"It seems to have been peculiar to the NAZARITES to suffer their hair to grow long, and to abstain from the use of wine, on making a sacred vow; and the story of Delilah, and Samson, who was a NAZARITE, is familiar to all."

9. Nazarite, this critical inquirer takes for granted, must mean a native of Nazareth! but there is yet no danger of his reader being deceived, since he makes, as usual, his appeal to a testimony that contradicts him; for all to whom the story of Samuel is familiar, well know that he was of Zorah, and had no connection whatever with Nazareth; and that consequently a Nazarite is not a Nazarean. This mode of producing evidence against himself really spares us so much trouble, that we cannot feel too grateful for it.

10. His field of compilation is not, however, confined to the writers of antiquity-' as the storm drives at any door he knocks.' Nearly six pages (367-373.) are allotted to a paper by an anonymous author in the Gentleman's Magazine;' and we know not whether we owe it to the ignorance of Mr. Urban's ingenious Correspondent, or to his own, or to both, that he writes Arena,' for Podium, in his details of a theatre; and Piræum more than once for the Piraeus of Athens.

10. We shall not be accused of bestowing an undue share of attention on the examination of the nature of Mr. Buckingham's citations, when we inform the reader that they occupy the full half of the volume. The day, however, is happily gone by when such a mode of bookmaking could pass upon the world for learning. Pedantry is not the name for it, because that seems to imply something, at least of erudition and research; whereas this is that sort of fitting on of ready-made extracts from indexes and margins, and gazetteers, and magazines, which is the legitimate resource of provincial guide-books, and tours to lakes and watering-places, where it is easy to gain a few pages by setting out from the Druids, and the Ancient Britons, and Boadicea.' This class of literature, it fortunately does not fall within our province to notice; but we can hardly suppress our disgust when we find this beggarly process introduced into the classic and holy regions of the East, and obtruded upon our notice in the pages of a quarto volume.

11. There is yet a charge of a more serious nature which lies against this work, and which we will simply preface with an extract from the author's introductory observations:

"At every step of a traveller's progress through Palestine, his indignation is so roused by attempted impositions on his judgment, and sometimes even on his senses, that his warm expression of it, in pouring forth epithets of contempt for such absurdities, may sometimes be conceived to display a contempt for religion itself. "

"Whenever the reader meets with such passages, he is intreated, in the true spirit of that Christian charity which is not easily provoked, which thinketh no evil, which heareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, crediteth all things' to put the most favourable construction on the passage that it will bear; AND IF

THE BEST OF THESE IS BAD, TO PASS IT BY.

<< There are some anecdotes detailed, more particularly those witnessed at Jerusalem, which may be thought also unfit for the public eye, but they are too descriptive of the state of manners there to be wholly omitted. If I have given a colouring to these, which is not in conformity with the reigning taste, I request the reader to pass them over in silence also, and attribute both these defects rather to my ignorance of the state of public feeling on these subjects, among my own countrymen, from having mixed much more with foreigners, than to any wish to shock the prejudices of the one class, or the delicacy of the other." P. xviii.

Decency and piety, then, are conceived by Mr.Buckingham to be mere matters of local fashion and convention; and should the reigning taste not revolt at it, he holds an author fully justified in disregarding both! He does, indeed, (in a wanton profanation of one of the most tender

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and beautiful passages of Scripture), obligingly invite us to pass over such passages as offend.' As readers,we possibly might; as reviewers, we cannot and we have found accordingly, as he had led us to expect, a sneering and irreverent tone in almost every paragraph where matters connected with sacred history are spoken of, and this upon those spots the most calculated to inspire very opposite sentiments in a well-regulated mind. Not unfrequently we detect him covertly aiming a side-blow at the miracles of the gospel.

"This lake (of Tiberias), like the Dead Sea, with which it communicates, is, for the same reason, never violently agitated for any length of time. The same local features, however, render it occasionally subject to whirlwinds, squalls, and sudden gusts from the hollow of the mountains, which, as in every other similar basin, are of momentary duration, and the most furious gust is instantly succeeded BY A CALM."-p. 468. (Note.) " And they launched forth: but as they sailed, Jesus fell asleep, and there came down a storm of wind on the lake, and they were filled with water and were in jeopardy, and they came to him and awoke him, and said, Master, Master, we perish: and he rebuked the wind, and the raging of the sea, AND THERE WAS A CALM.- Luke, chap. viii.”

The drift and intention of this commentary cannot be mistaken, but the assertion itself is untrue; since, first of all, there are not the same causes of stillness in the waters of this lake as in that of the Dead Sea, whose specific gravity is so much greater, that it has been proved, by recent experiment, that persons unable to swim elsewhere, will actually float upon their surface: the ridges of mountains, also, that border the Dead Sea, are higher, and more continuous, and nearer to the margin; so that there are fewer directions in which the winds can act upon it; while the effects from the snows on Libanus and Antilibanus, which are so near as to be sensibly felt at Tiberias, are too remote to extend to the other. These constitute very broad lines of distinction; and the fact is, that the lake of Tiberias is as subject as other lakes to violent and continued agitation, especially by winds blowing from the snowy summits to the northward; and whoever has seen the waves of the Lago di Garda, or even of Como, under such circumstances, will not talk slightingly either of the force or duration of a freshwater tempest.

We have not room to comment upon the traveller's very tender and pathetic parting from his 'tried and wellloved' friends at Alexandria, which he terms 'the most painful of all GUILTLESS feelings,' nor upon the thirty-two succeeding pages, which are consumed in a passage by sea, from Egypt to Syria, enlivened as they are with the customary ingredient of a storm; and shall therefore pass at once to the middle of the volume, where we first find him attached to Mr. Bankes's expedition. All that precedes, is drawn from Maundrel, Le Bruyn, Dr. Clarke, or the Gazetteer, with the exception of a few embellishments and errors, which are the writer's own.

12. We have early opportunities of remarking a rare degree of architectural and antiquarian sagacity. At Tyre, an aqueduct upon arches is ascribed to the time of the Macedonian conquest! it is, indeed, modestly termed :

"Merely a conjecture that both the fountain and the aqueduct are the work of the same lofty and magnificent genius who connected the Island of Tyre, like that of Clazomenæ, in the Gulph of Smyrna, to the Continent, and whose works of grandeur, made subservient to public utility, soften, in some degree, the darker shades of his all-conquering character."

13. to 16. He is still more fortunate in his discovery of 'Canaanitish remains in the ditch at Acre.' Whether it was the circumstance, alone, of their being in the ditch,' which led to this conclusion, he has not given us the means of knowing; and has thus left us with a painful misgiving upon our minds, that we may possibly ourselves have occasionally seen such Canaanitish remains,' without once suspecting it. Our faith, however, in his antiquarian re

ferences is somewhat shaken, by observing how short a time he adheres to them himself. He says (p. 137.) of Cæsarea, the fort itself, as it stands, is EVIDENTLY a work of the Crusaders :' two pages afterwards, describing a ruin at El Mukhelid (Antipatris), he tells us that it showed equally good masonry with that of the FORT OF Cæsarea, THE STYLE OF WHICH IT RESEMBLED, and then goes on to enlarge upon a tower called 'Aphek,' by Josephus (misconceiving this to have stood at Antipatris *), and concludes, that the portion of the fortified building which still exists here, may be the remains of the identical building.' Thus of two structures, the style of which he himself observed to be similar, he would ascribe the one to the Crusaders, and the other to we know not whom, before the reign of Nero! Whatever objections there may be, however, to his inductions, two grand architectural discoveries in two buildings, which we had conceived to be sufficiently well-known, are enough to establish his reputation. The dome of St. Pauls is said to be of the same form with that of the great mosque at Jerusalem, that is to say, it contracts and curves inwards towards the bottom, a fact of which Sir Christopher Wren was not, we believe, aware: and a pair of stone doors (he assures us) are still hanging in the Pantheon at Rome !' +

17. As he seems to have had no suspicion that the existing walls at Cæsarea do not coincide with those of the Roman city, we are not surprised to find him asserting, that the forum, theatre, &c.' are not 'distinguishable;' whereas, had he strayed but a few paces beyond their circuit to the southward (if he knows the form of a Roman theatre at all), he would very plainly have distinguished one. But we should weary the reader were we to enter into the wide field of all that he did not see, and did not inquire for. Neither have his inquiries (when he did make them) led to very accurate information. He says (p. 90.), that the very ruins which remained of the house of St. Anna (at Sepphoury) had been entirely demolished :' whereas they then were, and probably still are, in precisely the same state as when visited by Dr. Clarke.

18. Our author would have us believe (p. 213.) that he understood and spoke Arabic better than Mr. Bankes's interpreter, who, he himself tells us, had made the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, and who, we happen to know, had been resident several years at Cairo, and married to a wife there who spoke Arabic only. So high a degree of proficiency must (one would have supposed) have ensured great accuracy in all that he tells us of the local customs of the country. Did he then at Caypha, make no inquiries? or did his Arabic scholarship extend no farther than a few stammering names for the mere necessaries of life? The population of Caypha he says, (p. 115.) being made up of Mahommedans, Christians, and Druses, the women of the last-named sect are distinguishable from both the others by a horn worn upon their heads, and from those also of their own persuasion upon Mount Libanus by the fashion of pointing it backwards instead of forward. Now as far as accuracy is of any value in such trifling details, here are, at least, three false statements. First, though Druses do frequent the markets, both of Acre and Caypha, they form no part of the population of either, and any

This Aphek was, from the context of the passage in Josephus, a place quite distinct from Antipatris, and apparently in the road from thence to Lydda. The king of Aphek is enumerated among those whom Joshua smote, (Josh. xii. 18.) and Apheca is spoken of, Joshua xv. 5., as allotted to the tribe of Judab; Пupyos should be rendered here, therefore, not a tower, but a fortress, or strong hold. It is, probably, in the same acceptation of the word, that Erparwvos Tuрyos was the name of the place upon whose site Cesarea was afterwards founded.

†These two curious particulars will be found in pages 205. and 298.

women seen there wearing the horn, were most certainly not natives of the place: secondly, this could not serve to distinguish the Druse women from the Christians; since, in every village where the two sects are intermixed (and there are very few on Mount Libanus where they are not), this form of head-dress obtains equally with those of both religions: and thirdly, in the different districts of Libanus, the horn is worn in every direction in which it is possible to protrude it; to the front, to the back, to the right side, to the left, and in every fanciful variation of obliquity.

19. Our accomplished traveller (designated, as he tells us he was, by the prior of Nazareth, as Milord Inglese, richissimo, affabilissimo, ed anche dottissimo') repays the compliment of the fathers to his learning, by continually harping upon their lamentable ignorance. We must remind him, however, that ignorant as those monks may be, there are many points upon which it is not probable, and some upon which it is not even possible, that they can be so illinformed as himself. For instance, when he is willing, at Jerusalem, to bring before us no very decorous picture of their manners and morals, he introduces us to the cook of the convent, not at all aware that the said cook was (and is always) simply a servant of the society, and a layman, wearing the habit, so that it is just as judicious in him to give us the details of this cook (even supposing them to be true) as a sample of the lives of the friars, as it would be in a foreigner to cite as a picture of an Oxford education, the incidental view of a scout tippling in an ale-house.

20. Whilst we remark so much ignorance as to the internal economy of the convents where he resided, we give full credit to the penetration manifested in discovering, among its external dependencies, what is delicately termed (p. 245.) the brothel of the Catholic monk's ;—an establishment, of which we are assured, that travellers who have been often at Jerusalem, and long resident there, had never the good fortune to hear before. On his amour with the Abyssinian lady, which was so conducted that,' as the fortunate object of her passion himself tells us (and as we are inclined to believe), 'it could not be perceived even by those who were in the same room at the time,' we should have made no comment, had it not given occasion for his speaking in terms of disparagement of poor Nathaniel Pearce, whom he represents as a 'common sailor, who could hardly read.' That Pearce had been a common sailor is true, but he was very far from being a common man; and not only could he read, and that in French as well as in English, but he wrote a very beautiful hand. He has left behind him journals of ail that passed during his long residence in Abyssinia, which, when given to the press, as we trust they will be, by Mr. Salt, to whose care he bequeathed them, will, perhaps, throw more light upon the actual state of that singular country than any other work that has been written. Gladly would we exchange ten such quartos as this, got up by this 'member of so many flourishing literary societies,' for a few pages from this 'common sailor who could hardly read.'

The charge of low origin and ignorance' (with however odd a grace it may come from such a quarter) is not restricted to Nathaniel Pearce: two respectable Germans, who seem to have committed no other offence than that of having been assisted by Mr. Bankes, in the very same manner as the writer himself was almost immediately afterwards, are described as 'young men, who were evidently persons of low origin and confined education, and their manners WERE DECIDEDLY VULGAR,' 'Although travelling (he indignantly adds) without any professed object beyond their own pleasure, they were both so poor and destitute as to SUFFER Mr. Bankes to pay their expenses.' It is to be hoped that Mr. Buckingham does not intend to upbraid them, in this place, with a degree of SUFFERANCE, which he soon found it convenient to imitate, more especially as we have the best assurances, that these young men neither violated the confidence of any employers to whom they

were responsible *, nor abused the indulgence of their benefactor, by procuring tracings from his papers, in order to turn them afterwards to account.

On entering upon the journey beyond Jordan, to which we have more than once referred, it may not be amiss to premise, that the term we, which, up to this place, must be shared between the writer, his muleteer, and an old man from Tocat, henceforward signifies himself and Mr.Bankes, he having generously allowed that gentleman to become the associate of his labours. We acquit him, however, of deriving any material benefit from such assistance; since, whatever he may have drawn from that source, he has made his own by such a felicity of misapprehension, and overlaid with such a cumbrous drapery of fustian and common place citation, that we believe it would be very hard for his companion to recognise much of his own, excepting the groundworks of what he has given as his plans, which have also undergone their full share of embellishment for effect.

21. Our travellers, having crossed the Jordan, found themselves, on the fourth day, among the ruins of Jerash, which Mr. Buckingham assumes (upon no other grounds than the resemblance of name) to be those of Geraza; and turning to his geographical dictionary, pours out upon us all that he can find there about that obscure city: this dictionary, unfortunately, did not furnish him with the only passage that gives any colour to the supposition that it really was Geraza.

In the mean time, many concurring circumstances might appear rather to fix Pella at this spot. First, that city being much oftener mentioned in history than Geraza, it seems reasonable to presume that it was more considerable. The geographical position would correspond sufficiently well. Pella was termed civitas aquarum. The fine spring rising in the heart of these splendid ruins (no ordinary appendage in those climates) accords well with such a designation; but, above all, a feature in the remains there which Mr. Buckingham (inconceivable as it is) has totally overlooked, gives a very strong presumption upon that side. There exist the ruins of seven or eight Christian churches, more or less preserved, some with crosses and legendary inscriptions on them. It was to Pella that the Christians retired, when the holy city was besieged by Titus; and they established themselves there, and called it the New Jerusalem. No such thing is recorded of Geraza;

Mr. Buckingham had undertaken to carry letters for a mercantile house to India, over land, by the most direct and expeditious route, and with all attention to economy, the firm agree. ing, on their part, to bear his expenses. From the first moment, however, of his setting foot in Asia, we find him acting as if both his time and funds were his own. How he may have since arranged matters with his tried and well loved friends at Alexandria, we know not; but this we do know, that so soon as his conduct reached their ears, Mr. Barker, the British consul at Aleppo, was authorized to take from him the dispatches, and to dismiss him; and that he being now already on his way to Bagdat, a Tartar was sent expressly after him for his recall, but died accidentally upon the road! So that it is to the timely death of this Tartar that the Asiatic Societies at Calcutta, and Literary Societies at Madras and Bombay,' are indebted for their distinguished member.

His transactions with Mr. Bankes seem to have been an episode in his plan; we have not only the statement of that gentleman with respect to them, but have seen also the deposition upon oath, of his servants, (the same who are spoken of in this work,) that Mr. Buckingham bore no part whatever either in the dispositions or the expences of the journey beyond Jordan, &c.; that he never made a single sketch during this time, nor had materials for doing so, and has, moreover, been heard to lament his inability; that the plan, which is the groundwork of that here given of Djerash, was made by Mr. Bankes, and traced, by his permission, at a window of the convent of Nazareth by Mr. Buckingham, upon a direct promise that it should not be published!

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and so great a number of considerable Christian edifices seems to offer additional ground for placing Pella here.

22. That Pella and Geraza were places distinct from each other, there are abundant passages to prove. We have stated the pretensions of Pella. Upon the side of Geraza, we know but of one passage that makes it at all probable that these are its remains. It is that in which Ammianus Marcellinus praises the walls of Geraza, coupling. them with those of Bostra. It is surprising, that Mr. Buckingham should have missed this passage, since it might be found in the index to Gibbon. To have been coupled at all with Bostra, proves Geraza to have been a place of some consequence. The walls remaining at Jerash are worthy of the commendation bestowed on those of Geraza; and as there are no others at all comparable to them within that district of the Decapolis, which must certainly have included this city, this may, perhaps, strike the balance upon that side, especially as it is doubtful whether Pella was walled. Should this evidence, coupled with the similarity of name, be deemed decisive, we are left in full possession of the surprise which it must occasion, to find ruins of an extent and multiplicity almost without parallel, at a place of which history has recorded so little beyond its bare existence.

23. Let us now see how our traveller acquits himself in the description of those extraordinary remains. At the outset (p.343.), in his notices on the triumphal arch, we find him retailing an observation, which it is fair to suppose not his own, as it is very evident that he does not understand it. This bore (he says), a striking resemblance to the work seen in the ruined city of Antinoe, in Upper Egypt.' He does not inform us by whom it was seen, or what was the nature of the work. This is very guarded we must allow; but the fact is, that the resemblance which he heard cited was not in the work;' it was in that peculiar and florid taste only of decorating the lower part of the shafts of Corinthian columns with foliage, of which there are a few very large and striking examples at Antinoe, which, if our author had ever walked through those ruins he must have seen and remembered.

24. to 26. We cannot refrain from noticing, in passing, the audacious imposition attempted upon the reader, in referring him to the vignette at the head of the chapter,' as to a view of this triumphal arch. We have not ascertained from what obsolete work this pretended view is purloined ; it is not among Le Bruyn's, to whom we have traced almost all the others; but we have only to confront the print with his own description, and the ground-plan given, to be satisfied that Mr. Buckingham is not in possession of any sketch whatever made on the spot, and of the impossibility of its having any resemblance. Over each of the 'side arches for foot passengers,' he says, was 'an open square window,' and that as all the columns were broken near their tops the crowning capitals were not seen;' and he adds, that the frieze was destroyed.' Upon turning to the vignette, we find two out of four of the crowning capitals' (as he terms them) still in their places: there is nothing that the most ignorant could possibly describe as 'an open square window over the side arches; and the frieze is very entire! The next point to which he comes he calls a naumachia, because he found that word marked upon the plan from which he traced. The form itself was sufficient to denote it for a stadium, and it was only necessary, upon so hasty a draught as this seems to have been, to note down the peculiarity of its being occasionally floated for aquatic exhibitions: but our unfortunate friend had no notion that a naumachia might, possibly, be exhibited in a circus. Be this, however, as it may, it is clear that he never looked at it on the spot; since he says, (358.) there are no appearances of seats or benches for the

spectators: whereas, we believe, that there is no other circus known (excepting, perhaps, one at Laodicea), where the seats are so well preserved as they are in this." Nor (as he confidently assures us) are there any conclusive appearances of there having been any other than these Two entrances to the city.' We venture, in all humility, to suggest that there are four, all principal gates. Again, ‘in the centre, or nearly so, of this central space, was a noble PALACE, probably the residence of the governor. This is to be in luck! The edifice of which he is speaking, is the great propylæum to the temple on the hill, probably the most entire example of that kind of structure extant. He describes (356.)'an aqueduct that crossed the stream upon arches.' There is not any such thing, nor any necessity for one; what he mistook for it, is a tall bridge, over which passes the great transverse street of the city.

On what he terms the most imposing edifice among all the ruins for size,' (which it is not,) we have the following passage:

"The impression which the noble aspect of this building made on us, as we beheld it from every quarter of the city, was such, that WE BOTH Constantly called it the temple of Jupiter,' in our conversation and in our notes. This was done without our ever suggesting the propriety of the title to each other, without our having sought for any reason to justify its adoption, or at all arguing the claim in our minds." (382.)

All this may be very true, so far as respects Mr. Buckingham, who appears to have echoed what he heard, without knowing why or wherefore. But we may very safely take upon ourselves to hint to him, what his companion's reason was. Vitruvius assigns such elevated situations as command a view of nearly the whole circuit of the walls, to the temples of the tutelary deities; and of these he enumerates Jupiter as the first; whilst of temples contiguous to theatres, he says, that they should be dedicated to Apollo or Bacchus. There are but two principal temples at Jerash; the one almost abutting on a theatre; the other, of which he is speaking, detached and central, and on such an eminence as to command an uninterrupted view of the whole walls; it was natural in any one, conversant with this passage, and wanting names on the spot to distinguish the one from the other, in speaking of them, to term this the temple of Jupiter; though, we cannot conceive, that Mr. Bankes could have had the ill taste to assume his conjecture for a fact, and boldly give it this title upon two ground-plans. But there is nothing so positive as ignorance. We have to remark, on the pretended ground-plan of this temple, (p. 382.) first, that there are no doors (as there given) opening from the exterior to the back of the cells, either in this or in any other temple; secondly, that there is not the least appearance of there having been any peristyle; and thirdly, we must suggest, that it is one of the curious felicities' of our author's mode of observation, that he uniformly, in describing it, represents this as much the largest of the temples, whereas it happens not to be so in any one respect, but inferior to that near the theatre, in every proportion, by at least a third.

27. He has also mistaken a portion of the city wall for a military guard-house, and a Christian church in the valley for a Corinthian temple! but all the stores of his learning are lavished on the details of the theatre. He has astonished us with a discovery, that the theatre of Bacchus at Athens was called Hecatompedon.' (567.) We were taught, or as it now appears, mistaught, at school, that this designation belonged not to the Theatre of Bacchus, but the Temple of Minerva. With such exactness does he give us the dimensions of the seats, and other minutiæ of the Hecatompedon' Theatre at Athens, that it may be some disappointment to him to learn, that no such edifice exists, nor did exist there' upwards of two centuries ago,' when he tells us that it was measured. A smooth turf

then covered, as it does now, the site of the Theatre of Bacchus; and the only theatre existing there, that of Herodes Atticus, had not seats in it, when Spon and Wheeler saw it, any more than it has now, so that neither will that serve his turn. He, however, balances his accounts with theatres; for while he ascribes to one at Athens what it has not, he suppresses in one at Jerash what it has, both describing and engraving one of those there without any proscenium!

28. Besides quoting the two ingenious anonymous writers in the Gentleman's Magazine,' (one of whom treats by-the-bye, not of theatres, but of an amphitheatre, and measures the seats at Nismes, where there are not any,) he has the courage to extract very largely from De la Guilletierre's Travels. He could not possibly have made a more appropriate choice. We know of no book of travels to which we can so well compare his own as to this of De la Guilletierre. Dr. Spon published, so long ago as 1679, a catalogue of 112 errors in that little volume, replete as it is with disquisitions and learning, after the manner of Mr. Buckingham. One broad line of distinction we must, indeed, admit, and that is, that on the one hand it has been pretty satisfactorily made out that no such person as this De la Guilletierre ever existed; whereas the house of Briggs, at Alexandria, we believe, and Mr. Bankes, could furnish evidence of the reality of Mr. Buckingham.*

The ground-plan given of Jerash is founded on a tracing obtained from Mr. Bankes at Nazareth +; but so little did the borrower comprehend what he copied, that, hasty and incorrect as the original necessarily was, its errors are multiplied tenfold, both on the general plate, and in those of separate edifices, which are only enlarged from it. There is a zeal for deception in this, altogether extraordinary, for the alteration is systematic, and not accidental. In this general plan, when reduced to the size of a quarto page, it was found that the individual buildings would make but little figure if kept to their proportions, and perhaps disappoint expectation. The precaution has, therefore, been taken of exaggerating all in a twofold and threefold, and some even in a sixfold proportion, and upwards. He has himself given us a scale for detecting this, by telling us that the length of the city is about 5,000 feet. If what he is pleased to call the greatest temple (which is, in reality, the second only) be compared with this scale, it will appear to be of larger dimensions than any existing. temple in the world; and some of the arched vaultings in the bath would prove, by the same proportion, to be at least one hundred and fifty feet in the span. And yet this

It may possibly have been the adroit manner in which the supposed traveller' represents himself to have made use of some Englishman whom he met, and joined company with, that has so charmed our author, as to make him almost identify him with himself during several pages. My fellow travellers supplied me, and all things went on very well, and very honourably for me; however, I would needs have it thought that I borrowed it only, though, perhaps, they might have given it as well.'-Athens, Ancient and Modern, by M. de la Guilletierre, p.6.

Of his plate of inscriptions, he says, these inscriptions were given by Mr. Burckhardt to Mr. Bankes, as well as lo myself. This we know to be totally false, so far as respects himself, and that he obtained them only from a transcript in the margin of Mr. Bankes's ground-plan, who, not wishing to hazard the loss of the originals in a dangerous journey, had copied them on that paper for the purpose of collating them on the spot. It happened, as we also know, that, from many inscriptions belonging to Jerash, given to him by Mr. Burckhardt, Mr. Bankes extracted four or five only, and these are the very same that are here given; whilst of the remainder, which equally belong to Jerash, and were equally communicated by Mr. Burckhardt, not one makes its ap

pearance.

writer seriously tells us, in his preface, that he is sure that Mr. Bankes's liberality would have admitted of' his drawings being brought before the public in such a work as this !*

29. We now proceed towards the site of another great mass of ruins, called at present Oomkais. In the way thither we are told of a place named Abil; this, it was suggested to Mr. Buckingham, might be Abile, and he, having never before heard of any other Abile but that of Lysanias mentioned by St. Luke, concludes, of course, that the Abilene was hereabouts. His proofs of this are most unfortunate, for he himself cites a passage which places Chalchis in the Abilene; now Calchis, we know, was in the Hollow Syria, under Mount Libanus. But there is not, in fact, any position more certainly ascertained than that of Abila of Lysanias. It stood upon the river Barrady, on the road between Damascus and Baalbec, where its tombs are still to be seen; and Mr. Bankes has brought home a long inscription, not observed by former travellers, copied from the face of the rock there, in which the Abilenians record the making of a new road to their city. The very circumstance of its being termed Abila' of Lysanias' might have wakened a suspicion that there were two of the same name, the other was the Abila of the Decapolis; (so styled in a curious inscription in Greek and Palmyrene, in Lord Besborough's collection;) it is enumerated in Pliny's list of the ten cities, and there can be little doubt that the Abil, upon which all the common places belonging to another city are thrown away, is really that Abila. We believe that our author is only retailing a conjecture of Dr. Seetzen, when he suggests that the district now called Adjeloon may, probably, answer to the Gaulonitis of the Romans. He is unlucky in what he borrows; for we apprehend this to be a mistake; Adjeloon is, probably, within the ancient Batanea; Gaulonitis, we conceive, lay farther to the north; and that the modern district of Jolan, which is extensive, and includes some pretty considerable places, is more likely to represent it.

30. We now reach the consummation of Mr. Buckingham's blunders. The ruins of Oomkais he gives us for Gamala. What obliquity of intellect could have led him to such a conclusion, when Dr. Seetzen had already given the place its right name, it is impossible even to conjecture. He cites a number of second-hand passages, and they every one make against him! The case is so clear, that it is hardly worth stating the grounds of it as a question. Gadara stood high, the Hieromax ran below it, and at its feet were hot baths, so celebrated as to be considered second to none, excepting to those of Baiæ: its remains were likely to exhibit traces of magnificence, since it was restored by Pompey the Great in honour of one of his freed-men. It is not possible for any remains to answer all these conditions more exactly than those at Oomkais do; two theatres are in the body of the city, and one below, near the bath, which Mr. Buckingham contrived not to see.

Gamala was situated on the lake of Gennazareth, and on the opposite side of it from Tarichea. The Hieromax cannot, therefore, have flowed near it, nor are hot springs any where spoken of as connected with it; we read little

Mr. Bankes made, we understand, three subsequent visits at different times to Jerash, during one of which he was enabled to continue there during several days; and, with the co-operation of Captains Irby and Mangles, R. N. who were with him, and indefatigable in their desire of rendering him assistance, was enabled to lay down very accurate and detailed plans of every part of the ruins, so as to supersede what was hastily done in his first expedition. But without this, we must be permitted to say, that the work of Mr. Buckingham pleads strongly for the publication of this gentleman's papers and researches upon these interesting provinces, in order that such wretched and surreptitious substitutes as those before us may be done away.

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of any other edifices there except its walls. The vestiges of Gamala might be expected, therefore, to offer little besides a steep and fortified site. Such Mr. Bankes found them in one of his subsequent journies, (not at Phik, where Dr. Seetzen had conjectured them to be, but) at El Hossn, a remarkable but abandoned position on the east side of the lake. The remains are considerable, but not splendid.

31. We cannot help feeling a sort of pity for a traveller who can have wandered through the singnlar sepulchres of Oomkais, and have bathed in its hot waters, unconscious that those were the tombs and this the bath of Gadara. For, doubtless, it was among these very tombs that the Demoniac of the Gospel resided, and that our Lord performed his miracle; and in this very bath it is that the strange scene of incantation is laid in the life of Iamblicus, by which he is said to have called up the spirits of Eros and Anteros; a circumstance which our traveller is so far from knowing, that he gravely asserts his own belief that baths near to Gadara are not mentioned by any author. (p. 434.) Had he but looked into one half of those whom he cites, without going any farther, he must have known better. Oomkais becomes thus a field of most interesting and varied associations; adorned by the rival of Cæsar, and, by a strange coincidence, the scene of one of the most remarkable miracles which the Gospel attests, and of one of the latest which paganism in its dotage pretended to. But all this was lost on Mr. Buckingham; for he, forsooth, supposed himself at Gamala! We might here safely have dismissed him, did he not seek out one more opportunity for a blunder before he recrosses the Jordan, in boldly assuring us that Sumuk (Samek) is Tarichea. Tarichea it cannot possibly be, as it stands on the wrong part of the lake, and on the wrong side of the river; for we must warn the reader that Samek is improperly placed on the map, it really lying a considerable distance eastward from the issue of the river out of the lake, upon the very centre of the southern shore. It is a small modern village.

52. The real site of Tarichea Mr. Bankes both visited and mapped in another of his excursions; it lies as described by Josephus, both with respect to Tiberias and Gamala, and has now no inhabitants. It is a highly interesting fact with regard to it, that the trench which the Jewish general and historian dug, and has described, in order to insulate the city, can still be clearly traced, and is filled with the waters of the Jordan to this day when they rise. Other parts of Josephus's details of the Jewish war, Mr. Bankes was lucky enough to discover to be surprizingly illustrated at Tiberias; the walls built there by the historian remain, excepting precisely that part which we are told was razed at the back of the camp of Vespasian, which was near the hot springs of Emmaus: but we are wandering from the matter before us; for it was not in this expedition that Mr. Bankes ascertained those points, and consequently Mr. Buckingham remained as ignorant of them as his precursors; had it been otherwise, all this would, doubtless, have made a part of Mr. Buckingham's pretensions to contribute,' as he terms it, to the common fund of human knowledge.'

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33. One word more upon Mr. Buckingham's plates, and we have done with him. The paragraph in which he announces them, in his Preface, is most warily drawn up. Many of the vignettes are from original drawings made after sketches taken on the spot.' (p. xx.) He carefully abstains from stating which of them, by whom made, and when: thus if his reader be deceived, the author has vided a retreat for his conscience, in not having hazarded the lie direct.' In a subsequent page we find the following burst of honest indignation' in his animadversions on the plates in an edition of Maundrell's Journal. Some well-meaning friend, or some interested booksellers, subsequently caused these drawings to be composed from the

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