I hastened across the well-known Castle Square, and up the narrow passage, clattering over the uneven pavement, and drew up my horse at the entrance to the Consulate, where my kind friends—Mr. and Mrs. Finn—came out to welcome me. They led me, hooded and cloaked as I was, into their brilliantly-lighted drawing-room, where a conversazione of the "Jerusalem Literary Society" was being held. The rooms were quite English in character, and bright with lamps and well-arranged flowers, and filled with English guests, many of whom were recently-arrived travelers, strangers to me.
Large logs of wood were burning and crackling on the fire-dogs in the chimney-place. The whole presented a most striking contrast to the scenes and society by which I had been lately surrounded, and the delight I felt made me almost forget my fatigue. After the guests had gone we lingered for an hour by the fire in pleasant chat; and then for the first time I slept and found perfect rest and peace within the walls of Jerusalem. It was very pleasant when I woke in the morning to see the Consul's children round me, and to hear their English greetings, and their glad, familiar voices.
I found Jerusalem in the early Spring altogether different to Jerusalem in the hot Summer-time, when it had often appeared to me, literally, "a city of stone, in a land of iron, with a sky of brass," and when at midday all unsheltered places were quite deserted, and those people who could do so lived in tents in olive-groves in the valleys or on the hills round about Jerusalem. Now all was changed; the few open spaces within the city walls were green with grass, or patches of wheat and barley, and the whole of the mosque inclosure was like meadow-land sprinkled with flowers; the very walls were garnished with rough leaves, stonecrop, pellitory, and bright blossoms. Among them the bitter hyssop and bright-yellow henbane were pointed out to me, growing luxuriantly on the Tower of Hippicus, in the dry moat, and on all the
