“The Arab has maintained his language and his original country; on the Nile, in the deserts, as far as Sinai, and beyond Jordan, he feeds his flocks. In the elevated plains of Asia Minor the Turkoman has conquered for himself a second country, the birthplace of the Osman; but Palestine and Syria are populated. For centuries the battlefield between the sons of Altai and of the Arabian wilderness, the inhabitants of the West and the half-nomadic Persians, none have been able to establish themselves and maintain their nationality: no nation can claim the name of Syrian. A chaotic mixture of all tribes and tongues, remnants of migrations from north and south, they disturb one another in the possession of the glorious land where our fathers for so many centuries emptied the cup of joy and woe, and where every clod is drenched with the blood of our heroes when their bodies were buried under the ruins of Jerusalem....”[¹]
[¹] The Times, Thursday, December 24, 1840, p. 4.
Painted by G. Richmond. R.A.D.C.L.
Engraved by T. L. Atkinson
Sir Moses Montefiore, Bart., F.R.S.
From a mezzotint engraving (proof before all letters)
lent by Israel Solomons