In Nazareth we are shown what purports to be the work-shop of Joseph the carpenter, but we know that this is a modern appropriation, a Latin chapel, built only in 1859. We are asked to look at the Mensa Christi, a block of rock, rudely oval, 10 feet across and 3 feet high, in a church built in 1861, but we have no confidence that Jesus and his disciples used it as a table. Making a stronger claim is the house in which the Holy Family lived, or what remains of it, for the legend says that the upper storey or the outer room was carried away by angels through the air, and after lengthy travels was set down on the wooded hill-top of Loretto in Italy. It is a rock-cut grotto under the high altar of the Latin church. A wall of separation makes two chambers of it, the outer being called the Grotto of the Annunciation, and the inner the Grotto of St Joseph. The shaft of a red granite pillar hanging through the roof is believed to be miraculously suspended over the very place where the angel Gabriel stood to deliver his message, From the inner chamber—that of St Joseph—a narrow passage, with seventeen steps, leads up obliquely to the inmost part of the cave, a chamber of irregular shape, traditionally supposed to be the Virgin's kitchen.
Escaping from these places we inquire for that synagogue in which Jesus received instruction when a youth, and "stood up to read" on a memorable occasion after he had become a public teacher. But there are no Jews in Nazareth, and so there is no need of a synagogue now. The Greek Catholics, indeed, tell us that their chapel, in the main street, occupies the very site of the synagogue; but we find no remains of synagogue architecture. It occurs to us that there is one site, at all events, the features of which could hardly be destroyed or altered, namely, the "brow of the hill on which the city stood," and from which the Nazarenes intended to precipitate the great Teacher after that scene in the Synagogue. But when we have
