Nothing could better illustrate the completeness of the change through which Israel passed when she exchanged a nomadic for a settled life than the great importance which the idea of _the city_ has in the Bible. Kinglake describes the Jordan as “a boundary between the people living under roofs and the tented tribes that wander on the farther side.” The very name of “city,” applied to these grotesque little hamlets, shews how seriously they took themselves, and compels an amused respect for so mighty a little self-importance, for a “King” of that time might be compared with a chairman of parish council to-day. The idea of the city became more and more part of the religion of Israel as Jerusalem rose to religious as well as civil importance. To them God was a city-dweller, and there is an eastern saying about lonely wanderers journeying homeless towards the sunset, that they are “going to God’s gate.” The changing history of the land has passed it through many phases, and no doubt there are far wider differences between the centuries in respect of men’s dwellings than in respect of those natural features of the land which we have been studying in the preceding pages. This chapter will describe present conditions. And yet in spite of changes the aspect of things must be pretty much what it always was. Men gathered into cities on some strongly fortified hill for purposes of war, or around some holy place for worship, or in some fertile valley for safe agriculture; and the sites thus chosen are retained for the most part. With the exception of the wandering tents, which are occasionally seen throughout the land, there is hardly a solitary dwelling in Palestine which is not a ruin. And the want of good roads, together with the uncertain government, seems still to keep the village communities more apart than they are in most countries. Each village has a character and a reputation of its own, and cherishes views regarding its neighbours which it is not slow to impart either to them or to foreigners. The colour of these townships divides them into the three classes of our title. Damascus and Beyrout are beyond the scope of the present description--Damascus, the greyest city in the world so far as age is concerned; and Beyrout, the over-grown white town upon which the ends of the world are come, leaving it little individual character of its own. Keeping to the south of these, we have the clearly marked division, with little overlapping. A brown village may indeed have a white church or mosque gleaming from its bosom, and the walls of some towns besides Jerusalem are grey; yet in the main it is a land of brown villages, white towns, and one grey city. * * * * *