The Express.
London, England, 1868-06-13 00:00:00

[STAMPED Id. ADDITIONAL.] ONE P

EXPLORATIONS IN PALESTINE.

This is an age of restoration. Destructive as it
wine to be, its purpose is to dig down to the old
foundations, and disoover what actually was or is
beneath what seems to be. From the old Norman
or Saxon churches, where the whitewash is
scraped from the rudely pictured walls and
the plaster is picked from the sculptured
doorway, to the mounds of Babylon and Nineveh,
where a heap of shapeless rubbish is made to tell
us stories of forgotten history, everywhere there is
an effort after better acquaintance with the past.
Everywhere the ancient world lies under a
heap of rubbish. Eighteenth century church-
wardens whitewashed oak ceilings and plastered
groined roofs, and shut up sculptured windows
and doorways in the interests of economy, so
that many of the ecclesiastical restorations of the
age are merely the uncoverings of the past. Time
has done the same with sites and places. In our
towns and cities the Middle Ages are under our
feet. We come on traces of old London in digging
for sewers and excavating foundations. In Lei:-
carter a Roman pavement is shown in a cellar,
which was once on the doorstep of the ancient
house in the same old street, but the level
of the street has risen above it, as all
our levels seem to do. It is not the
natural soil, but the rubbish of ages, on
which we of the nineteenth century walk.
Still worse is the rubbish of legend and story
which encumbers historic sites. The ancient world
lies buried under a mass of conjecture and
assumption deeper than Thebes or Babylon be-
neath the dust of the desert. We may say, with-
out reference to the ancient figure of speech, that
historic truth lies in a well, and we must dig deep
to get it. But of all ancient places to which tlus
applies, it applies to Palestine the most. Over the
sites and scenes of Sacred History so many changes
have past, so many wars have been waged, so
many revolutions have swept, that they lie buried
under the rubbish of rain and legend of actual
displacements and misleading guesses deeper than
ordinary observation can trace them. The
destructions of Pagan Borne were followed in
after ages by the reconstructions of Christian
Rome. Paganism obliterated the traces of Chris-
tian scenes, but Christianity sought them and
found them anew. The devout feeling of earlier
times sought the spots where interesting events
bad happened, and ready imposture or greedy
faith discovered them all. Palestine is the land of
falsehoods. Every scene of the Bible History has
had its setting found for it, not by investigation
and inquiry, but by crude guessing, by unscrupu-
lous assertion, or by omnivorous faith. We have
more to unlearn than even to learn in Pales-
tine. Monkish lore has overlaid the land,
and buried its historic sites deeper than
the rubbish of its ruins. We have to cart
away the one and dig through the other. We have to
apply the patient habits and scientific methods of
modern study and observation to the investigation
of these ancient cities and landscapes and this
historic soil, with the hope that some substantial
addition will thereby be made to our knowledge
of the past and to the literary criticism of ancient
history.

This is the object of the Palestine Exploration
Fund, and of the excavations which have been
carried on under its direction. It was an American
divine, Dr. Edward Robinson, who, in our own
day, gave the first distinct impulse to Palestinian
discovery. He found traces of ancient sites em-
bedded in the spew& of the common people, and
was able to identify many of the scenes of Jewish
history by the names by which they are still called
by the Arab wanderers. In 1840, Majors Robe, Scott,
and Wilbraham, with a corps of engineers, made
a partial survey of the eenntry. and Lieutenant
Symonds executed a trigonometrical survey of
great part of Judna and the plain of Esdraelon,
and ascertained the remarkable differenoe of level
b&tween the Dead Sea and the Lake of Tiberias on
one hand and the Mediterranean on the other.
Since then many travellers have continued their
researches with various incomplete results, from
the Rev. Henry Tristram's investigations into the
flora and fauna of the Lebanon to M. de Saulcy's
crude guesses and hasty inferences about the Dead
Sea, and his more satisfactory. journey during
the present decade. But it is et& true, as the
Archbishop of York said at the meeting
on Thursday, that it is a shame and a
reproach to Christendom, that the land of the
Bible should be so little known as to its geogra-
phy, its natural history, its archaeology, and all
that science and literature can most desire to
know as to the cradle of our civilization and our
faith.

The work already done by the society is only
enough to show what promise there is of rich re-
sults in the future. The actual explorations have
been confined to the capital, and a few data have
been procured for determining several of the sites
of ancient buildings. The streets of the ancient
city have been reached, drains„ and re-
servoirs laid bare, and some of e f ures of the
original Temple-hill have been discovered. In
the Valley of Kedron the well of Job was sounded
to the depth of a hundred feet, and a broad
causeway was found between Zion and
litoriah, built arch on arch like some
ancient Roman viaducts still existing in the Cam-
pagna. But .the chief discovery was one single
work of ancient art—the seal of " Haggai, the son
of Shebaniab," supposed to be as early as the time
of Rua, and with an inscription in the ancient
Samaritan character. This, with a few coins and
fragments of pottery, is all that the excavations
have yielded aa yet. In the valleys of Kedrot and
the Tyropaian a succession of shafts had shown
how far beneath the present surface lay the ancient
level, and how the description of Josephus might
have been literally true, and the view from the
battlements of the ancient city before its rains
had choked the valley may have bee* the giddy
height the historian so proudly tells of. But the
little which has been done is only the promise of
more, and if the excavations proceed it may coins
to be with Jerusalem as with Rome and
Pompeii, that travellers will go, ae Dr.
&woe, ear they are already beginning to
do, to vivify their interest in history, and increase
their intelligent underetanding of it by looricit
the scenes amid whisk it was matted, and
out the spots width great events have
memorable. This is the practical use of such ex-
plorations. To vivify an ancientnarrative, to light
it up with something of the brilliancy of contem-
porary chronicles, we must reoonstruct the scenes
amid which it lies. It is this which gives such
sharp reality to some events of our own remoter
history, and helps us to-tbel as we do the oontinuity
of our national life. It is this, too, which in addi-
tion to a clear and brilliant style is the charm of
Renan's Life of Jeans. Written among the scenes in
which the life was lived, there is something in it
of the eaten' setting in which it was placed
ecenething of the background before which it;
august tubjeet moved, however neinatural and
monstrous may be the figure Reran h
~aspat in His
plsoe. The popular interest in Palestine admits
from the fact that pictorial teaching is more vivid
and lifelike than any
.iteseription can be. The
critical interest in it arras from the better under-
standing of any narrative which is given us by
knowing something of the eanies among which the
persons it speaks of moved, and the events it tells
of hopper ed. some disappointment will there-
fore be felt at the small results which
Palestinian exploration has as yet produced.
Bit those reunite are it least the pro-
liaises of greeter. They hare lad the 'radia-
tions for tLe archa3ology of Jeruealem, and they
already promise to correct the false impressions of
tradition, and to restore the true position of places

which association has ow
monkish geography, which is
have of Palestine, has got
thrown upon it, and, as Dean
Thursday, " the reputation of
Josephus has been considerabk
Perhaps the completion of the
pletely vindicate the old histor
store his fame.

The interest which has been
in these explorations ought t.
continuance. This is a work
needs time and patience. In
success is often the sudden r
tinued labour. In Lieut. Warren
an able and enthusiastic agent
fame of earlier explorers, and r
task. We are glad to hear
Palestine to-day to continue his researches.
There can be but little doubt that the 3eol. a
month needful to carry on the work will be sup-
plied by English liberality. Literature and
science are both interested in Lieutenant Warren's
proceedings, and even religion may be benefited
in the more vivid interest which greater knowledge
of itshistoric scenes may throw over its narratives,
and the more life-like reality which may be given
to poem, and prophecy, and parable. To give a
localhabitation and a name to places known to all
our children from the Bible narrative, is, as Rir
Henry Bawlinson said, one of the purposes of Pales-
tinian Exploration, in which it comes most closely
home to the interest of every English man, woman,
and child.

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.
(THIS DAY.)

The Tithes hopes the Servians will soon solve
the untoward question of their sovereignty, so unex-
pectedly confronting them, almost at the outset of their
independent career. The reference of what the, Tinus
calls the Railway Combination Bill to a Select* Com-
mittee of the House of lords is, oar contemporary thinks,
but preliminary to ita extinction, for their lordships will
not bare it in its present state, and the vice of the measure
seems almost ineradicable.

The Daily Nein speaks, amongst other topics, of local
taxation for the metropolitan police, of the Bensendewil/
case, and the late Rajah Brooke.
The Telymph makes sport of the sacrifloes which pri-
vate members will have to make of their favourite mea-
sures, and eulogises the late ex-President Beehams*
The Star refers to what was said last night respecting
the securities for the registration of the press, which it
terms a poor and paltry censorship, and discussing the
career of the late Mr. Buchanan, forms an unfavourable
estimate of it.

THE WEEKLY PRESS.

The Saturday Review says the mothes which
have induced the House of Commons to abstain from ex-
treme measures against the government will not influence
the next parliament. There will be no fear of a dissolu-
tion, and there will certainly be no objection to a clhange
on the ground that Mr. Disraeli has not bad a ffsi4 trial.
Almost the only argument in his numerous speeches which
has produoed any considerable effect wati contained in his
happy sarcasm on Mr. Gladstone's announcement that an
Irish crisis bad arrived. The House of Cotazaons %greed
with the minister that he was singularly unfortunate in
encountering, within seven days from his appearance
in Parliament as:FirstlLordroflthe Treasury,la catas-
trophe which had been preparing for 700 yaws. It was
undoubtedly-more important that Ireland should be con-
ciliated than that Mr. Disraeli should receive generous
consideration ; but, as long as it was possible to hope that
he had any Irish policy whatever, there was a strong feel-
ing in his favour. On the meeting of the sad parliaroests
ambition and cunoatty wIL equeny recombine an Inure-
diate trial, not only of the force of the government and
the opposition, but of the internal balance of power 'in the
liberal party.

The liberal spirit of the great constitutional lawyers of
the past seems to the Saturday Review to be found rather
in the expreadons of the Lord Chief Justice of England
about Gordon's unhappy arrest thank that at his eminent
colleague and puisne. There can be no doubt, since the
report of the Jamaica Commission, that an English subject
was put to death by a court composed of indiscreet officers,
upon evidence that would not have warranted the banging
of a dog; and, unless the majority of the Court
of Queen's Bench are mistaken, the miserable prisoner was
dragged under the jurisdiction of this military tribunal
by illegal violence. It may be the truth that Mr. Gordon
was, as Justice Blackburn described him, "a pestilent
fanatic," though the learned judge, after admitting Gor-
don's absolute innocence of the crime for which his life
was takes, would have acted more discreetly in leaving
the scourging of hie memory to others. But whitever
Gordon's demerits, he had a right, in common with all the
Queen's subjects, to a fair trial, and his life was forfeited
through an error of judgment on the part of Mr. Eyre
and his colonial advisers.

Referring to Mr. Lefevre'e bill for securing to mar-
ried women their own personal property, the flatierday
laPiew observes that the dead-heat between the sup-
porters and • opponents of the bill represented with some
accuracy the division of opinion which perhaps prevails in
general society, as well as in the Rouse of Cornmeal. It
is not a matter of regret that the measure is practically
postponed for a year by the reference to a *slog com-
mittee.

The remarkable censure of Mr. Justice Blackburn,
for to that the Chief Justice's language 'esiteinly
comes, does not seem to the Spectator to be more
grave or more startling than the occasion - ?really
required. Our contemporary is unable to tinder-
stand Sir Colin Blackburn's blunder. There wee
something positively indecent in his over-ruhne • legal
opinion so elaborately laid down by his superior judge
and so meetly acquiesced in by himself, without even
a citation of it and without the slightest respect to the
great anthill/ray from whom be was compelled to differ.
It is impossible to massive a molder submit of gsagepr
natation, both in legal doctrine and in practical directions
than Mr. Justice Blackburn, owing, no doubt, to the over.
powering force of his prepossessions, was guilty of in this
cam. If the Chief Justice had not openly dieavqwed his
oilisegue, end corrected the Oedemata he bad meek, he
mould have been not °sly =lust to Ms own sepaildion,
bed inilmileiy seem *Must telsisemuMiy. • r .
Discussing the reislionehip existing bohemia prows
and Germany, the Iseminer says it is upladr
that, though a war with Prance would be
calamity by most free-minded Germans, the of
the Imzerabarg question through a So-called " neutral-
leatios," has left a rankling wound is the nation's *east.
F • him Mom urged by Fames in this MOW,
mass put forth without stasidbg sobs dust with
a terrible rairibatign. MI well.wichars to Frans* apd to
I uropesa pesos musk tiserefore desire that the belharstial
French politicians should at last adopt a more isvutable
tone towards other nations. '

Refseriag to the makers at issue between Mt llesties
Blackburn sad his treason on the Ciseen'slissisk, sass

Strainer says that Westininster-hall bas asidawaram so
moved as it was oa Monday last by the dignillid tem-
perate, but solemn and scathing, words of dit Alen-
ander Cockburn. Oar contemporary rejoices Mad the
spirit of Holt, of Mansfield, and of Dins= 'sdfl: lives
and moves and speaks la that sacred high' place etjiatiat
when their MUM& WI .611 linger. TY* an-girmisalor of
Joanna has escaped without a trial; b•Sa gloss has
gone forth against the reckless Ow on popreadmlower
in times of civil trouble which will never pass &MN

• -
LORD CsAbuiliii.bues •QiilnCO, T. 'a
hey,
Jux. IL—Notice is bey* giiikatokatoihon=
friglineol the Priebe' of Wales'
Clams, hold airfoil. 4CIII. Inzneeta ow of
Pbilsz, tbs. akip. peg, jatAwsopieek. nellitfUee'lliessinethet'proal tcam royal
lighsess at this levee shall be ooesiiered as
will
to
reemtations to her Majesty. This levee will be the bet
hcld during the present eeeeoll.—Ge:ettf.

I

'ENVY.
summated. Already
is nearly all we stall
additional discredit
tan Stanley said on
L of our old friend
rably rehabilitated."
he survey may corn-
nian's credit and re-
en already awakened
to guarantor., their
>rk whioh pecdliarly
i such investigations
reward of long eon-
wren the society has
ent, emulous of the
entirely equal to his
r that he starts for

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