LATER PILGRIMS. 4G3 Pilgrims and travellers continued to visit Jerusalem. Sir John Mandeville was there, early in the fourteenth century, and describes the churches and sacred sites, but says little enough about the condition of the people. Bertrandon de la Eoquière was there a hundred years later. He says that though there were many other Christians in Jerusalem, the Franks experienced the greatest amount of persecution from the Saracens, and that there were only two Cordeliers in the Church of the Sepulchre. And in the same century Ignatius Loyola twice went on pilgrimage. He wished to end his days in Palestine, but this was, unhappily, denied him, and he returned, to be a curse to-the world by establishing his society. Among other pilgrims, passing over various princes and kings, may be mentioned Korte, the bookseller of Altona early in the eighteenth century, who was the first to assail the authenticity of the sites, and that of Henry Maundrell, chaplain to the English factory at Aleppo. But during the interval of five hundred years Jerusalem has been without a history. Nothing has happened but an occasional act of brutality on the part of her masters towards the Christians, or an occasional squabble among the ecclesiastics. Perhaps, some time, the day may come when all together will be agreed that there is no one spot in the world more holy than another, in spite of associations, because the whole earth is the Lord's. Then the tender interest which those who read the Scriptures will always have for the places which the writers knew so well may have a fuller and freer play, apart from lying traditions, monkish legends and superstitious impostures. For, to use the words which Cicero applied to Athens, there is not one spot in all this city, no single place where the foot may tread, which does not possess its history. 9. tr