Stooping to enter, we pass into the vestibule or Chapel of the Angel, walled with marble slabs, and thence into the inner Chapel of the Sepulchre itself, where the darkness is only relieved by the glowing lamps over the altar on the Tomb.
The most impressive portion of the church is, however, the nave east of the rotunda belonging to the Greeks, with its great screen in front of the three eastern apses. The floor is unoccupied, save by the short column marking the "centre of the world.â The dome above is poor, rudely whitewashed, and painted in fresco, with the long strings of globular lamps usually seen in Greek churches; but the glory of the place consists in the lofty screen and the panelling of the side walls. Into the panelling dark pictures are framed, and gilded thrones for the bishop and patriarch stand, one each side, beyond the dark wooden choir-stalls. The screen towers up to the roof, and presents figures, in rows one above another, standing in canopied recesses, but all in low relief: in the screen are the gates of the apses, and over each gale is a little purple glass lamp, the colour of which, in the gloom and beside the tarnished gilding, is truly magnificent. Four candlesticks of grey marble beautifully carved, the central pair eight feet high, stand before the steps to the screen; they are presents from the Czar, and have the Russian eagle on them.
Passing over without description the many minor chapels, which are dingy and uninteresting, there remains only the Chapel of Calvary to notice. It is as dark as the greater part of the rest of the church, yet on arriving at the top of the steep stairs, the general effect is a blaze of gold. Nearly the whole of the east end is occupied by the Greek altar. The pictures above it have been covered with gold plates, leaving only the faces visible. The lamps are gold, the sacred vessels are gold. The roof is very low, and painted in well executed and ancient fresco on a blue ground. A faint smell of rosewater pervades the chapel, mingled with an odour of stale incense.
Sunday after Sunday we revisited the venerable church, and followed the brown Franciscans in their march round the sacred stations, listening to the deep sonorous tones of their chant. On one occasion this was suddenly drowned by the high nasal scream of the Armenians, and we found the celebrant of the latter rite in the Calvary Chapel,--a priest with a long beard and peaked Armenian hood. The responses were made by black-robed acolytes in fezzes, and a second minister, in gaudy robes, with a gilt-paper crown much too large for him, swung a censer. The Latin ritual seemed simple and dignified, its music melodious, and its ministers reverential, when contrasted with the unearthly screeching and childish mummeries of the Oriental sect.