It is observed by the author of the Itinéraire, that the ancient travellers were extremely fortunate in not being obliged to enter into all these critical disquisitions; in the first place, because they found in their readers that religion which never contends against truth; and, secondly, because every mind was convinced that the only way of seeing a country as it is must be to see it with all its traditions and recollections. It is, in fact, with the Bible as his guide that a traveller ought to visit the Holy Land. If we are determined to carry with us a spirit of cavil and contradiction, Judea is not worth our going so far to examine it. What should we say to a man who, in traversing Greece and Italy, should think of nothing but contradicting Homer and Virgil? Such, however, is the course adopted by too many modern travellers; evidently the effect of our vanity, which would excite a high idea of our own abilities, and at the same time fill us with disdain for those of other people.[91] A short time after M. Chateaubriand visited Jerusalem, the church of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed by fire; and although it has been since repaired, it is admitted that both the architecture and the internal decorations are much inferior to those of the original edifice. The general plan of the whole building, however, as well as the arrangement of the holy stations, are so exactly preserved, that the descriptions of the earliest writers apply as correctly to its present as to its former state. It is true, that the tombs of Godfrey de Bouillon and of Baldwin his brother, which called forth the enthusiastic admiration of the French author just named, have been annihilated by the malignant Greeks, so that not a vestige remains to mark the spot whereon they stood. The Corinthian columns of fine marble which formerly adorned the interior being rendered useless by the fire, the dome is now supported by tall slender pillars of masonry, plastered on the outside, and so closely grouped together as to produce the worst effect. We are told, indeed, that the meanness of every thing about the architecture of the central dome, and of the whole rotunda which surrounds the Sepulchre itself, can only be exceeded by the wretched taste of its painted decorations.[92]