There is nothing we hear of more frequently than of the great additional light thrown upon the Bible by modern researches; and with Scripture geography and Scripture botany, with Eastern usages and ancient customs, this modern time professes a much clearer apprehension of the Bible than did the elder age, which was ignorant of all this minutiæ of illustration. But the science is overdone. The illustration smothers the text, and we become suspicious of every new attempt of that over-explanatory teaching which toils to bring the material and framework of the sacred record down to “the meanest capacity,” almost wearying us into incredulity where, if left alone, we could not choose but believe. Holy Writ, by far the truest and most life-like picture of its own time, explains itself with small assistance—but we are glad always to light on such an illustration as this, which brings before us, in all its striking features, the locality of one of the most striking scenes of the old dispensation. Like every other traveller in this singular country, M. Van de Velde is struck by the evident tokens everywhere of long-restrained and dormant fertility. The land is still a land of milk and honey. Folded into the unseen recesses of Carmel, where there is scarcely an eye to look on it, the soil is lavish of the richest vegetation, matted with plants and flowers; and everywhere the same teeming fruitfulness peers through the uncultivated waste, which notwithstanding is a barren waste bound with the visible restrictions of Providence, forbidden and interdicted to spread forth its riches, and waiting solemnly, with the life pent up in its great bosom, till the call of God shall wake it into the luxuriance of old.