The rotunda is well lighted, with a dome, light blue in colour and covered with golden lilies in memory of its repair by the French; the drum is of good white stone. In the centre rises the old Chapel of the Sepulchre, dark and gloomy, of marble discoloured by age, surmounted by a queer cupola, of Italian taste, and ornamented all along the top with gilt nosegays and modern framed pictures. Its entrance is flanked by very handsome marble candlesticks, and in front of the vestibule are hung beautiful gold and silver lamps, suspended by chains, and glowing with a subdued light through glass cups, red, yellow, and green; they number forty-three in all, thirteen for Franciscans, Greeks, and Armenians respectively, and four for the poor Copts. Stooping to enter, we pass into the vestibule or Chapel of the Angel, walled with marble slabs, and thence into the inner Chapel of the Sepulchre itself, where the darkness is only relieved by the glowing lamps over the altar on the Tomb. The most impressive portion of the church is, however, the nave east of the rotunda belonging to the Greeks, with its great screen in front of the three eastern apses. The floor is unoccupied, save by the short column marking the “centre of the world.” The dome above is poor, rudely whitewashed, and painted in fresco, with the long strings of globular lamps usually seen in Greek churches; but the glory of the place consists in the lofty screen and the panelling of the side walls. Into the panelling dark pictures are framed, and gilded thrones for the bishop and patriarch stand, one each side, beyond the dark wooden choir-stalls. The screen towers up to the roof, and presents figures, in rows one above another, standing in canopied recesses, but all in low relief: in the screen are the gates of the apses, and over each gale is a little purple glass lamp, the colour of which, in the gloom and beside the tarnished gilding, is truly magnificent. Four candlesticks of grey marble beautifully carved, the central pair eight feet high, stand before the steps to the screen; they are presents from the Czar, and have the Russian eagle on them. Passing over without description the many minor chapels, which are dingy and uninteresting, there remains only the Chapel of Calvary to notice. It is as dark as the greater part of the rest of the church, yet on arriving at the top of the steep stairs, the general effect is a blaze of gold. Nearly the whole of the east end is occupied by the Greek altar. The pictures above it have been covered with gold plates, leaving only the faces visible. The lamps are gold, the sacred vessels are gold. The roof is very low, and painted in well executed and ancient fresco on a blue ground. A faint smell of rosewater pervades the chapel, mingled with an odour of stale incense.