one of our latest and most intelligent travellers, “ making a few observations on one 
mass of ruins, the imposing grandeur of which peculiarly struck us. I allude to that 
remnant of a Colonnade, of which there are six columns standing. The beauty and 
elegance of those pillars are surprising. Their diameter is seven feet, and we estimated 
their altitude at between fifty and sixty, exclusive of the epistylia, which is twenty feet 
deep, and composed of immense blocks of stone, in two layers of ten feet each in depth; 
the whole most elaborately carved in various devices. The space originally included 
by those pillars was 104 paces long by 50 broad.” 1 The magnitude of the stones gene¬ 
rally used in these buildings is extraordinary. In the west wall there are three stones 
which together measure 182 feet, with proportional depth. The largest which the Artist 
had ever previously seen were those in the Egyptian Temple of Dendera, 29 feet. 2 Some 
of the stones in the walls of Jerusalem were also of great size. But, “these are, perhaps, 
the most ponderous masses that human skill ever moved into a wall; and here they are 
raised between twenty and thirty feet from the foundation.” 3 The largest stone of the 
three is 62 feet 9 inches long, the two others are about 60 feet each. 4 
1 Irby and Mangles’ Travels. 2 Roberts’s Journal. 
3 Richardson's Travels. 4 Rococke. 
SHRINE OF THE NATIVITY. 
This chamber, partly an excavation in the limestone, lies directly under the Church 
built by the mother of Constantine. It is thirty-seven feet long by eleven wide, and 
though now naked, when compared with the general decoration of the Greek shrines, 
is floored and walled with marble, and seems to have been once covered with Mosaic, of 
which some rich specimens still remain. 
On the right are three lamps, suspended over the Manger in which our Lord was 
laid; opposite to this, the altar, covered with a canopy, is said by the Monks to mark 
the place where the Magi knelt to make their offerings. At the other end of the Grotto, in 
the semicircular recess, a glory represents the Star which guided the Magi. Round it is 
the inscription— 
“Hie de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus Natus est.” 
The manger now in the Grotto is only a substitute; the original, according to the 
Italians, having been removed to Rome by Sixtus V. It is now in the Church of Santa 
Maria Maggiore, in a small Chapel remarkable for the costliness of its ornaments. 
Numerous lamps, the gifts of Christian princes, throw light over the darkness of the 
chamber. Above the spot where the Magi knelt, is a picture exhibiting them in the 
act of worshipping; one of the wise men is an Ethiopian. 
