Excerpt from The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Illustrated by Over Four Hundred Paintings and Drawings Taken From the Four Gospels and From Studies Made in Palestine

This is why, attracted as I was by the divine figure of Jesus, and by the entrancing scenes of the Gospel story, and desiring to present them, as faithfully as I could, in theirdifferent aspects, I determined to start for Palestine, and to visit it as a devout pilgrim.

I started on the 1sth of October, 1886. I was just fifty years old.

As soon as I arrived in Egypt, I saw that there was no fear of my losing any of my illusions; Alexandria and Cairo already amply repaid me for my journey, by giv ing me the direct impression of antiquity. With such documents, it seemed almost superfluous to go further - antiquity was palpably there, and I thought it would be easy to rid it of the thin layer of modernity that covered it, and so discover at once the remains of the bygone ages. When I ar rived in Palestine, however, the impression was different again; I felt that Africa was not the whole of the East; that there the race, the customs, the materials used in the construction of the towns, and hence even more markedly the landscapes and the soil, all were different. As I went northwards, from the time of leaving Nazareth, Lebanon, and Damascus, I was aware of the presenceof the Turkish race, that is to say, of the man coming from the North, with his special customs, his sensuality, and his distinctive costume, composed of fur-lined stuffs, heavy with embroidery, which necessitate quite a different style of arrangement.

I was thus able to gain, by comparing the North and the South, a fuller and more pre cise idea of the country of the Jews.

As for the buildings, the variations in their general character were quite as striking. In Africa and the north of Palestine, where wood is used, the construction and decora tion of the houses and other edifices are quite different from what is seen in Judea, where wood is, and always must have been, want ing, since it had to be brought from Lebanon for the palaces and the porches of the tem ple The roof of every house was raised in a dome, and this dome was visible above the rest of the roof; hence this crowd of little domes in Judea, which contrast with the flat roofs of the northern and southern towns.

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