expatiate upon something the sheikh had said--perhaps about camels or the grain crop--beginning his interruption almost literally in the words of Job’s friends:--“Hearken to me, I also will shew mine opinion. I will answer also on my part, I also will shew mine opinion. [Illustration: SITE OF THE ANCIENT CITY OF SAMARIA. The remains of the ancient city are on the olive-clad hill to the left.] For I am full of matter, the spirit within me constraineth me.” Altogether it was a scene of the unadulterated East--just such a scene as might have been witnessed any time these three thousand years. * * * * * The great memorial of Israel is her religion. To her it was given to know the Eternal God and to pass on that knowledge to all the nations of the world. Among the many impressions given by a journey through Palestine, none is so important and none so strong as this, that the land was eminently suited for that one purpose and for that alone. She tried many similar experiments, but they all failed utterly. The luxurious orientalism of Solomon, the democratic revolt of Jeroboam, the military ambitions of Baasha, and the attempt at commercial supremacy which Omri made--each of these was an imitation of one or other of the contemporary nations. For Israel they were alike impossible. Their successive failures proclaim her a peculiar people, set in a peculiar place for a peculiar purpose. For them, as Renan says, “to act like men”--_i.e._ like all the rest of the world--was a sort of degradation. All other experiments in greatness failed; their greatness lay solely in the knowledge of the Lord. CHAPTER II GRÆCO-ROMAN Nothing strikes one more than the contrast in Palestine between the vanishing of Hebrew buildings and the permanence of Roman ones. You have come here to a land which you know to have been for many years under Roman government, but which still to your imagination is Oriental, with here and there a Roman touch. You find, among the very ancient buildings, hardly a remaining trace of anything that is not Roman; and of Roman work you find an amount which probably astonishes you. Before you have long left Jaffa, some part or other of one of the old Roman roads making for Jerusalem will be seen. Not long afterwards Bether comes in sight--that terrible little valley where the blood ran so deep when the siege ended and the Jews’ last hope was broken. So you move on from point to point of Roman story until, as you climb the steep ascent from the Jordan valley to Gadara, you realise that it was when encamped just here that Vespasian heard the news of Nero’s death and was proclaimed emperor by his legion.