as it is with a marble floor, it is impossible to determine whether the elevation is masonry or living rock; if the latter, it is remarkable that such a rocky eminence should be left in this portion of the city; and if a natural rock, its sides and top should be exposed to view. Descending the Greek staircase and turning to the right, we came to a gloomy vault called the Tomb of Adam, near where once stood the tombs of the chivalrous Godfrey and the heroic Baldwin. Returning to the transept, we passed a yellow marble slab, inclosed with a low railing which pilgrims fondly kiss, and over which lamps burn continually. It is the legendary Stone of Unction, on which the body of Jesus was anointed for his burial. Passing through the rotunda, we descended into the tombs of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, together with two others, excavated in the living rock, and which, if ancient, are the most remarkable antiquities within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Returning again to the rotunda, my good Franciscan gave me his benediction, and, parting from me, left me to the reflections of the hour. Whether this church covers the Golgotha of the crucifixion and the place of our Lord’s sepulture remains an open question. No subject within the range of sacred archæology presents greater difficulties, and none has been contested with a more brilliant display of acute argumentation and varied learning. Pre-eminently it is a question of two sides, and the contest is sometimes so evenly balanced that an assumed victory by the advocates of either theory is one of doubtful certainty. To argue against the supposition, one is forced to reason against his inclination to stand on the site of the Redeemer’s death and sit within the shadow of his tomb; to reject it is to leave the world without a substitute, and consign the remembrance of those grand events which it commemorates to the memory of man, without a knowledge of the scene of their occurrence; to deny the identity of the spot is to call in question the traditions of fifteen centuries, to which the Christians of Europe and of the East have fondly clung, and for which the brave have died; to accept it is to argue against the unbroken silence of three hundred years――against equivocal history――against topography――against analogy――against eminent scholarship――against the Bible. The argument for it is tradition and history; the proof against it is the Bible and topography.