during the first Christian persecution. Then come the Fountain of the Virgin, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the site of the Ascension upon the Mount of Olives. All these, with many others, and the traditions which attach to each, have been too well and too frequently described by travellers to need that we should dwell upon them here. The Ccenaculum, or Tomb of David, is situated at the south-west angle of the town, outside the city walls ; the history of this has been already related on p. 436. The olive groves by which the city is surrounded, and of which such glowing descriptions have been given by enthusiastic pilgrims, are scanty, and, like most other olive groves, exceedingly ugly and uninteresting ; to tell the sober truth it is impossible to grow very rapturous over a stunted tree, with greasy, silver-grey foliage and dilapidated trunk. On a gala day, however, when a motley throng, dressed in bright colours and fantastic garb, crowd outside the Jaffa gate, disperse themselves amongst the tombs in the cemetery of the upper pool of Gihon, or cluster in animated groups beneath the olive trees, the scene is one which a lover of the picturesque might travel far to see. The city is completely Availed round, presenting the appearance of a huge fortress ; by the Jaffa gate, where the tower of Hippicus rises above the walls, and the cypresses of the Armenian convent gardens peep over the battlements, they are pretty and picturesque, but, with this exception, there is nothing whatever in them to arrest the attention. Examining them more closely, you are struck with the great size of the stones used in their construction, many of which, especially in the lower portions, are doubtless óf great antiquity. Captain Warren, in the course of his excavations at the south-east angle and elsewhere, has come upon blocks which may still occupy the place where Solomon's workmen laid them, but now