The question that I find has been most frequently put to me since my return home is—What effect travel in the East has on belief? What the effect may be in any case will, of course, depend on what were the ingredients and character of the belief. If, for instance, a traveller makes the discovery that old Egypt was far grander, far more civilized, and far more earnest than the mention of it in the Hebrew Scriptures had led him to suppose, he will receive a shock; or if a man finds the agricultural capabilities of the greater part of Syria utterly unadapted to English methods of farming, and has no idea of other methods; and if, furthermore, he is ignorant of the ways in which commerce can maintain a large population anywhere, he will receive another shock. We can imagine that such persons will ever afterwards affirm that the effects are bad. They were bad in their own minds, and they cannot see how they can be good in any other mind. We will take these two instances first. Suppose a different kind of traveller, one who had previously arrived at some not altogether inadequate conceptions of the mind, and of the greatness of old Egypt. He had also observed the fact that these things are not dwelt on in the Hebrew Scriptures, and had formed some opinion as to the cause of the omission. Then he will receive no shock from what he sees in the monuments of the greatness of Egypt, and of the evidently high moral aims of its religion. Suppose, again, that he had quite understood that he should not see the same kind of agriculture in Syria as in Suffolk; and that when he was among the hills he had found, often to a greater extent than he had expected, that formerly every rood of ground had been turned to account; it is true, in a very un-English manner, but still in a manner well adapted to the locality; that terraces had been formed wherever terraces could be placed; that corn, figs, olives, vines had been grown on these terraces (on some hills the actual summit is still a vineyard), and that, where the ground was not suitable for terracing, it had been depastured by flocks and herds; and that there is evidence that many hills must have been clothed from the bottom to the top with olives. And suppose also that he was quite aware that populous cities could have been maintained by trade and commerce in Judæa just as easily, to say the least, as were Palmyra and Petra in the wilderness. Then he will receive no shock from the un-English agricultural aspects of Syria. Instead of any disagreeable sensation of that kind, he will see in the present desolation of the country interesting and instructive evidence of a change in the channels of commerce, and a demonstration of the sad fact that where the Turk sets his foot, although he is a very good fellow, grass will not grow.