We should like to linger over the rest of Conder’s journey, but the few lines that remain must be devoted to his final remarks. Conder, it must ever be remembered, was one of the first to dispute the then current belief that the Holy Land had lost its old character for fertility, and that changes in climate had induced an irreparable barrenness. He maintained in particular that the supposed dearth of water had been much exaggerated by recent tourists. “With respect to the annual rainfall, it is only necessary to note that, with the old cisterns cleaned and mended, and the beautiful tanks and aqueducts repaired, the ordinary fall would be quite sufficient for the wants of the inhabitants and for irrigation.” (Here, too, recent events have effected an agreeable transformation.) And, in general “the change in productiveness which has really occurred in Palestine, is due to decay of cultivation, to decrease of population, and to bad government. It is Man and not Nature, who has ruined the good land in which was ‘no lack,’ and it is, therefore, within the power of human industry to restore the old country to its old condition of agricultural prosperity.” Construct roads, raise irrigation works, promote afforestation--those were the measures Conder suggested, after the three strenuous years of his survey (1872 to 1875). Such optimistic opinions are now quite common; and, we may hope, are tending towards realization, if only men’s hopes are not set too high. But let us not forget that among the first moderns to formulate such opinions, on the basis of _exact knowledge_, was the author of _Tent Work in Palestine_. KALISCH’S “PATH AND GOAL” Of Marcus Kalisch’s learned commentaries on the Bible it has been truly said that they are a thorough summary of all that had been written on the subject up to the date when those commentaries were published. He not only knew everything, but he had assimilated it. Nor was it only his learning that placed him among the first among the Jewish scholars of the second part of the nineteenth century. He was original as well; that he “anticipated Wellhausen,” more than one has declared of him, as they have declared of others before Kalisch. Learning and originality make a fairly strong instrument for drawing out the truth. But another strand is needed to compose the threefold cord that shall not easily be broken. This, too, Kalisch had at his command. It is the strand of sentiment. In his more orthodox days when he produced his _Exodus_ (1855), and in his more rationalistic period when he gave to the world his _Balaam_ and his _Jonah_ (1887-8)--at all stages of his activity he was never the mere philologist. Like Sheridan’s character, he was a man of sentiment; but unlike Joseph Surface, his sentiment was genuine. He was, to put the same truth in other words, an expounder of ideas as well as a critic of words.