I.

THE CITY.

Oh! fair and favoured city, where of old
The balmy airs were rich with melody,
That led her pomp beneath the cloudless sky
In vestments flaming with the orient gold.

DEAN MILMAN, The Fall of Jerusalem.

ET the reader carry back his imagina-
tion to a time immediately preceding
our Saviour's death; to the day when,
seated on the green slope of the Mount

of Olives, with his apostles gathered around him, the Author of our Faith looked down upon the great Jewish metropolis" the Holy City "-glowing in the gold and purple of the sunset.

It was evening, says Dean Milman, and the whole irregular line of the famous capital, as it soared from the deep valleys encircling it on three of its sides, might be clearly traced. Behind the western hills "slow sank the setting sun"-the "significant emblem of the great Fountain of moral light, to which Jesus and his faith have been perpetually compared"-his last gleams of glory resting on the castled height of Mount Zion-on the magnificent palace of Herod the King-on the square

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