'24B AUKfi’s TRAVELS 
The House of St. Anne , atSephoury, presented us with the 
commencement of that superstitious trumpery, which, for a 
long time, has constituted the chief object of devotion and of 
pilgrimage in the Holy Land, and of which we had afterward 
instances without number.* A tradition prevails that St. 
Joachim and the mother of the Yirgin Mary resided in this 
place; accordingly, some pious agent of Constantine the First 
erected over the spot where the monks fancied their house had 
stood, or, what is more likely, over what they vouched for be¬ 
ing the house itself, a most magnificent church. The remains 
of this sanctuary were what we had been invited to see; and 
these now bear the name of the house I have mentioned. 
The visit was, however, attended by circumstances which may 
possibly interest the reader more than the cause of it will io« 
duce him to imagine. 
We were conducted to the ruins of a stately gothic edifice, 
which seems to have been one of the finest structures in the 
Holy Land. Here we entered, beneath lofty massive arches 
of stone. The roof of the building was of the same mate¬ 
rials. The arches are placed at the intersection of a Greek 
cross, and originally supported a dome or a tower: their ap¬ 
pearance is highly picturesque, and they exhibit the grandeur 
of a noble style of architecture. Broken columns of granite 
and marble lie scattered among the walls, and these prove how 
richly it was decorated. We measured the capital of a pillar 
of the order commonly called Tuscan, which we found lying 
against a pillar of granite. The top of this formed a square of 
three feet. One aisle of this building is yet entire; at the 
eastern extremity whereof a small temporary altar had been 
recently constructed by the piety 7 of pilgrims: it consisted of 
loose materials, and was of very modern date. Some frag¬ 
ments of the original decorations of the church had been ga¬ 
thered from the ruins, and laid upon this altar; and, although 
it w as open to every approach, even Mahometans had abstain¬ 
ed from violating the sacred deposit. We were less scrupu¬ 
lous ; for among these, to our very great surprise, we noticed 
an ancient painting, executed after the manner of the pictures 
worshipped in Russia,! upon a square piece of wood, about 
half an inch in thickness. The picture, split through the 
middle,, consisted of two pieces: these, placed one upon the 
# A house supposed to have belonged to the same persons is also shown in Jerxisi,* 
7 em. 
t- See the Hist part of these travels, eh. II.. 
