the storm against the parts of the body that were exposed. In order to judge of the size of the particles, I attempted to catch some in a cap; but how great was my surprise when I found I could not succeed in securing a single specimen of these supposed little particles.

This led me to conceive that the smarting sensation did not proceed from the small stones or the sand striking the body, but that it must be the effect of some invisible force, which I could only compare with a current of electric fluid.

After forming this conjecture, I began to pay closer attention to the phenomena which surrounded me. I observed that the hair of all our party bristled up a little, and that the sensation of pricking was felt most in the extremities and joints, just as if a man were electrified on an insulated stool.

To convince myself that the painful sensation did not proceed from small particles of stone or sand, I held a piece of paper stretched up against the wind, so that even the finest portion of dust must have been detected, either by the eye or by the ear; yet nothing of the kind took place.

The surface of the paper remained perfectly unmoved and free from noise.

I stretched my arms out, and immediately the pricking pain in the ends of my fingers increased. This led me to conjecture that the violent wind, called in Egypt Camsin, is either attended by strong electrical phenomena, or else the electricity is caused by the motion of the dry sand of the desert. Hence we may account for the heavy masses of dust, formed of particles of sand, which for several days darken the cloudless sky. Perhaps we may also go so far as to conjecture that the Camsin may have destroyed caravans by its electrical properties, since some travellers assure us that caravans have occasionally perished in the desert; though I must remark that in all the regions I have travelled through I never could hear the least account of such an occurrence. At all events, to suppose that such calamities have been caused by the sand overwhelming the caravans is the most ludicrous idea that can be imagined.

"The Camsin generally blows in Egypt for two or three days successively, but with much less violence during the night than the day. It only occurs in the period between the middle of April and the beginning of June, and hence its Arabic name, which signifies the wind of fifty days.' Penny Magazine.

QUESTIONS.

How far were they from Cairo? Where is Cairo? By what were they overtaken? How was the wind? What did it blow upon them? Where did it all come from? What did they hear? What did they feel? What caused it? What did they think it was? How did they test it? Where did they feel it most? What happened to their hair? How is it accounted for? What is the wind called? What does the word mean? Why is it so called? When does it blow? How are caravans destroyed by it?

THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.

IN His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, our Lord had wept for the woes of the city which would not own Him, and had foretold that the present generation should not

pass away until His mournful words had been fulfilled. One alone of His apostles (St. John) was left to tarry until this coming for vengeance; the rest had all gone through the pains of martyrdom to their thrones in heaven.

St. Andrew died in Greece, bound on a cross shaped like the letter X, and preaching to the last. His friend St. Philip had likewise received the glory of the cross in Asia; and the last of the Bethsaida band, St. Bartholomew, was tied to a tree and flayed alive in Armenia. St. Matthew and St. Matthias died in Ethiopia or Abyssinia, leaving a church which is still in existence.

St. Thomas was slain by the Brahmins in India, where the Christians of St. Thomas ever after kept up their faith among the heathen around. St. Jude died in Mesopotamia, after writing an epistle to his flock; and his brother, St. Simon Zelotes, also went by the same path to his rest; but their deaths only strengthened the Church, and their successors carried out the same work.

The judgments of God were darkening around Jerusalem. A procurator named Florus was more cruel and insulting than usual, and a tumult broke out against him. Agrippa tried to appease it, but the Jews pelted him with stones, and drove him out of Jerusalem; they afterwards burnt down his palace, and rose in rebellion all over Judea, imagining that the prophesied time of deliverance was come, and that the warlike Messiah of their imagination was at hand.

Nero was much enraged at the tidings, and sent an army under a plain, blunt general, named Vespasian, to punish the revolt. This army subdued Galilee and Samaria, and was already surrounding Jerusalem, when Vespasian heard that there had been a great rebellion at home, and that Nero had been killed. therefore turned back from the siege, to wait and see what would happen, having thus given the token promised by our Lord, of the time when the desolation of Jerusalem should be at hand, when the faithful were to flee.

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Accordingly, in this pause, all the Christians, marking well the signs of coming wrath, took refuge in the hills while the way was still open. Armies were seen fighting in the clouds; a voice was heard in the Holy of Holies,

saying, "Let us depart hence!" The heavily-barred gate of the temple flew open of its own accord; and a man wandered up and down the streets day and night, crying, "Woe to Jerusalem! Woe! Woe!'

The Jews were hardened against all warning; they had no lawful head, but there were three parties under different chiefs, who equally hated the Romans and one another. They fought in the streets, so that the city was full of blood; and fires consumed a great quantity of the food laid up against the siege; yet still the blind Jews came pressing into it in multitudes, to keep the now unmeaning feast of the passover, even at the time when Vespasian's son, Titus, was leading his forces to the siege.

It was the year 70, thirty-seven years since that true passover when the Jews had slain the true Lamb, and had cried, "His blood be on us and our children!" What a passover was that, when one raging multitude pursued another into the temple, and stained the courts with the blood of numbers! Meanwhile Titus came up to the valleys around the crowned hill, and shut the city in on every side, digging a trench, and guarding it closely, that no food might be carried in, and hunger might waste away the strength of those within.

Then began the utmost fulfilment of the curses laid up in the law for the miserable race. The chiefs and their parties tore each other to pieces whenever they were not fighting with the enemy; blood flowed everywhere, and robbers rushed through the streets snatching away every fragment of food from the weak.

The famine was so deadly that the miserable creatures preyed on the carcases of the dead; nay, "the tender and delicate woman" was found who, in the straits of hunger, killed her own babe, roasted and fed upon him. So many corpses were thrown over the walls that the narrow valleys were choked, and Titus in horror cried out that the Jews, not himself, must be accountable for this destruction.

For the sake of the Christian fugitives in the mountains these dreadful days were shortened, and were not in the winter; and in August Titus's soldiers were enabled to make an entrance into the temple. For the sake of its glorious beauty, he bade that the building should be

spared; but it was under the sentence of our Lord, and his command was in vain.

A soldier threw a torch through a golden window, and the flames spread fast while the fight raged; the space round the altar was heaped with corpses, and streams of blood flowed like rivers. Ere the flames reached the sanctuary, Titus went into it, and was so much struck with its beauty that he did his utmost to save it, but all in vain; and the whole was burnt, with six thousand poor creatures, whom a false prophet had led to the temple, promising that a -wonder should there be worked for their deliverance.

The city still held out for twenty more days of untold misery; but at last the Romans broke in amid flames quenched in blood, and slaughter raged everywhere. Yet it was a still sadder sight to find the upper rooms of the houses filled with corpses of women and children dead of hunger; and, indeed, no less than a million of persons had perished in the siege, while there were ninety-seven thousand miserable captives, twelve thousand of whom died at once from hunger.

As Titus looked at the walls and towers, he cried out that God himself must have been against the Jews, since he himself could never have driven them from such fortresses. He commanded the whole, especially the temple, to be levelled with the ground, no two stones left standing, and the foundation to be sown with salt; and he carried off the candlestick, shewbread table, and other sacred ornaments, to be displayed in his triumph.

An arch was set up at Rome in honour of his victory, with the likeness of these treasures sculptured on it. It is still standing, and the figures there carved are the chief means we have of knowing what these holy ornaments were really like. He gave the Jews, some to work in the Egyptian mines, some to fight with wild beasts to amuse the Romans, and many more to be sold as slaves.

Other people thus dispersed had become fused into other nations; but it was not so with the Jews. Slay them not, lest my people forget it, but scatter them abroad among the heathen," had been the prophecy of the Psalmist, and thus it has remained even to the present day. The piteous words of Moses have been literally