is struck with the magnificence of some of the khans, aqueducts, and other works of public utility, denoting a state of great prosperity and high civilization, which everywhere present themselves; but, though these monuments at the present day exhibit the marks of a long-standing neglect, no timely repairs are made, and the work of destruction is allowed to continue, as if they belonged to no one, and that the soil was bereft of its rightful owners.'

Its rightful owners are the Israelites, and it will not always be bereft of them. Israel, the restorer of cities to dwell in, is not yet on his way. The Jews acting around the exchanges of Europe, and trampled on as they have been in ages past, kingdoms are now their creditors. The time in their history seems past, or fast passing away, when no man could lift up his head; and were they now to return, some of them would be taken from among the chief men of the earth. At present, per centage is their attraction among the Gentiles; and they cling to the stocks like needles to a magnet. But were public credit to be affected, and the magnetic influence to be destroyed, and were a way prepared for their return to the land of their fathers, those infidel Jews who, in great numbers throughout Germany, now for the first time in their history, deny that their race shall return, freed from the bonds that link them to the land of the Gentiles, might find their strongest attraction in the land which they too at last begin to despise; for, whenever se curity of possession can be attained, where does per centage rank higher among the exchanges of Europe than in a purchased strip of land at the foot of Amanus? "There is a strip of land on the banks of the Orontes which is devoted to the cultivation of the culinary vegetables peculiar to Turkey, badinjan (egg-plant), bamijah, and capsicum. Ibrahim Pasha had purchased this for sixty purses, or three hundred pounds, and farmed it out. It probably yielded more than two hundred pounds a year to the proprietor."† Before turning from the mountains of Israel, which have been a derision, may we not ask, What would not the whole land yield were it to overflow with the multitude of men which shall yet cover it, when the desolate wilderness, in which such gleaning grapes are left, shall become like the garden of Eden ?

Robinson's Travels in Syria, vol. ii., p. 288. † Ainsworth's Assyria, vol. ii., p. 95, 96.

For the farther solution of this question, we must look from the mountains to the still richer plains, which lie to the west as to the east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan, and in the north of Syria, as in the kingdom of Bashan.

The land of Israel is a land of hills, and valleys, and plains. Chains of hills and mountains extend from its southern to its northern extremity, and thus impart a variety of richness and a diversity of climate to the separate portions of each tribe, as they are destined to extend successively from the bounds of the Red Sea to the top of Amana. The mountains of Seir, the hill-country of Judea, the hills of Ephraim and Samaria, the goodly mountain of Lebanon, and the Neyzery hills from thence to the north of the Orontes, where they border with Amanus, occupy the whole length of the land on the west of the El-Gha and the Orontes, while the line of the hills of Moab, of Gilead, and of Bashan is continued, valleys intervening throughout, by the higher range of Anti-Lebanon, which borders with the land of Hamath. The marvellous manner in which these mountains were made to contribute in rich abundance to the wants and luxury of a dense population, is of itself the strongest of positive proofs that no pains were spared in the cultivation of the plains, and the remains of numberless aqueducts and cisterns throughout the land show that it once was as a watered garden. Continuous mountains, interspersed with numerous valleys, sheltered and watered plains as continuous and extensive; and from end to end of the land, these too succeed each other, in a natural richness and fertility so great, that an exuberant produce called for little toil, even as the prodigality of the ground in producing magnificent thistles, and other wild plants and thorns, often exhibits in their profusion a fecundity which renders the desolation astonishing.

The plains of Philistia, of Sharon, of Acre, and of Phonicia, jointly extend along the coast from the south of Palestine to the base of Mount Casius. The ridge of Carmel by the sea divides the plain of Sharon from that of Acre, and from the great plain of Esdraelon; and where Lebanon touches the coast, it divides for a short space the Phoenician plains. In the interior of the land, the valleys of the Jordan, the Kasmich, and the Orontes extend from the Dead Sea to Amanus, the rivers of which flow through extensive plains ere they reach the Euphrates.