the posterity of Esau. In the very heart of these mountains, occupying a little plain of less than two miles circumference, stood the capital city of the people to whom this region belonged. A few holes hewn in the crags which environed the little plain all around, formed the rude beginnings of this city. Some of these caves were placed so high on the mountain's face, that the early Edomite, whose dwelling they formed, looked forth, like the eagle in his eyry, upon the little plain beneath, and the mountains' summits beyond, glowing, it might be, in the light of the morning sun, or tinged, perhaps, with his setting rays. By and by, as their knowledge of art increased, and as their wealth enabled and prompted them to carry that knowledge into effect, the inhabitants began to embellish the entrances of their rocky dwellings by such ornaments as it belongs to the chisel to create. The most beautiful façades began to cover the bottom of the mountains, not built, but hewn in the rock; while pillars, arches, temples, and elegant and luxurious dwellings, rose on the little plain, and entirely covered its surface.

Shut in from all the world by a rampart of rocky mountains, beyond which, on the west, lay a sandy desert extending to the Nile, and on the east, a vast plain by no means distinguished for its fertility, one would have thought that Petra would have been rarely visited that it would have been one of the most secluded cities in the world, and little known. Just the opposite of this was the fact. There was

scarce a city of its time of which it could be said that it was a more frequent, or a more general resort. This city amid the hills of Edom (Petra) was, for a long period, the centre of the commerce of the world. All the riches of the East-the myrrh and the frankincense of Arabia, the pearls and the rich stuffs of India-passed through her on their way to the climes of the West. There was not a country on the Mediterranean shore, from Egypt on the one side to Greece and Italy on the other, which did not look to this city amid the mountains of Seir for what its people needed, in addition to what its soil produced. Petra, moreover, was the abode of royalty, as well as the centre of a rich and extensive trade. She had sovereigns of her own; and her people-brave in war, as well as skilful in commerce-retained their independence, when the rest of the nations bowed to the yoke of the great monarchies which successively arose in the world. Nature had encompassed her with impregnable defences; her walls were the everlasting hills; and from the bottom of her mountains she saw the armies of Rome, which had overrun the world, turn back. Such was the eminence to which, from small beginnings, this city rose. Not only did she challenge the admiration of the world by the singular beauty and extraordinary character of her architecture; she was the resort of strangers from every region of the earth; and the command she exercised over the vast trade of which she was the channel, gave her great influence over the surround