The feast lasted eight days: in the first seven the ceremonies of the commencement were repeated, but with this difference, the number of bullocks for the burnt-offering was diminished by one every day,[166] and in the six following days civil occupations might be pursued, which were forbidden on the first. The traffic, which took place at all the great festivals, was especially active at this time. The curious productions of Egypt, the imports and manufactures of Tyre, the spices of the east, the balsam of Gilead, and the corn and cattle of Galilee, were bartered or sold; and every one purchased what was necessary against the approaching season of winter. Helon, however, had no pleasure in seeing what he considered as a profanation of the house of God, and withdrew from the sight of it to pass his days in the tabernacle of Iddo, on the mount of Olives. On the third day he presented his thank-offering, which was truly to him what its name implied, an offering of peace. While Sulamith was engaged in preparing the meal from that part of the victim which belonged to the offerer, Helon availed himself of the permission which the priests enjoyed on festival days, to go into the holy place and see its magnificence. ----- Footnote 166: Numb. xxix. ----- Standing at the altar of burnt-offering, which was itself raised forty-two steps above the court of the Gentiles, a space of twenty-two cubits intervened between the spectator and the temple building. The altar, therefore, was not within but in front of the temple, the blood of atonement which was to reconcile man to God being thus shed between them. Twelve steps ascend from the level of the base of the altar to the temple; and where the pillars Jachin and Boaz stood in the temple of Solomon,[167] the portico began. The building consisted of three parts, the portico, the holy place, and the holy of holies. The portico was a hundred cubits high, a hundred long, and twenty broad: the entrance, which was seventy cubits, and twenty-five broad, stood open without folding-doors. Within, the portico was ninety cubits in height, fifty in length, and twenty in breadth, from east to west. Every part of it was gilded. Opposite to the entrance was the curtain which closed the passage into the holy place, fifty-five cubits in height and sixteen in breadth, exhibiting the colours of the four elements, white, dark blue, crimson, and purple. A large vine, with golden clusters, of the size of a man, was represented over the entrance. The holy place had not the same proportions as in Solomon’s; it was twenty cubits in breadth, sixty in height, and forty in length. In it stood the golden candlestick, the golden altar of incense, and the golden table of shew-bread. The holy of holies, before the entrance to which a second curtain hung, was a cube of twenty cubits. In this temple it was empty; but in that of Solomon it had contained the ark of the covenant with the tables of the law, above