from what remained these scars and seams of ignominy were fairly erased. You say that in Rome I mix freely with the Roman youth, that I sit at their tables and they at mine, that I join them at the games, and in every amusement of our city life. It is true; yet still I am a Jew. I am beloved of many because I am Julian; yet by the very same am I abhorred because I am a Jew. The Roman beggar who takes my gold, - for gold is gold, begs pardon of the gods, and as he turns the corner scours the coin upon the sand. Yet, my mother, I see not why one people should thus proscribe another; nor do I look upon the wrong but with indignation. You justly accuse me with indifference to the religion of my fathers. I have never beheld with patience the slights, insults, and oppressions which, by the stronger, have been heaped upon the weaker; nor, truly, when I reflect, can I see why the worship of a people should be charged upon them as a crime. It is these injuries which have roused within me, at times, the Jew-however for the most part in my search after pleasure, I have been too ready to forget all but what ministered directly to that end. If thou art filled with wonder at so serious a vein in me, I will soon give thee the reasons thereof; but let me first speak of my passage hither, and of that which happened immediately on my arrival. But I left Antioch, as I have said, with regret. At the mouth of the Orontes I embarked in a trader, bound to Cæsarea, and then to Joppa and Alexandria. We at first were driven out to sea by an east wind, and ran quite along the shores of Cyprus; but this soon subsiding, we crossed over again to the Syrian coast, and were afterwards enabled to keep our vessel so near, the breezes being gentle and from a safe quarter, ·that I enjoyed a continued prospect of the country, with as much distinctness and satisfaction, methinks, as if I had been travelling by land; at least with distinctness enough, for every pleasure of this sort is increased by a certain degree of obscurity and dimness. Painters understand this, and over their works throw a sort of haze by some mysterious process of their divine art, which imparts to them their principal charm. No prospect and no picture is beautiful which is clear and sharp as if cut in metal. Truth itself is to me improved by a veil of this same mistiness thrown around it. But if any fault is to be found with this Syrian atmosphere, it is that of this all-involving dimness there is something too much, to that degree, indeed, that the eye is often cheated of the distant features of the landscape, the mountains which, drawn upon the chart defore us, we know to be not far distant, not too far for the eye to reach with ease, being cut off entirely by this purple wall of partition. Happily, as we drew near the port of Berytus, beyond which lay the mountains of the Libanus and Anti-Libanus, there was not so much of the quality of which I speak in the air, as to deprive us of a view of their summits, crowned with their snowy caps, filling the whole eastern horizon. It was a magnificent mountain scene, a fitting vestibule, you will say, my mother, through which to enter the holy land of Moses and Abraham. It was, I am obliged to confess, with emotions such as I had never experienced before, that I found myself now for the first time gazing upon the shores of this wonderful people, the home of my fathers. It was beautiful to the eye, as we skirted the coast, as one long continued garden. The rich agriculture of the husbandman was pushed out to the very sands of the sea-beach, and every cape, and promontory, and lofty peak, showed, sparkling in the sun, the white walls of a village or some insulated dwelling, proving how thickly peopled must be the country, which could spare its inhabitants for the cultivation of spots naturally barren and inhospitable, but now by the hand of industry changed to a soil not less fertile than that of Italy. I could not but wish that, if it were decreed I must be a Jew, I had been born and had lived in these sunny regions; and in truth, that it had pleased heaven to have retained my parents on their native soil, seeing that there, among our own hills and plains, we could not but have been a people more respected than we now are, or ever can be, wandering over the earth, forcing ourselves upon every nation and every city, unwelcome guests, among them but never of them. - We had not long lost sight of the ridges of Lebanon, when we passed successively those ancient seats of opulence and renown, Sidon and Tyre; then doubling a lofty cape, formed by a part of Mount Carmel shooting into the sea, a few hours' sail revealed a distant prospect of Cæsarea. As we drew near, I was astonished at the magnificence of the port. It is a harbor of an immense capacity as to vessels of all kinds and sizes, yet has it been formed wholly by the hand of art. The shore presents at this part of the coast an banks running from south to north, with none of those alternate projections and inlets which are proper for the security of ships against both the current of the sea and storms of wind. Wherefore, at the cost of an immense sum, did Herod the Great construct this artificial basin, - larger than the famous one at Athens,— wherein vessels can ride in perfect safety, pro almost even line of sandy tected especially against the violence of the southern gales, which in this region are chiefly to be feared. The water is enclosed by a mole in the shape of a half moon, which, bending round from the south, presents its open mouth to the north, whose gentle winds allow vessels at all times to obtain an entrance. This mole, wholly of marble, and of enormous proportions, offers to the eye on the outer side a continuous range of edifices, also of marble, which seemed to me palaces as I approached at a distance, but are designed for the reception of merchandise; while on the inner side, for its entire length, it affords a broad and spacious pavement, where the ships are lightened of their burdens, and, lashed to iron rings or pillars, ride securely till their cargoes for another voyage have been received. At the entrance of the harbor, and at the very extremity of the mole, there rises a lofty tower, upon the summit of which you behold a Colossus of Asia, while on the opposite side of the entrance, upon a similar tower which terminates the shorter arm of the mole, stands a Colossus of Rome, of the like huge proportions. Towers of the same height and size shoot up along the whole length of this vast wall, intended partly as an additional feature of magnificence, and partly as a defence against the assaults of an enemy. From the |