JUDEA CAPTA. CHAPTER I. "AGAIN will I build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel!" saith the Lord. Evermore bearing in mind this promise, regarding it as a beacon of hope, yea, of positive certainty, brightening the dark path that we are about to traverse, we may the better bear to fix a stedfast gaze on the desolations of many generations,-to recall, in what has been, the painful prelude to what now is; and to relate how, with the stroke of a cruel one the holy city was smitten, her spiritual privileges extinguished, and her temporal glories buried in the dust. "Beautiful for situation," that which constituted its principal beauty was also its main strength. Judea is peculiarly a "hill country ;" and in the neighbourhood of the holy city these mountainous elevations are rendered conducive to its defence as to have furnished King David with an illustration of the divine guardianship: "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people." What the size and aspect of the city may have been in the days of its highest splendour, |