THE FEMALES OF BETHLEHEM. 553 were some of the most beautiful of their sex we met in the East. They had slight and elegant figures; a native grace of mien and air, and large lustrous eyes, shaded by lashes of surpassing length, the soft witchery of which is described in the language of our country's poet "Such eyes! long, shadowy, with that languid fall Of the fring'd lids, which may be seen in all Lending such looks as, on their marriage days, Young maids cast down before a bridegroom's gaze!" Added to this their oval expressive faces, composed of features, regular without formality, and marked without harshness; the tasteful drapery of their light simple attire; the dark tresses that fell in wild luxuriance over their necks and shoulders, braided with small golden coins, while a zone of the same brilliant material adorned their high expanded foreheads; their elastic step, the music of their silver anklets, (Isaiah, iii. 16,) and the beauty of the long-necked vases they carried on their heads, in some supported by the left hand, while the right held up the folds of their blue tunics-all cast a charm, an inexpressible charm round those lovely Arab maidens. The rosebud's bloom, that complexion so rare under an eastern sun, was on their cheeks and lips, very different from the pink, sickly tinge of the Circassian or Osmanli, or the dark olive hue of the Abyssinian, or Egyptian. In Europe those females would be admired as most interesting brunettes ;* and a modern painter *No females in existence possess finer or more erect, and at the same time more graceful carriages than those accustomed to carry light burdens on the head. It is a subject of some surprise, why those to whose care the education of the young ladies of our own country is committed, have not sooner taken the hint from this fact, and thrown aside those horrible machines, backboards, steel straps, and monitors, calculated not only to give an awkward and ungraceful gait and appearance to the person, but really to promote deformity. To appreciate the advantages of this mode of exercise, it is only necessary to observe any milkmaid walking with a pail upon her head. To preserve its balance, she must stand perfectly erect-the shoulders must be in their natural position, and on a perfect level; and, strange as it may seem, to preserve the equilibrium should have one of the maids of Bethlehem to sit for the Madonna. Bethlehem is a straggling village, with one broad and principal street; the houses have not domed-roofs like those of Jerusalem and Ramlah, but are built, for the most part, of clay and bricks, and every house is provided with an apiary, the beehives of which are constructed of a series of earthen pots, ranged on the house tops in the same manner as the wooden ones are in Asia Minor. There are said to be about 3,000 inhabitants in this place, the greater part of whom are Arab Christians; for Ibrahim Basha, finding that the Mooslims were continually at war with the Christians, had lately expelled the former, leaving the latter in peaceable possession of the village. The inhabitants are nearly all engaged in the manufacture of those articles of sacred merchandize that supply the bazaars and warehouses of the Holy City; and no sooner was our party espied than we were beset by a multitude of bead hawkers and relic sellers, shouting aloud the respective holy powers and miraculous virtues of their different wares. Some of the articles wrought in mother-of-pearl are carved with considerable skill; more than we could expect to find in that distant land, and the workmanship of some would not disgrace the artists of our own country. One of these manufacturers, whose workshop I visited, informed me, that when a boy he had been sent by his parents to Spain, to be instructed in the trade. In the streets several Bedawee blacksmiths were at work. The rude and simple character of their temporary forges attracted of the burden, be it ever so light, the back must be straight; and more pressure is taken off those parts of it called, in technical language, the intervertebral substance, than when walking or remaining without any such appendage. Were a similar kind of exercise more used, and were our young ladies permitted to breathe a little more fresh air, we should see fewer of those deformities, even of a minor character, than at present unhappily prevail amongst the sex; and are more frequently, perhaps, the effect of inattention and improper education than of any other cause whatever. If these obvious principles were attended to, we should have less occasion for the single hour of powerful kalesthenics, resorted to, to make up for the many, many hours of the day, spent in acquiring mechanical and perhaps useless accomplishments. THE FRANK CONVENT. 555 our attention. The bellows which they employed, was a most primitive instrument of its kind, being nothing more than an inflated goatskin bag, such as we read of being used by the early Greeks, and which in this instance was blown by the smith's wife pressing its sides together and then drawing them asunder to admit the air. At the farthest extremity of the town is the Frank convent, at whose low massive door we alighted, and were well received by the fraternity. We were first conducted into the cathedral of St. Helena, a handsome, spacious hall, consisting of a central nave, and aisles separated from each other by rows of tall Corinthian pillars of grey marble, but much defaced by dirt and the remains of gaudy paintings. As there is no ceiling, the lofty roof is exposed to view; and, although composed of the last of the cedars of Lebanon, it is still in a state of good preservation, and affords a fine specimen of the architecture of its day. The chapel at the upper end of the hall is now separated from it by a wall; as it was considered too expensive to keep up the whole; and the centre has a most cold, lonely, and desolate appearance. In this cathedral Baldwin the First was crowned king of Jerusalem, and it is the most chaste, architectural building in Palestine. The chapel belonging to this part of the building scarcely deserves our notice; but, the attendant monk placing in the right hand of each of us a large lighted wax taper, led us to the subterranean grotto, called the "Chapel of the Nativity." A flight of steps conducted us into an oblong apartment, in which a small low crypt, said to be hewn out of the solid rock, was exhibited to us as the actual place of the Nativity. On one side of it is an altar with a silver plate on the floor, like to that at Calvary, and said to cover the spot on which the birth of the Saviour took place. Opposite to this, a niche in the wall contains a very handsome, polished white marble trough, like a sarcophagus, which is shown as the very manger in which the infant Jesus was laid!! This trough is on a level with the floor of the apartment, which is somewhat lower than that of the outer chamber. The niche in which it is placed contains a very good Spanish painting, representing the event. Another place in this little vault is shown as that in which the Magi presented their gifts, and is also ornamented by a good painting. A number of silver lamps, suspended from the roof, are kept continually burn 556 SUPPOSED SITE OF THE NATIVITY. ing; the walls are ornamented with blue satin and brocade, which are now in rather a faded and torn condition, but patched with tawdry furniture-calico. Can this be, in reality, the stable in which the infant Jesus was brought forth—and this the manger in which he was laid? I am constrained to say, that I do not think they are for the places shown as such are neither in accordance with the simple narrative of Scripture, nor at all analagous to the appearance that inns or public karavansaries at present exhibit throughout the East; and it must be remembered, that in the never-changing manners and customs of this country, we have at this very day the same usages and habits that existed from the very earliest period that history records. The opinions set forth and the statements for and against its identity are easily disposed of; nor would I have introduced the subject, except for the arguments brought forward by Dr. E. D. Clarke, who by the way has written most learnedly upon the place, though he acknowledges that he did not visit it; and whose arguments, if they were valid, would do away with all those that he had previously urged against the Holy Sepulchre-nay, they complete the only evidence upon that subject that he seems to ridicule. The passage runs thus :"The tradition respecting the Cave of the Nativity seems so well authenticated, as hardly to admit of dispute. Having been always held in veneration, the oratory established there by the first Christians attracted the notice and indignation of the Heathens so early as the time of Adrian, who ordered it to be demolished, and the place to be set apart for the rites of Adonis. This happened in the second century, and at a period in Adrian's life when the Cave of the Nativity was as well known in Bethlehem as the circumstance to which it owed its celebrity." He then appeals to the authority of St. Jerome, and says that "upon this subject there does not seem to be the slightest ground for scepticism."* This is strange language from a writer who, but a few pages farther back, totally overlooks the fact of this same Adrian erecting statues of Venus and Jupiter over the sepulchre of Calvary; and which likewise prove that they were subjects of *Travels in Greece, Egypt, and the Holy Land. By E. D. Clarke, LL.D. vol. iv. 8vo. edition, p. 415, 6. interest, if not of adoration, to the Christians of Jerusalem in the second century; and also in one who styles the Empress Helena "an infatuated old woman," and the Holy Sepulchre "a dusty fabric, standing like a huge pepper-box in the centre of the present modern church." It is stated by the monks, and all previous travellers have given insertion to the legend, that the whole of this grotto is hewn out of the solid rock. This, from actual inspection, I can positively deny, for part of the tapestry having fallen from the roof I was enabled, much to the annoyance of the attendant friar, to examine it, and found it arched with masonry. The chief objection to this place is its total dissimilarity to all other inns or resting places. The answer to this objection, that "it is by no means uncommon in these countries to use similar souterrains as habitations for both man and beast,"* cannot have any weight, or be taken as a proof of the identity of the manger at Bethlehem; for the places that are thus alluded to were never formed for inns, but were originally tombs, which, having been rifled of their contents, became in turn resting places for occasional travellers, and their sarcophagi or stone troughs were converted into mangers. The catacombs of Alexandria, the tombs of Sackara, and numberless other excavations could be adduced to prove this position, and no traveller has yet recorded a single instance in any country of a stable having been formed by excavating the rock beneath the surface; this one, in particular, is so small that it could barely have held a donkey, which, in order to reach it, must have been led down a steep descent under ground. In order to determine this point I paid particular attention to the karavansaries of the different eastern towns we visited. These places usually consist of a large square enclosure, surrounded by a range of buildings, the upper stories of which are appropriated to the accommodation of travellers, and the lower, and the court-yard itself for their beasts. It was in the latter of these, in all probability, the holy family had to take up their abode, the former being already so completely occupied as to afford them no room. To suppose that the place called the *Three Weeks in Palestine, p. 58. |