Notes of a Clerical Furlough, Spent Chiefly in the Holy Land. With a Sketch of the Voyage Out

to be a discoverer. In his opinion, there has been too much pretension of that sort already, and sometimes on absurdly slight and insufficient grounds. He makes no claim to be regarded as an authority on any of the numerous unsettled questions which still lie open for investigation and discussion, in connection with the history, the antiquities, and the topography of Judea. On many of these, indeed, he has formed his own opinion, and on some of them he has ventured to express it; but his main object has been so to set things before the reader that, when he comes to the end of the journey, he may have some definite conception of the sort of country he has been passing through, and may know nearly if not altogether as much about it as the writer knows himself.

The journey will be found to embrace a large proportion of the most interesting localities in the Holy Land. Conducted from Jaffa, on the shores of the Levant, to Jericho and the Dead Sea-from the vicinity of Hebron to the sources of the Jordan-the reader will travel over the entire breadth, and very nearly over the whole length, of the land. He will visit all the lakes of the Jordan valley, and, at various points, the Jordan itself, from the Sea of Sodom, at its southern extremity, to the waters of Merom, and the magnificent scenery of Banias, at the base of the Jebel-es-Sheikh-the mighty Hermon. He will pass through all the chief scenes of Scripture history, from the hill country of Judah to Dan—including Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Bethel, Shechem, Samaria, Jezreel, Nazareth, and Tiberias. Crossing the shoulder of Hermon, and

descending into the great plain beyond it, he will visit Damascus the oldest of inhabited cities; thereafter, traversing the treble range of Anti-Libanus to the ruins of Baalbek, and passing through Cole-Syria, he will ascend the snowy heights of Lebanon, survey its majestic cedars, and finally, in the beautiful Bay of Tripoli, regain the good yacht St. Ursula, which brought him all the way from home. The route, no doubt, is one over which many travellers have passed; but every one has his own way of looking at things; and, in a land of such undying and inexhaustible interest, though so much has been reaped, there is still not a little to be gleaned.

The volume, as will be seen, makes no show of either references or notes. It would have been the easiest thing possible, to plant a whole forest of them at the bottom of every page. In more elaborate works they are, perhaps, indispensable. In such a volume as this they could serve hardly any other purpose than that of wearying and perplexing the reader. Whatever seemed necessary in this department, the author has endeavoured to work into the text; and so as to supply the information required, without interrupting the flow of the narrative. In doing so he has generally compared his observations with those of the authors of most authority upon the subject; and as the result of this comparison his own have been sometimes corrected, and often made fuller and more complete. To these authors, in common with all whe would either write about or travel in Palestine intelligently, he owes a debt of gratitude, which he esteems it equally a duty

and a privilege to acknowledge. The limits within which he has thought it expedient to confine the size of the volume, together with the incessant pressure of his ordinary avocations while preparing it, have obliged him considerably to abridge the latter part of the narrative.

One object he has had especially in view,—to gather around his course the manifold associations of Scripture, and by connecting, as much as possible, each successive scene with the sacred history which it so vividly recalls, to make the reader participate in the delightful conviction which, at every step, was forced more irresistibly upon his own mind, that the Bible history is, and must be, both real and true. This conviction, though only confirming a belief that was solid and settled before, the author felt to be the best reward of a journey through the Holy Land. If his experience in this particular shall help to communicate a like feeling to the mind of any of those who may honour his volume with a perusal, it will not have been written in vain.

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