To quote from some travellers who were present at the ceremony, during the year 1846, we are informed that “it was a very remarkable scene. The large area of the church was densely crowded; but, around the sepulchre, a space of about four feet wide was kept clear by a double line of Turkish soldiers. At short intervals of time, a number of infatuated and highly-excited men and boys entered in, and, rushed round and round with desperate energy, screaming and hallooing like so many maniacs. Some stood upright on a friend’s shoulders, who ran with the rest till an unlucky stumble threw both to the ground. One old man was particularly conspicuous; he generally headed the rest, and seemed to be fitter for a strait-waistcoat than to be the leader of a religious procession. He danced, shouted, and threw himself into all sorts of postures. At last he mounted on another frantic devotee, and urged him to his utmost speed: they continued their mad course till he was thrown down violently against two of the soldiers; they seized him by the hair of his head, and hauled him out of the church. In a few minutes, however, he returned and was more outrageous than before. Thus, for two hours, the church was a scene of noise, confusion, and frantic excitement. At two o’clock the governor arrived, and quietly took his seat. The racing pilgrims were driven off the course, and, shortly after, a procession of priests, headed by the patriarch, and followed by a motley group of ragged fellows, bearing shabby banners, walked slowly round three times, chanting some prayers. The patriarch was a grey-headed old man, with a cunning expression of countenance; his very look seemed to say, ‘I am about to act a lie--what fools are you to believe it!’ There is a circular hole in the side of the little chapel built over the sepulchre; close to it a man was posted, protected by the soldiers. He was a rich pilgrim, probably an Armenian, who had paid handsomely for the privilege of being the first to light his tapers by the holy fire. The old patriarch, having divested himself of most of his fine trappings, entered alone into the sanctuary. In a minute after, he pushed through the hole a quantity of flaming cotton, dipped in spirits of wine; the favoured pilgrim eagerly lighted a bunch of tapers by it, and, escorted by the soldiers, hurried out of the church. The excitement was now at its height; a scene followed which baffles description. There was a tremendous rush towards the flame, still held out by the patriarch, and each strove who should light his taper the earliest. Those who could not get up to head-quarters were obliged to procure a light from the more fortunate, and in three minutes the church and adjoining chapels were in a blaze. Thousands of wax-candles and flambeaux were glittering over the space; some had forty or fifty long thin tapers bound together, which were intended as valuable presents for friends at home. It was, for the time, like