1781.b.39, 12(34)

Inscription: Inscribed in the negative, 'Frith 196.'

Genre: Architectural Photography

View looking across ruined structures towards the church: 'The ruined state of modern Jerusalem is strikingly brought before us by this view. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre has outside the aspect of a place long deserted, so that we could not imagine, did we not know, that it is still the object of pilgrimages, and in the hands of rich Christian communities. The great square tower is seen to have partly fallen, the smaller, but loftier, towers to be decayed, and the chief dome to have lost its outer covering. This last has lately been restored, but so long as the rain does not penetrate into the interior, the external appearance of the church is wholly neglected. The houses nearer to us seem uninhabited, so miderable is their state. The street to the left, with its pavement sloping to the middle, and the ragged awnings of the shops, is harmonious in its wretchedness. Everything looks as though the city had been sacked, and was now almost or entirely uninhabited. The Norman church, rising from the oriental houses in striking contrast, recalls at once the time of the Crusaders, whose monumnets, records of their inflexible national feeling, show nothing borrowed from the land of their sojourning...'