taining about three thousand spectators, ALL cut out of the rock. In some places these sepulchres are excavated one over the other, and the side of the mountain is so perpendicular, that it seems impossible to approach the uppermost, no path whatever being visible. "The ground is covered with heaps of hewn stones, foundations of buildings, fragments of columns, and vestiges of paved streets, all clearly indicating that a large city once existed here. On the left bank of the river is a rising ground, extending westward for nearly three quarters of a mile, entirely covered with similar remains. On the right bank, where the ground is more elevated, ruins of the same description are to be seen. There are also the remains of a palace and of several temples. In the eastern cliff there are upwards of fifty separate sepulchres close to each other." These are not the symbols of a feeble race, nor of a people that were to perish utterly. But a judgment was denounced against the strongholds of Edom. The prophetic threatening has not proved an empty boast, and could not have been the word of an uninspired mortal. "I will make thee small among the heathen; thy terribleness hath deceived thee and the pride of thy heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill; though thou shouldst make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord: also Edom shall be a desolation."

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These descriptions, given by the prophet and by the observer, are so analogous, and the precise locality of the scene, from its peculiar and characteristic features, so identified—and yet the application of the prophecy to the fact so remote from the thoughts or view of Burckhardt as to be altogether overlooked-that his single delineation of the ruins of the chief (and assuredly the strongest and bestfortified) city of Edom was deemed in the first edition of this treatise, and in the terms of the preceding paragraph, an illustration of the prophecy alike adequate and legitimate. And though deprecating any allusion whatever of a personal nature, and earnest for the elucidation of the truth, the author yet trusts that he may here be permitted to disclaim the credit of having been the first to assign to the prediction its wonderful and appropriate fulfilment; and it is with no slight gratification that he is now enabled to adduce higher evidence than any opinion of his own, and to state, that the selfsame prophecy has been applied by others-with the Bible in their hands, and with the very scene before them-to the selfsame spot. Yet it may be added, that this coincident application of the prophecy, without any collusion, and without the possibility, at the time, of any interchange of sentiment, affords, at least, a strong presumptive evidence of the accuracy of the application, and of the truth of the prophecy; and it may well lead to some reflection in the mind of any reader, if skepticism has not barred every avenue against conviction.

On entering the pass which conducts to the theatre of Petra, Captains Irby and Mangles remark:-"The ruins of the city here burst on the view in their full grandeur, shut in on the opposite side by barren craggy precipices, from which numerous ravines and valleys branch out in all directions; the sides of the mountains covered with an endless variety of excavated tombs and private dwellings, (O thou that dwellest in the clefts of THE ROCK, &c. Jer. xlix. 16,) presented altogether the most singular scene we ever beheld." In still further confirmation of the identity of the site, and the accuracy of the application, it may be added, in the words of Dr. Vincent, that "the name of this capital, in all the various languages in which it occurs, implies a rock, and as such it is described in the scriptures, in Strabo, and Al Edrissi." And in a note he enumerates among the various names having all the same signification-Sela, a rock, (the very word here used in the original,) Petra, a rock, the Greek name, and The Rock, pre-eminently-expressly referring to this passage of scripture.

Captains Irby and Mangles having, together with Mr. Bankes and Mr. Legh, spent two days in diligently examining them, give a more particular detail of the ruins of Petra than Burckhardt's account supplied; and the more full the description, the more precise and wonderful does the prophecy appear. Near the spot where they awaited the decision of the Arabs, "the high land was covered upon both its sides, and on its summits, with lines and solid masses of dry wall. The former appeared to be traces of ancient cultivation, the solid ruin seemed to be

only the remains of towers for watching in harvest and vintage time. The whole neighbourhood of the spot bears similar traces of former industry, all which seem to indicate the vicinity of a great metropolis." A narrow and circuitous defile, surrounded on each side by precipitous or perpendicular rocks, varying from four hundred to seven hundred feet in altitude, and forming, for two miles, “a sort of subterranean passage," opens on the east the way to the ruins of Petra. The rocks or rather hills, then diverge on either side, and leave an oblong space, where once stood the metropolis of Edom, deceived by its terribleness, where now lies a waste of ruins, encircled on every side, save on the northeast alone, by stupendous cliffs, which still show how the pride and labour of art tried there to vie with the sublimity of nature. Along the borders of these cliffs, detached masses of rock, numerous and lofty, have been wrought into sepulchres, the interior of which is excavated into chambers, while the exterior has been cut from the live rock into the forms of towers, with pilasters, and successive bands of frieze and entablature, wings, recesses, figures of animals, and columns.

Yet, numerous as these are, they form but a part of "the vast necroplis of Petra." "Tombs present themselves, not only in every avenue to the city, and upon every precipice that surrounds it, but even intermixed almost promiscuously with its public and domestic edifices; the natural features of the defile grew more and more imposing at every step, and the excavations and sculpture more frequent on bo sides, till it presented at last a continued street of tombs." The base of the cliffs wrought out in all the symmetry and regularity of art, with colonnades, and pedestals, and ranges of corridors adhering to the perpendicular surface; flights of steps chiselled out of the rock; grottoes in great numbers, "which are certainly not sepulchral;" some excavated residences of large dimensions, (in one of which is a singe chamber sixty feet in length, and of a breadth proportione];) many other dwellings of inferior note, particularly abundant in one defile leading to the city, the steep sides of which contain a sort of excavated suburb, accessible by flights of steps; niches, sometimes thirty feet in excavated height, with altars for votive offerings, or with pyramids, columns, or obelisks; a bridge across a chasm now apparently inaccessible; some small pyramids hewn out of the rock on the summit of the heights; horizontal grooves, for the conveyance of water, cut in the face of the rock, and even across the architectural fronts of some of the excavations; and, in short, "the rocks hollowed out into innumerable chambers of different dimensions, whose entrances are variously, richly, and often fantastically decorated with every imaginable order of architecture"-all united, not only form one of the most singular scenes that the eye of man ever looked upon, or the imagination painted-a group of wonders perhaps unparalleled in their kind—but also give indubitable proof, both that in the land of Edom there was a city where human ingenuity, and energy, and power must have been exerted for many ages, and to so great a degree as to have well entitled it to be noted for its strength or terribleness, and that the description given of it by the prophets of Israel was as strictly literal as the prediction respecting it is true. "The barren state of the country, together with the desolate condition of the city, without a single human being living near it, seem," in the words of those who were spectators of the scene, "strongly to verify the judgment denounced against it." "O thou who dwellest in the clefts of the rock, &c.-also Edom shall be a desolation," &c.

Of all the ruins of Petra, the mausoleums and sepulchres are among the most remarkable, and they give the clearest indication of ancient and long-continued royalty, and of. courtly grandeur. Their immense number corroborates the accounts given of their successive kings and princes by Moses and Strabo; though a period of eighteen hundred years intervened between the dates of their respective records concerning them. The structure of the sepulchres also shows that many of them are of a more recent date. Great," says Burckhardt, “must have been the opulence of a city which could dedicate such monuments to the memory of its rulers." But the long line of the kings and of the nobles of Idumen has for ages been cut off; they are without any representative now, without any memorial but the multitude and the magnificence of their unvisited sepulchres. They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, (or rather, they shall call, or summon, the nobles thereof,)

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