In a valley contiguous to Bethlehem are the remains of a church and convent which were erected by the pious empress over the place where the angels appeared to the shepherds. Nothing has survived the desolation to which every edifice in Palestine has been repeatedly subjected but a small grotto wherein the heavenly communication was vouchsafed to the simple keepers of the flock. On the way back to Jerusalem the traveller is induced to leave the more direct route, that he may visit the Convent of St. John in the Desert. This monastery is built over the dwelling where the Baptist is supposed to have first seen the light; and accordingly, under the altar, the spot on which he was brought forth is marked by a star of marble bearing this inscription:-- "Hic precursor Domini Christi natus est." Here the forerunner of the Lord Christ was born. The church belonging to this establishment has been described as one of the best in the Holy Land, having an elegant cupola and a pavement of Mosaic, with some paintings. But the appearance, nevertheless, is poor and deserted, as if its votaries were few, and but little concerned in preserving its ancient grandeur. The account given of it by Sandys will amuse the reader by the simplicity of the narrative as well as by the deep interest the good man felt in the various scenes which passed before him:--"Having travelled about a mile and a halfe farther, we came to the cave where the baptist is said to have lived from the age of seven until such time as he went into the wilderness by Jordan, sequestered from the abode of man, and feeding on such wilde nourishment as these uninhabited places afforded. This cave is seated on the northern side of a desert mountaine,--only beholden to the locust-tree,--hewne out of the precipitating rock, so as difficultly to be ascended or descended to, entered at the east corner, and receiving light from a window in the side. At the upper end there is a bench of the selfesame, whereon, they say, he accustomed to sleeps; of which whoso breaks a piece off stands forthwith excommunicate. Over this, on a little flat stand the ruins of a monastery, on the south aide, naturally walled with the steepe of a mountain; from whence there gusheth a living spring which entereth the rock, and again bursteth forth beneathe the mouth of the cave,--a place that would make solitarinesse delightful, and stand in comparison with the turbulent pompe of cities. This overlooketh a profound valley, on the far side hemmed with aspiring mountains, whereof some are cut (or naturally so) in degrees like allies, which would be else unaccessibly fruitlesse; whose levels yet bear the stumps of decayed vines, shadowed not rarely with olives and locusts. And surely I think that all or most of those mountains have bin so husbanded, else could this little country have never sustained such a multitude of people. After we had fed of such provision as was brought us