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majority of the dates can only still be regarded as so many approximations to the truth. The universal diversity and frequent contradiction only show how difficult this whole matter seems to be. The shrewdest course, therefore, as it appeared to us, was to furnish as few dates in a positive style as possible, and merely to take them from those writers whose authority was most deserving of consideration, and also to give the different dates assigned by different authors, leaving the reader to determine, in a great measure, for himself.

MANSE OF DOLPHINTON,

1st January, 1856.

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JERUSALEM; SITE OF THE TEMPLE

DAMASCUS; ANCIENT WALLS, WITH HOUSES BUILT UPON THEM

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ATHENS; THE ACROPOLIS, FROM THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER

ATHENS; AGORA OR MARKET-PLACE

CORINTH, FROM THE GULF

CORINTH; FRAGMENT OF A TEMPLE

CHAPEL IN ST. PAUL'S BAY

ST. PAUL'S BAY, MALTA.

MAMERTINE PRISON AT ROME

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ANCIENT PART OF ROME, WITH THE PALATINE MOUNT, THE COLI

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ST. PAUL AND HIS LOCALITIES.

CHAPTER I.

THE BIRTH AND BOYHOOD OF SAUL.

IN our Eastern travels of ten thousand miles, we felt much pride and pleasure when passing for hundreds of miles by the bases of the Lebanon and Taurus mountain range. In this grand circuit along the eastern shores of the Levant, we enjoyed a distinct sight of the country, with its bold and beautiful beaches. It seems to have been terribly tossed by volcanic eruptions, and torn by earthquakes into an endless variety of deep ravines and perpendicular masses of rugged rocks, precipitous headlands, and unfathomable craters from burning mountains, whose fires, now extinguished, had long been in very active operation. Day by day some terrific mountain-such as Lebanon, or Taurus, or Olympus, all ten or twelve thousand feet in height-looked down upon us in sublime majesty from their snowy ridges. On the main land our eyes were feasted by a countless number and variety of places, all remarkable in ancient history; and on the ocean often were there ten or twelve islands seen at once by the naked eye, all beautiful beyond description merely to look at, but interesting far more from the details of sacred and civil history. As one of these receded into the dim, distant horizon, another gradually rose from the waves before us, and another and another bay, strait, headland, or hill attracted our notice, and sent us to

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our Bible, or to Homer, or Virgil, Xenophon, Horace, Livy, or Quintus Curtius. Then some name was sounded from one to another, familiar to us all from our boyhood; for we all knew more or less of our Bibles and of the Classics, and everybody delighted to recal some interesting detail. With intense interest did we take our last look of some huge mountains, which seemed so long to have hung upon our elbow, grieving that we were to see them no more, and with corresponding novelty did we catch the first glance, far, far away, of some other range which was to be our companion for days, and the boundary of the dreary plains all around.

In these regions of danger, disease, and death-of banditti, wild beasts, and serpents-of mosquitoes, locusts, and frogs by the million, the traveller, weary though he be, feels elevated that comparatively few Europeans are to be found in this tract, as far even from Gibraltar as the Mediterranean sea could carry him. Taken in minuter details, the environs were generally extremely pretty, and abounding with apricot and peach-trees, mulberry plantations, and vineyards. The dark-leaved pomegranate, with its deep vermilion blossoms intertwined with its fairer neighbour the orange-tree and the stately poplar, stood before us, through and even over which peeped the more stately minaret; and the tents or the humble huts of the Asiatics were scattered around, or the natives were seen drawing water, or bathing, or praying by the river's side at sunrise, or during the heat of the day they were clustered under their fig-trees, none being to make them afraid. And when the wayfaring man advances, he finds every inhabitant of these remote regions as hospitable as Abraham was of old, when the Lord appeared to him in the plains of Mamre. "And he sat in the tent-door in the heat of the day; and he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent-door, and bowed himself toward the ground, and said,

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