin; round, not flexible, almost flat; and so thickly in-crusted with pearls, that it was impossible to detect the colour of the velvet which covered it. Beneath it descended two broad braids of dark brown hair, which would have swept the ground had they not been turned half-way up, and there fastened with bunches of precious stones; these, too, restrained the hair which fell, in rich braids, on each side of her face.
That face presented the perfection of oriental beauty; such as it existed in Eden, such as it may yet occasionally be found among the favoured races in the favoured climes, and such as it might have been found abundantly and for ever, had not the folly and malignity of man been equal to the wisdom and beneficence of Jehovah. The countenance was oval, yet the head was small. The complexion was neither fair nor dark, yet it possessed the brilliancy of the north without its dryness, and the softness peculiar to the children of the sun without its moisture. A rich, subdued and equable tint overspread this visage, though the skin was so transparent that you occasionally caught the streaky splendour of some vein like the dappled shades in the fine peel of beautiful fruit.
But it was in the eye and its overspreading arch that all the Orient spake, and you read at once of the starry vaults of Araby and the splendour of Chaldean skies. Dark, brilliant, with pupil of great size and prominent from its socket, its expression and effect, notwithstanding the long eyelash of the desert, would have been those of a terrible fascination had not the depth of the curve in which it reposed softened the spell and modified irresistible power by ineffable tenderness. This supreme organisation is always accompanied, as in the present instance, by a noble forehead, and by an eyebrow of perfect form, spanning its space with undeviating beauty; very narrow, though its roots are invisible.
The nose was small, slightly elevated, with long oval nostrils fully developed. The small mouth, the short upper lip, the teeth like the neighbouring pearls of Ormuz, the round chin, polished as a statue, were in perfect harmony with the delicate ears, and the hands with nails shaped like almonds.
Such was the form that caught the eye of Tan-cred. She was on the opposite side of the fountain, and stood gazing on him with calmness, and with a kind of benignant curiosity: The garden, the kiosk, the falling waters, recalled the past, which flashed over his mind almost at the moment when he beheld the beautiful apparition. Half risen, yet not willing to remain until he was on his legs to apologise for his presence, Tancred, still leaning on his arm and looking up at his unknown companion, said, ‘Lady, I am an intruder.’
The lady, seating herself on the brink of the fountain, and motioning at the same time with her hand to Tancred not to rise, replied, ‘We are so near the desert that you must not doubt our hospitality.’
‘I was tempted by the first sight of a palm tree to a step too bold; and then sitting by this fountain, I know not how it was——’
‘You yielded to our Syrian sun,’ said the lady.
‘It has been the doom of many; but you, I trust, will not find it fatal. Walking in the garden with my maidens, we observed you, and one of us covered your head. If you remain in this land you should wear the turban.’
‘This garden seems a paradise,’ said Tancred. ‘I had not thought that anything so fair could be found among these awful mountains. It is a spot that quite becomes Bethany.’
‘You Franks love Bethany?’
‘Naturally; a place to us most dear and interesting.’
‘Pray, are you of those Franks who worship a Jewess; or of those other who revile her, break her images, and blaspheme her pictures?’
‘I venerate, though I do not adore, the mother of God,’ said Tancred, with emotion.
‘Ah! the mother of Jesus!’ said his companion. ‘He is your God. He lived much in this village. He was a great man, but he was a Jew; and you worship him.’
‘And you do not worship him?’ said Tancred, looking up to her with an inquiring glance, and with a reddening cheek.
‘It sometimes seems to me that I ought,’ said the lady, ‘for I am of his race, and you should sympathise with your race.’
‘You are, then, a Hebrew?’
‘I am of the same blood as Mary whom you venerate, but do not adore.’
‘You just now observed,’ said Tancred, after a momentary pause, ‘that it sometimes almost seems to you that you ought to acknowledge my Lord and Master. He made many converts at Bethany, and found here some of his gentlest disciples. I wish that you had read the history of his life.’
‘I have read it. The English bishop here has given me the book. It is a good one, written, I observe, entirely by Jews. I find in it many things with which I agree; and if there be some from which I dissent, it may be that I do not comprehend them.’
‘You are already half a Christian!’ said Tancred, with animation.
‘But the Christianity which I draw from your book does not agree with the Christianity which you practise,’ said the lady, ‘and I fear, therefore, it may be heretical.’
‘The Christian Church would be your guide.’
‘Which?’ inquired the lady; ‘there are so many in Jerusalem. There is the good bishop who presented me with this volume, and who is himself a Hebrew: he is a Church; there is the Latin Church, which was founded by a Hebrew; there is the Armenian Church, which belongs to an Eastern nation who, like the Hebrews, have lost their country and are scattered in every clime; there is the Abyssinian Church, who hold us in great honour, and practise many of our rites and ceremonies; and there are the Greek, the Maronite, and the Coptic Churches, who do not favour us, but who do not treat us as grossly as they treat each other. In this perplexity it may be wise to remain within the pale of a church older than all of them, the church in which Jesus was born and which he never quitted, for he was born a Jew, lived a Jew, and died a Jew; as became a Prince of the House of David, which you do and must acknowledge him to have been. Your sacred genealogies prove the fact; and if you could not establish it, the whole fabric of your faith falls to the ground.’
‘If I had no confidence in any Church,’ said Tancred, with agitation, ‘I would fall down before God and beseech him to enlighten me; and, in this land,’ he added, in a tone of excitement, ‘I cannot believe that the appeal to the Mercy-seat would be made in vain.’
‘But human wit ought to be exhausted before we presume to invoke divine interposition,’ said the lady. ‘I observe that Jesus was as fond of asking questions as of performing miracles; an inquiring spirit will solve mysteries. Let me ask you: you think that the present state of my race is penal and miraculous?’
Tancred gently bowed assent.
‘Why do you?’ asked the lady.
‘It is the punishment ordained for their rejection and crucifixion of the Messiah.’
‘Where is it ordained?’
‘Upon our heads and upon our children be his blood.’
‘The criminals said that, not the judge. Is it a principle of your jurisprudence to permit the guilty to assign their own punishment? They might deserve a severer one. Why should they transfer any of the infliction to their posterity? What evidence have you that Omnipotence accepted the offer? It is not so announced in your histories. Your evidence is the reverse. He, whom you acknowledge as omnipotent, prayed to Jehovah to forgive them on account of their ignorance. But, admit that the offer was accepted, which in my opinion is blasphemy, is the cry of a rabble at a public execution to bind a nation? There was a great party in the country not disinclined to Jesus at the time, especially in the provinces where he had laboured for three years, and on the whole with success; are they and their children to suffer? But you will say they became Christians. Admit it. We were originally a nation of twelve tribes; ten, long before the advent of Jesus, had been carried into captivity and scattered over the East and the Mediterranean world; they are probably the source of the greater portion of the existing Hebrews; for we know that, even in the time of Jesus, Hebrews came up to Jerusalem at the Passover from every province of the Roman Empire. What had they to do with the crucifixion or the rejection?’
‘The fate of the Ten Tribes is a deeply interesting question,’ said Tancred; ‘but involved in, I fear, inexplicable-obscurity. In England there are many who hold them to be represented by the Afghans, who state that their ancestors followed the laws of Moses. But perhaps they ceased to exist and were blended with their conquerors.’
‘The Hebrews have never blended with their conquerors,’ said the lady, proudly. ‘They were conquered frequently, like all small states situate amid rival empires. Syria was the battlefield of the great monarchies. Jerusalem has not been conquered oftener than Athens, or treated worse; but its people, unhappily, fought too bravely and rebelled too often, so at last they were expatriated. I hold that, to believe that the Hebrew communities are in a principal measure the descendants of the Ten Tribes, and of the other captivities preceding Christ, is a just, and fair, and sensible inference, which explains circumstances that otherwise could not be explicable. But let that pass. We will suppose all the Jews in all the cities of the world to be the lineal descendants of the mob who shouted at the crucifixion. Yet another question! My grandfather is a Bedouin sheikh, chief of one of the most powerful tribes of the desert. My mother was his daughter. He is a Jew; his whole tribe are Jews; they read and obey the five books, live in tents, have thousands of camels, ride horses of the Nedjed breed, and care for nothing except Jehovah, Moses, and their mares. Were they at Jerusalem at the crucifixion, and does the shout of the rabble touch them? Yet my mother marries a Hebrew of the cities, and a man, too, fit to sit on the throne of King Solomon; and a little Christian Yahoor with a round hat, who sells figs at Smyrna, will cross the street if he see her, lest he should be contaminated by the blood of one who crucified his Saviour; his Saviour being, by his own statement, one of the princes of our royal house. No; I will never become a Christian, if I am to eat such sand! It is not to be found in your books. They were written by Jews, men far too well acquainted with their subject to indite such tales of the Philistines as these!’
Tancred looked at her with deep interest as her eye flashed fire, and her beautiful cheek was for a moment suffused with the crimson cloud of indignant passion; and then he said, ‘You speak of things that deeply interest me, or I should not be in this land. But tell me: it cannot be denied that, whatever the cause, the miracle exists; and that the Hebrews, alone of the ancient races, remain, and are found in every country, a memorial of the mysterious and mighty past.’
‘Their state may be miraculous without being penal. But why miraculous? Is it a miracle that Jehovah should guard his people? And can He guard them better than by endowing them with faculties superior to those of the nations among whom they dwell?’
‘I cannot believe that merely human agencies could have sustained a career of such duration and such vicissitudes.’
‘As for human agencies, we have a proverb: “The will of man is the servant of God.” But if you wish to make a race endure, rely upon it you should expatriate them. Conquer them, and they may blend with their conquerors; exile them, and they will live apart and for ever. To expatriate is purely oriental, quite unknown to the modern world. We were speaking of the Armenians, they are Christians, and good ones, I believe.’
‘I have understood very orthodox.’ ‘Go to Armenia, and you will not find an Armenian. They, too, are an expatriated nation, like the Hebrews. The Persians conquered their land, and drove out the people. The Armenian has a proverb: “In every city of the East I find a home.” They are everywhere; the rivals of my people, for they are one of the great races, and little degenerated: with all our industry, and much of our energy; I would say, with all our human virtues, though it cannot be expected that they should possess our divine qualities; they have not produced Gods and prophets, and are proud that they can trace up their faith to one of the obscurest of the Hebrew apostles, and who never knew his great master.’
‘But the Armenians are found only in the East,’ said Tancred.
‘Ah!’ said the lady, with a sarcastic smile; ‘it is exile to Europe, then, that is the curse: well, I think you have some reason. I do not know much of your quarter of the globe: Europe is to Asia what America is to Europe. But I have felt the winds of the Exuine blowing up the Bosphorus; and, when the Sultan was once going to cut off our heads for helping the Egyptians, I passed some months at Vienna. Oh! how I sighed for my beautiful Damascus!’
‘And for your garden at Bethany?’ said Tancred.
‘It did not exist then. This is a recent creation,’ said the lady. ‘I have built a nest in the chink of the hills, that I might look upon Arabia; and the palm tree that invited you to honour my domain was the contribution of my Arab grandfather to the only garden near Jerusalem. But I want to ask you another question. What, on the whole, is the thing most valued in Europe?’
Tancred pondered; and, after a slight pause, said, ‘I think I know what ought to be most valued in Europe; it is something very different from what I fear I must confess is most valued there. My cheek burns while I say it; but I think, in Europe, what is most valued is money.’
‘On the whole,’ said the lady, ‘he that has most money there is most honoured?’
‘Practically, I apprehend so.’
‘Which is the greatest city in Europe?’
‘Without doubt, the capital of my country, London.’
‘Greater I know it is than Vienna; but is it greater than Paris?’
‘Perhaps double the size of Paris.’
‘And four times that of Stamboul! What a city! Why ‘tis Babylon! How rich the most honoured man must be there! Tell me, is he a Christian?’
‘I believe he is one of your race and faith.’ ‘And in Paris; who is the richest man in Paris?’ ‘The brother, I believe, of the richest man in London.’
‘I know all about Vienna,’ said the lady, smiling. ‘Cæsar makes my countrymen barons of the empire, and rightly, for it would fall to pieces in a week without their support. Well, you must admit that the European part of the curse has not worked very fatally.’
‘I do not see,’ said Tancred thoughtfully, after a short pause, ‘that the penal dispersion of the Hebrew nation is at all essential to the great object of the Christian scheme. If a Jew did not exist, that would equally have been obtained.’
‘And what do you hold to be the essential object of the Christian scheme?’ ‘The Expiation.’
‘Ah!’ said the lady, in a tone of much solemnity, ‘that is a great idea; in harmony with our instincts, with our traditions, our customs. It is deeply impressed upon the convictions of this land. Shaped as you Christians offer the doctrine, it loses none of its sublimity; or its associations, full at the same time of mystery, power, and solace. A sacrificial Mediator with Jehovah, that expiatory intercessor born from the chosen house of the chosen people, yet blending in his inexplicable nature the divine essence with the human elements, appointed before all time, and purifying, by his atoning blood, the myriads that preceded and the myriads that will follow us, without distinction of creed or clime, this is what you believe. I acknowledge the vast conception, dimly as my brain can partially embrace it. I understand thus much: the human race is saved; and, without the apparent agency of a Hebrew prince, it could not have been saved. Now tell me: suppose the Jews had not prevailed upon the Romans to crucify Jesus, what would have become of the Atonement?’
‘I cannot permit myself to contemplate such contingencies,’ said Tancred. ‘The subject is too high for me to touch with speculation. I must not even consider an event that had been pre-ordained by the Creator of the world for countless ages.’
‘Ah!’ said the lady; ‘pre-ordained by the Creator of the world for countless ages! Where, then, was the inexpiable crime of those who fulfilled the beneficent intention? The holy race supplied the victim and the immolators. What other race could have been entrusted with such a consummation? Was not Abraham prepared to sacrifice even his son? And with such a doctrine, that embraces all space and time; nay more, chaos and eternity; with divine persons for the agents, and the redemption of the whole family of man for the subject; you can mix up the miserable persecution of a single race! And this is practical, not doctrinal Christianity. It is not found in your Christian books, which were all written by Jews; it must have been made by some of those Churches to which you have referred me. Persecute us! Why, if you believe what you profess, you should kneel to us! You raise statues to the hero who saves a country. We have saved the human race, and you persecute us for doing it.’
‘I am no persecutor,’ said Tancred, with emotion; ‘and, had I been so, my visit to Bethany would have cleansed my heart of such dark thoughts.’
‘We have some conclusions in common,’ said his companion, rising. ‘We agree that half Christendom worships a Jewess, and the other half a Jew. Now let me ask one more question. Which is the superior race, the worshipped or the worshippers?’
Tancred looked up to reply, but the lady had disappeared.