Passing on to Palestine, we find, memories and associations still stronger and more striking; for here nature is invested with the sentiment that in Egypt is awakened by art. Palestine belongs not to time only, but to eternity; with which, by types and illustrations, its earthly history is so beautifully blended and aggrandised. Its literature is inspired truth, its annals are prophecies fulfilled, and the very face of the land itself vindicates the beauty it _once_ wore, through all the sorrow and desolation that have fallen on it since. Owing to the metaphorical style of Oriental composition, every object in nature was used to illustrate or impress by its analogy; and hence not only the holy mountains, the sacred rivers, and the battle plains have memories for us, but the very "hyssop on the wall," the blasted fig-tree, the cedar, the "high rock in the thirsty land;" every vale, and hill, and lake, and city, is consecrated by some association with the men who spoke the words of God--with the time that witnessed His presence in the flesh. The remorseless Jews were swept from the Promised Land, as their ancestor was from Eden, for the irreparable sin; and the sword of the Roman waved over the ruined walls of Jerusalem, forbidding all return. The Saracen and the Crusader succeeding, add another element of interest--an English association--to long-tried and suffering Judea. The Crusaders were rather a warlike emigration than invasion; they were the angry overflow of discontented Europe, which sought to vent its spleen and dogmas upon the Infidel. Their ebbing tide bore back to us the arts and sciences and chivalry of Arabia; and thus Palestine became the channel for all our best temporal acquirements, as it had long since furnished us with our eternal hope. All this, and more--much more--invests Syria with undying and exhaustless interest to the student and the traveller; but we will not linger on such impressions now. We have a lighter task to fulfil, though we are about to visit the land of Nimrod, of Abraham's nativity, and of the empire of Semiramis. The pleasant company in which we travel will speed us on; and, in the old troubadour fashion, lay and legend will beguile the way. But before we enter fairly on our pilgrimage to "Ur of the Chaldees" and the tomb of Nineveh, we shall pause to make some practical observations on the route which, in its present aspect, may be new to some of our readers.