The pomp and power departed, the lost magnificence:
The hills were proud to see thee, and they are sadder now;
The sea was proud to bear thee, and wears a troubled brow,
And evermore the surges chant forth their vain desire:
‘Where are the ships of Tarshish, the mighty ships of Tyre?’”
One of the most sublime experiences of life is to stand where he stood, with the great waves rolling up the beach and shaking the earth with their powerful surges, and with the spray breaking about the dark ruins of the ancient city, and there repeat the poem from which the above verses are taken. It gives power and life to the words which can never be felt or seen by those who have never heard the bellowings or felt the shocks of the Mediterranean surf.
From Tyre he ascended Mount Carmel, and following the shore to Jaffa, took the usual route to Jerusalem. It was the most pleasant season of the year (April), and all vegetation was fast springing into its bountiful life. The cactus, orange, and pomegranate were in bloom, and all nature seemed in its most cheerful mood. So like a paradise did it look to him, that it was some little time before he could get into that frame of mind which brought a realization that he was in that land of great renown. But as that thrilling moment arrived when he stepped upon the highest plateau of the mountains near Jerusalem and looked with astonished eyes over the valley and on the “City of our God and the mountain of his holiness,” he felt, with a sudden thrill, that he was in the presence of the Great and the Holy. With emotions that cannot be described he rode over those sacred fields and entered the gates of the city.
From Jerusalem he made an excursion, by the way of Bethany, to the Dead Sea. It was a sultry day, and he suffered much from the heat, having therein a suggestion of the rain of fire and brimstone which destroyed the cities whose ruins are supposed to be petrified at the bottom of the Dead Sea. With his usual hardihood he plunged fearlessly into the bituminous waters of the Dead Sea, and seemed to enjoy what no traveller who has since indulged in that bath is known to have enjoyed, the buoyance of the water and the sensations caused by the volcanic materials held in solution.
On his return to the city he remained for several days examining the sacred localities and contending with the crowds of beggars and guides who blocked the narrow and filthy streets of Jerusalem. The wretchedness, poverty, disease, and filth of the people are so prominent and so loathsome, that unless the ordinary traveller keeps constantly on his guard, he will forget all the old and holy associations in his disgust for the city of to-day. It is said that the city is less dirty and less stricken with disease than it was in 1850. If such be the fact, it is a marvel indeed how Mr. Taylor ever found a fit place for his Muse, which so frequently visited him there. He seems, however, to have been deeply interested in everything, having about as little faith in what the guides told him about the locality of the Holy Sepulchre, Calvary, Gethsemane, and the true cross, as travellers in more modern times appear to entertain. Jerusalem was not only all that we have represented it to be outwardly, but the people would lie beyond the fables of any other people; would steal and would murder. To be much troubled by these facts would destroy the poetry of the place, and Mr. Taylor allowed none of those things to move him. He wrote of the facts as he found them, uncolored by the imagination, and seems to have flattered himself that he was not as sentimental as the travellers who had preceded him. If he was so very practical, whence such beautiful poetry?
“Fair shines the moon, Jerusalem,