From Jerusalem he made an excursion, by the way of Bethany, to the Dead Sea. It was a sultry day, and he suffered much from the heat, having therein a suggestion of the rain of fire and brimstone which destroyed the cities whose ruins are supposed to be petrified at the bottom of the Dead Sea. With his usual hardihood he plunged fearlessly into the bituminous waters of the Dead Sea, and seemed to enjoy what no traveller who has since indulged in that bath is known to have enjoyed, the buoyance of the water and the sensations caused by the volcanic materials held in solution. On his return to the city he remained for several days examining the sacred localities and contending with the crowds of beggars and guides who blocked the narrow and filthy streets of Jerusalem. The wretchedness, poverty, disease, and filth of the people are so prominent and so loathsome, that unless the ordinary traveller keeps constantly on his guard, he will forget all the old and holy associations in his disgust for the city of to-day. It is said that the city is less dirty and less stricken with disease than it was in 1850. If such be the fact, it is a marvel indeed how Mr. Taylor ever found a fit place for his Muse, which so frequently visited him there. He seems, however, to have been deeply interested in everything, having about as little faith in what the guides told him about the locality of the Holy Sepulchre, Calvary, Gethsemane, and the true cross, as travellers in more modern times appear to entertain. Jerusalem was not only all that we have represented it to be outwardly, but the people would lie beyond the fables of any other people; would steal and would murder. To be much troubled by these facts would destroy the poetry of the place, and Mr. Taylor allowed none of those things to move him. He wrote of the facts as he found them, uncolored by the imagination, and seems to have flattered himself that he was not as sentimental as the travellers who had preceded him. If he was so very practical, whence such beautiful poetry? “Fair shines the moon, Jerusalem, Upon the hills that wore Thy glory once, their diadem Ere Judah’s reign was o’er: The stars on hallowed Olivet And over Zion burn, But when shall rise thy splendor, set? Thy majesty return?”