WITH that romantic sentiment which marks the nineteenth century, M. de Vogüé expresses the feeling of a visitor to Jerusalem in the days when Gothic architecture meant so much to the enthusiastic student of history: “Je retrouvais avec bonheur, au temps désiré du pèlerinage ces formes communes qui me rappelaient la patrie, et qui mêlaient aux glorieux souvenirs qu'elles évoquent les douces pensées du clocher domestique.” At the present day these charming sentiments would perhaps be less keenly felt by the tourist who has visited many other lands where the remains of Gothic architecture survive in the midst of alien surroundings. The distinguishing characteristics of Gothic art are well enough pronounced in the buildings of the Holy Sepulchre, but they are certainly not so well preserved as in the cathedrals of the neighbouring island of Cyprus. The churches of Nicosia and Famagusta, the immediate successors of the Jerusalem monuments in point of date, are singularly untouched except for the removal of all Christian emblems, and this of course is due to their conversion into mosques. Far different has it been with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, owing chiefly to the great fire of 1808, and to the subdivision of the interior into the tenancies of the different sects of Christendom.

The study of the existing group of buildings is complicated by many remarkable circumstances. The visitor to the Holy City is confronted by the appearance of the half-ruined, half-rebuilt remains of one of the grandest monuments of the Middle Ages, tenanted by representatives of every branch of existing Christianity except the Protestant; and these various sects occupy the place as the tenants of Mohammedan owners of the property.