been formerly without the city. It is at present not a small way within; and in order to shut it out, the ancient walls must have made the most extraordinary and unnecessary curve imaginable. Its elevation was probably always inconsiderable, so that there is little to stagger one's faith in the lowness of its present appearance. The exclusion of Calvary must have deprived the ancient city of a considerable space of habitable ground, of which, from the circumscribed nature of its site, there could have been little to spare. But tradition could not err in the identity of so famous a spot; and the smallest scepticism would deprive it of all its powerful charm. Besides, that the disposition of the former Jerusalem appears to have been, in other parts, sufficiently irregular.-The mosque of Omar, the most beautiful edifice in the Turkish empire, stands, in a great measure, on the site occupied by Solomon's Temple. The area around it is spacious and delightful; and being planted with trees, affords the only agreeable promenade in the city. Christians, however, are never allowed to enter it. Its situation is little elevated above the level of the street, so that Mount Moriah, formerly the highest eminence that joined the city, and where the temple stood, is now shorn of its honours. The loftiest part of the town at present is the western, between the gates of Bethlehem and Zion, where the convents are situated. The sides of the hill of Zion have a pleasing aspect, as they possess a few olive-trees and rude gardens, and a crop of corn was at this time growing there. On its southern extremity, a short way from the wall, is the mosque of David, which is held in the highest reverence by the Turks, who affirm that the remains of that monarch, and his son Solomon, were interred here, and that their tombs still exist. In a small building attached to the mosque, and where a church formerly stood, is the room in which was held the last supper of our Lord and his Disciples: we looked into it through some crevices; it had a mean and naked appearance. Being now an inmate of the Catholic convent, the best plan was to make oneself as happy as circumstances would allow, and these were scanty enough. The fathers were of the Franciscan order, dirty, sullen, and wretchedly clad; and their wine, which Chateaubriand praises so highly, is execrable. Father Giuseppe, indeed, was the cicerone of the order; a little, amusing, time-pleasing monk, who had a decent little cell, where he kept some excellent cordial, and other comforts, and had one or two saints frying upon gridirons, pasted on the walls. Each of these fathers cleaned his own apartment, made his bed, and was indebted to no one's service. Having agreed with Father G. to visit the church of the Holy Sepulchre, we went there in the evening, and, passing through the court entered the first lofty apartment. There was a guard of Turks in a recess just within the door, to whom every pilgrim is obliged to pay a certain sum for admission; but we were exempted from this tax. In the middle of the first apartment is a large marble slab, raised above the floor, over which lamps are suspended: this is said to be the space where the body of the Redeemer was anointed and prepared for the sepulchre. You then turn to the left, and enter the large rotunda, which terminates in a dome at the top. In the centre of the floor stands the holy sepulchre; it is of an oblong form, and composed of a very fine reddish stone brought from the Red Sea, that has quite the ap pearance of marble. Ascending two or three low steps, and taking off your shoes, you enter the first small apartment, which is floored with marble, and the walls lined with the same. In the centre is a low shaft of white marble, being the spot to which the angel rolled the stone from the tomb, and sat on it. You now stoop low to enter the narrow door that conducts you to the side of the sepulchre. The tomb is of a light brown and white marble, about six feet long and three feet high, and the same number in breadth, being joined to the wall. Between the sepulchre and the opposite wall the space is very confined, and not more than four or five persons can remain in at a time. The floor and the walls are of a beautiful marble; the apartment is a square of about seven feet, and a small dome rises over it, from which are suspended twenty-seven large silver lamps richly chased and of elegant workmanship,-presents from Rome, of the courts, and religious orders of Europe: these are kept always burning, and cast a flood of light on the sacred tomb, and the paintings hung over it, one Romish and the other Greek, representing our Lord's ascension and his appearance to Mary in the garden. A Greek or Romish priest always stands here with the silver vase of holy incense in his hand, which he sprinkles over the pilgrims. Wishing to see the behaviour of these people, who come from all parts of the world and undergo the severest difficulties to arrive at this holy spot, we remained for some time within it, and the scene was very interesting. They entered, Armenians, Greeks, and Catholics, of both sexes, with the deepest awe and veneration, and instantly fell on their knees: some, lifting their eyes to the paintings, burst into a flood of tears; others pressed their heads with fervor on the tomb, and sought to embrace it; while the sacred incense fell in showers, and was received with delight by all. It was impossible for the looks and gestures of repentance, grief, and adoration, to be apparently more heartfelt and sincere than on this occasion. Yet other feelings were admitted by some, who took advantage of the custom of placing beads and crosses on the tomb to be sanctified by the holy incense, to place a large heap on it of these articles, which, being sprinkled and rendered inestimable, they afterwards carried to their native countries, and sold at a high price. LINES WRITTEN AT MIDNIGHT. WHO can ever look up to yon beautiful arch, Where the moon shines in holy and hallowing light, Who, can ever look up to those beautiful orbs, Nor dream that he breathes in a world all unknown, And thrills from a heavenly heart to his own? Oh, these are the moments to dream on the dead, J. MR. MARK HIGGINBOTHAM'S CASE OF REAL DISTRESS. "What is thy name? Thou 'It be afraid to hear it."-MACBETH. I BELIEVE I may confidently appeal to the whole circle of our ac quaintance, whether both myself and my wife were not universally respected as Mr. and Mrs. Mark Somers, of Bentinck-street and Englefield-green, at both of which residences our parties, though not numerous, were fashionable and select; and our dinners, though rare, quite as profuse of plate and French wines as was consistent with our income. Indeed I have reason to think they were rather more so, for we were generally condemned to a fast after a feast, often denying ourselves permanent comforts for the sake of an occasional luxury. However, we were as happy as two people could be, who were doomed to support existence on little better than two thousand a-year; and so we might have continued, but that my wife's uncle, Mr. Timothy Higginbotham of Hoxton, a great manufacturer of bricks, chose to convert himself into clay for the benefit of future brickmakers, leaving the whole of his immense fortune to his only relative, Mrs. Mark Somers. A great misfortune truly! methinks I hear the reader exclaim. Alas"! it proved so to me, for it was vitiated and tainted with one condition which poisoned all the happiness it might have otherwise conferred, namely, that I should take and wear the abhorred name of Higginbotham! I had ever been squeamish, fastidious, fantastical about names, the more so as I had always considered my own particularly euphonons and genteel; and to be robbed of it thus unexpectedly, and made the nominal representative of a vile Hoxton dealer in argillaceous parallelograms-the thought was intolerable. Too well was I aware that all our friends and acquaintance would revenge themselves for our accession of fortune by an unmerciful raillery and interminable quizzing of its hideous appendage. Already did the odious appellation hiss in mine ears by day, and haunt them in my dreams. The faces of my friends danced before my imagination so completely mantled over and flickering with ridicule, that there was not room to stick a single pin in them without transfixing some cursed jibe or jeer, some latent irony, or open and malicious snigger. I shall be told that this was a preposterous source of misery; perhaps so, but still it was, and is one; and others have been plunged into as deep an affliction by causes apparently more trivial. "Would any one believe," says the learned Walderstein in his Diary, "that I have been often wretched, because for the last twenty years I have never been able to sneeze three times together!" How cheerfully would I consent never to sneeze again for the whole remainder of my life, if I could only disburthen myself of this miserable, mean, and degrading sobriquet. So humiliating and insupportable did it appear to me, that I seriously proposed to my wife an abandonment of the legacy upon such grievous terms, extolling our present happiness, and urging the sufficiency of our means for all rational gratifications; but she laughed at my arguments, and was inexorable to my most pathetic entreaties, ""Twill be but a nine days' wonder," she exclaimed, "and we must brazen the thing out as well as we can, consoling ourselves with the pleasures of a Mr. Mark Higginbotham's Case of real Distress. 291 substance, for any temporary pains that may be inflicted by a mere name. What's in a name? as Shakspeare says. A rise by any other name would smell as sweet."-"Ay, and a great deal sweeter," I replied, "if any other could be substituted for this unfortunate one of Higginbotham," I would have said, but that ominous "Amen stuck in my throat.""Besides," continued I, "does not Shakspeare elsewhere assert that 'he who filches from me my good name,' makes me poor indeed?"— "Well then, my dear," replied my wife, "Shakspeare tells a story, for you have been made rich, not poor, by the process." -"Rich in worldly things," I resumed, with a sigh, " but cognominally I am impoverished, degraded, sunk deeper than plummet ever sounded. Were it a fair name, I could submit; but this is a nickname, a byword, a reproach. Give a dog an ill name, says the proverb, and hang him. Never dog had a worse than mine, and I feel already as if I were hung up aloft for the finger of scorn to be wagged at, and condemned to stand in the pillory of my own appellation, as the wretch Hig-No, I cannot pronounce it. Take any name but that, and my firm nerves shall never tremble.' Would I could be 'a man again,' and look the world boldly in the face with the happy baptismal and patronymic appellations which I once possessed! If the horrid and unfeeling old brickmaker had only left me half his fortune, upon condition of taking half his name, I might have been happy, whichever moiety he had inflicted upon me. The latter portion indeed might have subjected me to a ludicrous perversion of the testator's meaning, as I am of somewhat Grenvillian structure (being distantly related to the Temples); but still it would have been infinitely better than the compound calamity under which I am now suffering." For some time I attempted (it was rather an unmanly expedient, I must confess) to make a compromise with my ignominy, by writing letters and describing myself to tradesmen and others as the late Mr. Mark Somers; but this was falling from Scylla to Charybdis, for it presently got rumoured that I was dead, and Partridge himself was never exposed to more annoyances than I drew down upon my devoted head by this incautious mode of expression. Like that celebrated living defunct, I actually encountered a respectable man in black, standing upon my drawing-room table, who told me he was come from the undertaker to measure the walls for mourning hangings, and asked directions about the coffin and the funeral; while the clergyman, the sexton, and half a dozen more came gently to the door with tristful visages, and were not to be persuaded, without considerable difficulty, that I was still alive as Mr. Higginbotham, though unfortunately extinct as Mr. Mark Somers. Shortly after this occurrence, while standing in my hall, I heard the postman knock and inquire whether there was any servant in the house named Higginbotham, as he had got a letter so directed. Well might the fellow imagine that no master of an establishment, no decent personage in fact, could own so base and vulgar an appellation. This heightened my disgust at the atrocious conduct of the old brickmaker, and at that very instant a fat wretch came to solicit some assistance, who Higginbothamed me at every other word of a long tale of distress, and concluded by saying she had formerly worked as char-woman "for Mrs. Higginbotham as is." Revolting as the word had always appear 292 Mr. Mark Higginbotham's Case of real Distress. ed when applied to myself, it seemed ten times more hideous when visited upon so genteel a woman as my wife. I believe I actually shed a tear as I turned away, not at the fat woman's story, (for I hated the foul-mouthed hussey,) but at my own, in being obliged to submit tamely to the insult of hearing such a four-syllable defilement applied to my wife. Nevertheless, it became necessary to bear my fate like a man, to face the world boldly with my unutterable name, and run the gauntlet of public ridicule, however pointed and provoking. We accordingly engaged ourselves to one of Lady S's immense routs in Arlingtonstreet, whither I betook myself with as much alacrity as a criminal to the scaffold, or a lamb to the slaughterhouse. As there was no recording angel to let fall a tear upon the word as I gave it in, and blot it out for ever, the servant at the door announced me with a half-suppressed titter, and another on the landing-place, converting my Christian name into a verb of the imperative mood, repeated it after the following fashion," Mr. and Mrs.-(mark!)—and then spitefully shouted out at the top of his voice the soul-harrowing and hated "Higginbotham!" Never shall I forget the nudging of elbows and giggling of saucy faces as they vulgarly gazed after me; nor the blank astonishment, sudden stare, and polite though insolent simper of the company in the drawing-room upon hearing such a name announced in such an -assemblage. Anxious to show that I was still somebody, I bustled up -to two or three acquaintance whom I recognised in the throng, but they seemed eager to disclaim all connexion with any such hideous and awfully plebeian sound, and ensconced themselves behind impenetrable masses of visitants. My guilty conscience suggested to me that I was as much shunned as Peter Schlemihl when he had lost his shadow, and I felt proportionably irritated against what I conceived to be the arrogance and impertinence of the company. At this critical moment, when I was just ready to boil over, a heavy man placed his heel upon my corn, and in that agony of mental and bodily suffering being prepared to convert every thing into an intentional insult, I turned upon him, exclaiming fiercely as I fumbled for a card, "Sir, my name is Higginbotham."—" My dear Sir," replied the gentleman with a polite bow, and a provoking calmness, "I have not the smallest doubt it is; you look as if it were." Heavens! what an indignity! not only to be de facto, a real, live, bona-fide Higginbotham, but to be told that I looked like one! Even now I blush at the recollection of the follies I committed on that ill-fated evening, while smarting under the first agony of my new title; and when I inform you, Mr. Editor, that I am likely to retain that execrable appendage, and lose the money that accompanied it, (the particulars of which will form the subject of a future letter,) I think you will admit there never was a case of more real distress than that of your unfortunate correspondent MARK HIGGIN BOTHAM. |