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ARAB PROVERB-JEROME'S TOMB.

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the law, therefore, only was observed as was necessary to confirm the transfer of the rights to Boaz.

In regard to modern customs, there is a proverb among the Arabs which may possibly owe its origin to this law of Moses. When an Arab divorces his wife, he says of her, She was my babûj (slipper), and I cast her off. In both the law and the proverb the babûj represents the woman and her matrimonial rights and claims. It is one thing, however, for a man to kick off his slipper in disgust, and quite another to have it plucked off in scorn and contempt by the insulted lady, especially if she should spit in his face, and fasten upon him in Israel the nickname Beit Khabûtz hanaal, the house of him whose shoe is loosed. In any event, the comparing of woman to a slipper is not very complimentary to the sex, but it is eminently Arabic, and it is a deplorable fact that all her matrimonial rights can be kicked off, like a worn-out babûj, at the caprice of her heartless lord and tyrant.

But you must allow me to complete my visit and return home. I examined with much interest the great church, which is certainly ancient and is really worth seeing, and the paintings in various parts of it, which are not.

But did you not enter the tomb of Jerome, and his study, where he spent so many years in translating the Bible?

Most certainly I did, and was deeply impressed by the visit. I suppose that these may be genuine, as also the last resting-place of the two ladies, his companions and patrons. These are all beneath the premises which belong to the Latin monks, and it is no more than justice to add that they manifested more decorum and solemnity in their deportment than do the Greeks and Armenians. After completing the circuit of Holy Places, and refreshing the inner man at the restaurant, kept by a talkative Greek, we took a long circuit eastward to see the surrounding country, and then returned hither across those plains where the shepherds watched their flocks on that night when the Redeemer of the world was born.

11th. In my walks about Zion to-day I was taken to see

the village or quarter assigned to the lepers, lying along the wall directly east of Zion Gate. I was unprepared for the visit, and was made positively sick by the loathsome spectacle.

You could not be more surprised and startled than I was on my first introduction to this awful disease. Sauntering down the Jaffa road, on my approach to the Holy City, in a kind of dreamy maze, with, as I remember, scarcely one distinct idea in my head, I was startled out of my reverie by the sudden apparition of a crowd of beggars, "sans eyes, sans nose, sans hair, sans every thing." They held up toward me their handless arms, unearthly sounds gurgled through throats without palates-in a word, I was horrified. Having never seen a leper, nor had my attention turned to the subject (for a quarter of a century ago Jerusalem and its marvels were not so well understood as they are now), I at first knew not what to make of it. I subsequently visited their habitations, as you have done to-day, and have made many inquiries into their history. It appears that these unfortunate beings have been perpetuated about Jerusalem from the remotest antiquity. One of my first thoughts on visiting their dens of corruption and death was, that the government should separate them, and thus, in a few years, extinguish the race and the plague together; and I still think that a wise, steady, and vigilant sanitary system might eventually eradicate this fearful malady. But it will not be so easily or expeditiously accomplished as I then thought. It is not confined to Jerusalem, for I have met with it in different and distant parts of the country. And what is particularly discouraging is, that fresh cases appear from time to time, in which it seems to arise spontaneously, without hereditary or any other possible connection with those previously diseased. This fact, however, has not yet been fully established.

It is evident that Moses, in his very stringent regulations respecting this plague and its unhappy victims, had in view its extinction, or at least restriction within the narrowest possible limits. Those who were merely suspected were

LEPROSY OF THE JEWS-TACITUS' ACCOUNT OF. 517

shut up, and if the disease declared itself the individual was immediately removed out of the camp, and not only he, but every thing he touched, was declared unclean. For all practical purposes, the same laws prevail to this day. The lepers, when not obliged to live outside the city, have got a separate abode assigned to them, and they are shunned as unclean and dangerous. No healthy person will touch them, eat with them, or use any of their clothes or utensils, and with good reason. The leper was required by Moses to stand apart, and give warning by crying unclean! unclean! Thus the ten men that met our Saviour stood afar off, and lifted up their voice of entreaty. They still do the same substantially, and, even in their begging, never attempt to touch you. Among tent-dwelling Arabs the leper is literally put out of the camp.

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Tacitus has some strange stories about the leprosy and the Jews. When he comes to speak of the Jewish war in the time of Vespasian, he takes occasion to give an account of the origin of this people, in which there are almost as many fables as sentences. He then goes on to say that one thing is certain. The Jews, when in Egypt, were all afflicted with leprosy, and from them it spread to the Egyptians. When the king, Bochorus, inquired of Jupiter Ammon how his kingdom could be freed from this calamity, he was informed that it could be effected only by expelling the whole multitude of the Jews, as they were a race detested by the gods. He accordingly drove them all forth into the desert, where one Moses met them, and succeeded in bringing them all into obedience to himself," with a great deal more of such nonsense. He accounts for the rejection of swine's flesh among the Jews by the fable that the leprosy was caught from swine. This much, I think, can be safely inferred from a careful study of the 13th and 14th chapters of Leviticus, that the Hebrews were actually af flicted with the awful curse of leprosy beyond all modern example-leprosy of many kinds: in their persons; "leprosy in garments"-in the warp and in the woof-leprosy in

Tacitus, Ann., book v.

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