in brasiers, to warm their large apartments, is rather confirmed by the circumstance mentioned in the gospel of John, that the servants and officers of the high priests, when Christ stood before the council, had made a fire of coals (for it was cold), and they warmed themselves; for this it seems was a fire of charcoal, not of wood. Chardin, agreeably to this idea, supposes that the fire which was burning before king Jehoiakam, in which he burnt Jeremiah's roll, was a pan of coals. In this way, persons of quality warm themselves in Persia, and particularly in Media, and wherever wood is easily obtained. The manner in which they sit, will not allow them to be near a chimney; therefore in those places of the east, they have great brasiers of lighted coal. This, Mr. Harmer thinks, is the more probable, that the term (ns) which the prophet uses, occurs no where else in the sacred volume denoting a hearth. The Seventy render it exaga, in the Vulg. arula, a little altar, a portable grate or brasier. Such contrivances were in use among the ancient Greeks, and are called by Homer Aμngs in the Odyssey, where he says that Penelope's maids "threw the embers out of the brasiers upon the floor, and then heaped fresh wood on them, to afford both light and warmth." εσχάρα, But the words of the prophet are more favourable to the opinion of Dr. Russel that it was a hearth, and not a brasier, near which the Jewish monarch was sitting; otherwise the burning of the wood must have filled the house with smoke. Persons of quality at Aleppo, says the historian, have small winter chambers, which have a chimney and a hearth raised about a foot from the floor; and • Chardin's MS. notes, quoted by Harmer, vol. i, p. 341. Malcom's Hist, of Persia, vol. ii, p. 523. they even place their charcoal in a pan there to avoid the deleterious effects of its fume in a close place. This mode of sitting is no impediment; the divan, or alcove, is formed in the usual manner.f upon The natives of those countries, are careful to decorate their habitations with the choicest products of the vege table kingdom. The quadrangular court in front of their houses, is adorned with spreading trees, aromatic shrubs, and fragrant flowers, which are continually refreshed by the crystal waters of a fountain playing in the middle, To increase the beauty of the scene, they cover the stairs which lead to the upper apartments with vines, and have often a lattice work of wood raised against the dead walls, which climbs a vine, or other mantling shrub. This pleasing custom justifies Doddridge in supposing the oc casion of our Lord's comparing himself to a vine, might be his standing near a window, or in some court by the side of the house, where the sight of a vine creeping upon the staircase or the wall, might suggest this beautiful simile. This kind of ornament seems to have been very common in Judea, and may be traced to a very remote antiquity From the familiar manner in which the Psalmist alludes to it, we may suppose it was one of the decorations about the royal palace: "Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house; thy children like olive plants round about the table. Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord." Kimchi, a celebrated Jewish writer, explains the psalm in the same way; and observes that a wife is compared to a vine, because that alone of all trees can be planted in a house. In confirma, f Harmer's Observ. vol. i, p. 342, Dr. Clarke's note. h 1 Psa, cxxviii, 3, tion of Kimchi's remark, Dr. Russel says, "It is generally true, if fruit-bearing trees be intended, as the vine is almost the only fruit tree which is planted in the houses; pomegranates are another." But the orientals were attentive to safety, not less than to convenience and pleasure. To secure their dwellings from the depredations of hostile tribes, that scoured their country in all directions in quest of plunder, they were forced to surround them with lofty walls. This mode of defence seems to have been adopted at a very remote period; for the spies whom Moses sent into Canaan to view the country, reported that the cities were great, and walled up to heaven. The height of these walls, which by a bold oriental figure, dictated by the pusillanimous fears of the spies, are said to reach up to heaven, must have appeared to the people of Israel, unaccustomed as they were to warfare of that kind, and totally unprovided with the means necessary for besieging fortified places, a very serious obstacle to the accomplishment of their wishes. But the magnitude of it may be illustrated with the greatest advantage, from the accounts which modern travellers have given us of the present inhabitants of those deserts, who are much in the same circumstances as the people of Israel were when they came out of Egypt, whose attacks are effectually repelled by the lofty walls of one or two Christian monasteries. The great monastery of mount Sinai, Thevenot says, is well built of good free stone, with very high smooth walls; on the east side there is a window, by which those that were within, drew up the pilgrims into the monastery with a basket, which they let down by a rope that runs by a pulley, to be seen above at the window, and the pilgrims went into it one by one, and so were hoisted up. These walls are so high that they cannot be scaled, and without cannon that place cannot be taken.j k The monastery of St. Anthony in Egypt, says Maillet, is a vast enclosure, with good walls, raised so high, as to secure this place from the insults of the Arabs. There is no entrance into it but by a pulley, by means of which people are hoisted up on high, and so conveyed into the monastery. No warlike apparatus which the Arabian freebooters possess, are sufficient for the reduction of these fortified places. The Israelites, not better provided for besieging strong-holds, hastily concluded that the walled cities of Canaan, of which they heard such discouraging accounts, must oppose an unsurmountable barrier to their progress. It is not to be supposed, that the descendants of Canaan, like the timid monks of Sinai, walled up their gates on the approach of danger, and permitted none to enter the place, but by means of a pulley; but if their gates had not been well secured, the precaution of raising their walls so high had been in vain. One method of securing the gates of fortified places, among the ancients, was to cover them with thick plates of iron; a custom which is still used in the east, and seems to be of great antiquity. We learn from Pitts, that Algiers has five gates, and some of these have two, some three other gates within them, and some of them plated all over with thick iron. The place where the apostle was imprisoned, seems to have been secured in the same manner; for, says the inspired historian, “When they were past the first and second ward, j Thevenot's Trav. part i, p. 169, 170. 1 P. 10. they came unto the iron gate that leadeth into the city, which opened to them of its own accord."m Pococke, speaking of a bridge not far from Antioch, called the iron bridge, says, there are two towers belonging to it, the gates of which are covered with iron plates, which he supposes is the reason of the name it bears," Some of their gates are plated over with brass; such are the enormous gates of the principal mosque at Damascus, formerly the church of John the Baptist. To gates like these, the Psalmist probably refers in these words: " He hath broken the gates of brass ;" and the prophet, in that remarkable passage, where God promises to go before Cyrus his anointed, and “break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron."y But the locks and keys which secure these iron and brazen doors, by a singular custom, the very reverse of what prevails in the west, are of wood. The bolts of these wooden locks, which are also of wood, are made hollow within, which they unlock with wooden keys, about a span long, and about the thickness of a thumb. Into this key they drive a number of short nails, or strong wires, in such an order and distance, that they exactly fit others within the lock, and so turn them as they please. The locks and keys which shut the doors and gates in countries adjacent to Syria, are fabricated of the same materials, and in the same form. But those cities which were fortified with more than ordinary care, had sometimes bars of brass, or iron. In describing the superior and almost impregnable strength of Babylon, which Cyrus was cho |