There is not much force then in Mr. Wratislaw's objections; he has done absolutely nothing to controvert my reasoning from Scripture. Let it be plainly understood, that it is on this I rely. I have, I think, shewn that the beginning of the 14th day was the time originally commanded for the slaying of the Paschal lamb. It is conceded that the Jews generally, in Christ's time, did not kill at this hour, but at the close of the day. Three Evangelists relate, in plain language, that our Lord and his disciples partook of the passover before the nation in general partook of theirs. If my first and main point be established, it clears up all the apparent difficulty; let those who differ from me apply themselves to this. It is the question before them; all others are of little comparative importance.

I will now refer to Mr. Blenkinsopp's letter. He is apparently willing to allow the force of my reasoning, but for " one flaw in it, which," he thinks, "vitiates the whole." I have carefully read what he says, but I do not think it will be found to possess much weight.

He says, that I have overlooked the fact that the passover was a sacrifice, that, as such, the blood must be offered by a priest in the temple, and that our Lord and his disiples could not possibly have accomplished the sacrifice at any other time than that appointed-wrongly or rightly-by the authority of the priesthood.

In order to make this reasoning of any consequence, Mr. Blenkinsopp must shew that the priesthood were unanimous upon this question, or, that if they were not unanimious, the ruling party would strictly prohibit any daparture from the usual practice. It is not enough for Mr. Blenkinsopp to affirm their unanimity, or their intolerance of an opposite opinion. I have just as much right to say that they were not unanimous, and better reason for maintaining that there was no such intolerant spirit existing at that time as would prevent a minority, however small, from carrying out their peculiar views, and sacrificing a lamb at any hour of the evening that they chose. There were many differences of opinion among the Jews, and there appears to have been perfect liberty of opinion among them. The Pharisee did not excommunicate the Sadducee, nor either of them persecute the Essene. It is not therefore at all improbable, far less impossible, that an Israelite might have had his Paschal lamb slain at the beginning of the 14th day, and its blood sprinkled on the altar in the temple, if he saw fit to do it. Mr. Blenkinsopp must give us proof of its impossibility, his mere affirmation goes for nothing. The testimony of the Mishna is not any proof; it was not written-if we allow the highest antiquity claimed for it-before A.D. 180; it comes too late to speak with authority.

There is one other argument of Mr. Blenkinsopp to which I would refer. He says that our Lord celebrated the Eucharist at his last supper with leavened bread, and that consequently he could not then have been partaking of his passover, which, according to the law, must be eaten with unleavened bread. There would be much force in this if Mr. Blenkinsopp had good evidence that our Lord did use leavened bread at the Eucharist; his only evidence, however, is the tradition of the Eastern church. I must be excused if I do not accept this as evidence

of the smallest weight against the testimony of the three Evangelists, who tell us that our Lord did eat the passover. On the authority of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, I believe that the tradition of the Eastern church is wrong, and that our Lord celebrated the Eucharist with unleavened bread.

My theory then is unshaken as yet, and I have little doubt that the more it is examined into, the more generally it will be acquiesced in. HENRY CONSTABLE.

THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE SINAITIS.

SINCE my letter on the Sinai question in the last number of the J. S. L., two communications have appeared on the same subject; on which I should wish to offer a few observations.

I. To bring to a test the relative pretentions of critics and tourists I ought, perhaps, to commence by answering the question of W. O., who (with the "civil triumph" of the traveller in Sterne) inquires if I have ever visited the Sinaitis, or whether I wrote from hearsay only. As to the first part of the question, I must answer in the negative. If I had ever travelled in this region, I should not have been under the necessity of making an appeal (unfortunately, I am afraid, in vain) to the piety and religion of the influential portions of the clergy, to promote a thorough and complete examination of this most interesting region. Knowing perfectly what still remains to be done, I should, if I had ever travelled on the Petræa, have exerted myself, to the best of my power, to investigate those portions from which travellers have hitherto turned aside, and in which alone any discoveries of real importance are to be made.

But, on the other hand, the application of the term "hearsay" seems to me hardly correct. Hearsay evidence (as we all know) is not tolerated in a court of justice; and the words "mere hearsay " imply, primâ facie, some ill-supported statement. But there is no legitimate connexion between careful and well-studied geographical criticism, and what may, with any propriety, be termed "writing on hearsay." To combine in a critical spirit, and after a careful comparison, all that is most valuable in the relations of travellers who have actually seen what they describe, is not to write upon hearsay, but to decide upon evidence. The difference is of importance; for a writer, who has all the evidence before him, may possibly judge better and form a clearer conclusion (to the extent of that evidence) than any one of the various witnesses, whose united testimony forms the body of evidence.

If W. O. wishes for an example of this, he will find it by comparing

"They order," said I, "this matter better in France."-" You have been in France?" said my gentleman, turning quick upon me with the most civil triumph in the world.-Sterne's Sentimental Journey.

the very able letter of M. R. E. respecting the Wady Feirân, with the narrative of Canon Stanley. The latter had actually passed through the Wady Feirân, and ascended the Jebal Serbal; and the principal result of this autoptic examination, is a wild tissue of romantic impossibilities. Romantic the Canon always is (as was correctly observed in the review of his Lectures, in the last number of J. S. L.); but the romance, which may be pleasing in a novel or a poem, is always a tawdry, often a very mischievious accessory, to Biblical investigations. The Canon's romance, like a will-o'-the-wisp, sinks into a quagmire before the criticism of M. R. E.; and the autoptic witness appears simple enough before the critic on evidence, who (as he himself informs us) has never visited the Sinaitic region. From the letter of M. R. E. we see how much topographical knowledge may be acquired by reading and study. From the book of Canon Stanley we easily discern how useless is a mere autopsia unsupported by a correct criticism. That the errors of the travelled Stanley are corrected by the non-travelled M. R. E., is a fact to which the travelled W. O. himself bears witness.

So if we compare the two letters of M. R. E. and W. O., we shall not, perhaps, be of opinion that the communication of the writer who derives his information from books and maps, is, in any respect, the least graphic, correct, complete, and intelligible of the two. In novel suggestions, of real importance, the superiority is plainly on the side of M. R. E., who at once perceived (what escaped the observation of the autoptic Canon) that the battle with Amalek, if it had taken place at all in the Wady Feirân, must have occurred about twenty miles to the west of the impossible position in which the Canon was inclined to fix it. The correctness of this suggestion seems admitted by W. O.; yet though, perhaps, hundreds of travellers have passed through the Wady Feirân, since that Wady was first suggested as the site of the battle of Rephidim, the remark was first made by a writer who tells us that he never set foot in that picturesque ravine. So much for the observation of travellers! To M. R. E. we also owe, for the first time, the important suggestion (which, if correct, renders the supposed passage of the Israelites through the Wady Feirân ridiculous) that the mere line of march of the people and their cattle would have filled this Wady from one end to the other. When the average breadth of the ravine is exactly ascertained, we shall perhaps have a full confirmation of this hypothesis.

We must not, therefore, be too rash in affixing the trivial name of "hearsay" to that criticism, which corrects the errors of actual observation; nor must we suppose that a man is a competent writer on Biblical geography, merely because he has passed through Biblical

scenery.

I trust it will not be understood that I wish to undervalue, in the slightest manner, the important and indispensible aid which judicious travellers may afford to the removal of all the remaining doubts respecting the Exodial geography.

But up to the present time that aid has been too uniformly conNEW SERIES.-VOL. I., NO. II.

FF

fined (as W. O. himself observes) to certain beaten tracts, as to which we really require no further information, except of that exact and specific kind (descending to the minutiae of actual admeasurement) which travellers rarely afford. It is to be lamented that this state of things is not likely to pass away in a hurry. The Convent of St. Catherine affords such a convenient terminus for a tour to what is (with amusing simplicity) termed SINAI, that tourist after tourist makes his arrangements for the familiar trip, in the familiar manner; and year after year we have the old cuckoo-song repeated,-Cairo to Sinai (meaning, of course, the convent) and Sinai to Cairo. It is also probable that the bargains with the Arab Sheikhs are made more easily, and on more reasonable terms, for that than any of the less practised routes. The terms are known, and there is less room for Arab chicanery. Then also, after the trip to the convent,-after the old homage paid to the old Loretto,—the tripper is, of course, unwilling to suppose that he has visited Attica, and not seen the Parthenon. Has he been shaken till his bones are dislocated on a camel? been burnt to a mummy by the scorching suns of the Peninsula? disputed tremendously with imposing sheikhs?

"And shall these labours and these honours die?" Have all these toils been encountered in vain? Μὴ γένοιτο. The rocks around the convent will be Sinai to him, even if common sense has long since erased such Sinais from the leaves of her tablets. He will still maintain to his friends and his family that he has visited Sinai; though the Sinai of his visions be as chimerical as the gardens of Irim, and the palace of king Shedâd, which was built alternately with "bricks of red gold and white silver."f

Since the clergy (unhappily occupied with intestine wars) persistently ignore the necessity of elucidating the geography of the Exodus, we must trust to time, and comfort ourselves with the sage apophthegm of the afflicted Durandarte, "Patience, cousin, and shuffle the cards."

To proceed then with our shuffling:

II. Among the tourists who have confined their investigations to the trip from Cairo to "Sinai," and from "Sinai" to Cairo, I presume we must number W. O.; since he makes no allusion to any further route. If he had ever visited Petra, I presume he would have favoured us with some suggestion with respect to Canon Stanley's apocryphal identification of that city with Kadesh;-an identification only to be paralleled by the rabbinical stories of king Og, in whose shin-bone a man might (according to Rabbi Jochanan) run comfortably for three miles without being able to see the end of it.

The palace and gardens of king Shedâd are famous in the romantic history of Arabia. A full account of the creation and completion of these monuments of pride, and of the fate of the superb Shedâd, their founder, will be found in the celebrated history of Abû Ja'far Mohammed Tabari (fantastically termed the Arabian Livy), and in a work entitled the Tohfat-al-Mujâlis. According to tradition the gardens and palaces still exist in the deserts of Araby, but have remained hidden from the sight of mortals, except on a single occasion in the time of Moawiyah.

With a natural partiality for the route he has taken, W. O. appears disinclined to give up the good old granitic region, the memorable seat of monastic imposture. Hence (without expressing any very decided opinion) he supports, so far as his suggestions extend, the claims of Ras Safsâfeh.

I shall shew, as I proceed, that his principal error consists in the partial and limited views which he has taken of the subject; and that he leaves completely out of sight the most important and unequivocal criteria of the genuine Sinaî. But let us examine what he has to say with respect to the Ras Safsâfeh.

As to the space afforded by the plain of Er-Raheh for an encampment, he thinks the objections by no means so serious as they have been lately represented. On this point, I am compelled to differ from him in the most decided manner. Unquestionably the space for encampment is enlarged, if we are, with W. O., to take in the five miles in the upper part of the Nukb Hawy. But, so far as I can understand the observations of Robinson and Stanley, the two chief supporters of the Ras Safsâfeh, no clear view of the monkish Horeb (of which the Ras Safsâfeh is a peak) is gained by the traveller from the westward till he reaches the watershed; and beyond this neither of the last-mentioned writers (if I rightly comprehend them) intended to carry the limits of the encampment westward.

It seems to me that we must place the whole encampment in sight of Mount Sinai. We read (Exod. xix. 2) that the Israelites came to the desert of Sinai, m. "Neged" is here correctly rendered by Noldius (Concord., 529) in the sense of è regione. Besides it is evident, from Exod. xix. 16, that the Israelites, before they had quitted the camp on the day of the covenant, saw with terror and consternation the thick cloud which covered the whole of the mountain, and the lightnings which were flashing about it in every direction.

With reference to the space which is actually required to coincide with the description of Moses and the incidents related by him, W. O. will perhaps allow me to quote a single paragraph from the "Critical Enquiry into the Route of the Exodus:". "In the desert, at the foot of Mount Sinai, there should be room for an encampment of three millions of souls with the cattle; and between the camp and the mountain space is required for the whole people; first, to be ranged in order at the foot of the mountain; and, secondly, to retire AFAR OFF in the direction of the camp."

If W. O. imagines that all the space, which the most extravagant liberality can add to the plain of Er-Raheh, will enable us to meet these requisitions, I must confess I differ, in toto, from him. According to my ideas, the camp of Israel was pitched, in a regular and compact form, in the open desert, and not dispersed in nooks and crannies among the clefts of the rocks; and between the camp and Mount Sinai was a very extensive open space (alone larger than the whole plain of Er-Raheh) in which a population, as large as that of London, might be first ranged in front of the mountain, and then retire afar off, still remaining between the camp and the mountain. That this could