Our notices of the medieval travellers would properly conclude here. A new era was opening upon the west as well as upon the east, and the last breath of the spirit of the crusades died, as the system which had nourished it sunk before the great religious Reformation of the sixteenth century. Instead of monks and soldiers, Europe, more enlightened, began soon afterwards to send merchants, and consuls, and ambassadors. A clearer and more satisfactory light was now thrown on the geography of the Holy Land. The English traveller in Palestine of most authority in the seventeenth century was Sandys, who, however, often erred on the side of credulity. Before the end of the century came the well known HENRY MAUNDRELL, who, on account of the brevity of his narrative and the extreme accuracy of his descriptions, has been selected to conclude the present volume. We know little more of Maundrell than that he was a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, which he left to take the appointment of chaplain to the English factory at Aleppo. It is not within our province to notice the works of subsequent travellers.
It will be necessary to make some statement to our readers of the manner in which the present volume has been edited, and of the sources from which the different works it contains have been derived.
The travels of bishop Arculf, (as compiled by Adamnan,) as well as those of Bernard the Wise, and the life of Willibald, were printed in the Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti, Sæc. III., Part II., in 1672. A previous edition of Arculf had been published in a small quarto volume, Ingoldstadt, 1619, which also contained the abridgment by Bede. The latter, under the title of _Libellus de Locis Sanctis_, is included in the different editions of Bede's works, and will be found in the recent edition by Dr. Giles, accompanied with an English translation. Another edition of the narrative of Bernard was published from a manuscript in the Cottonian Library in the British Museum by M. Francisque Michel, in the Memoirs of the Society of Geography at Paris. M. Michel's text is in many respects inferior to that of Mabillon, but it contains the concluding paragraphs relating to the state of society in Egypt, Italy, and France, which were wanting in the manuscript from which Mabillon printed. But the new editor, M. Michel, has fallen into a very grave error; for the treatise of Bede, _De Locis Sanctis_, following in the Cottonian manuscript the tract of Bernard, he has mistaken them for one continued treatise, and printed them as such, accusing Mabillon of having printed only one half of his author. The narrative of Sæwulf, the only manuscript of which is preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, was published in the collection of the French Geographical Society by M. D'Avezac, from a transcript furnished by the editor of the present volume. M. D'Avezac has executed his task of editing with remarkable care and discrimination, but I fear that the transcript was in two or three instances inaccurate, and at the time of publication it was unfortunately not in the power of M. D'Avezac to have it collated with the original. One omission of some importance for the architectural history of the church of the Holy Sepulchre was very kindly pointed out to me by Professor Willis, and has been corrected in the translation. In describing this church, the text as printed by M. D'Avezac contains the words, "Ista oratoria sanctissima continentur in atrio Dominici sepulchri ad orientalem plagam. In lateribus autem ipsius ecclesiæ suæ capellæ sibi adhærent præclarissimæ hinc inde, sicut ipsi participes Dominicæ passionis sibi in lateribus constiterunt hinc inde." In the original manuscript the passage stands thus, and is rendered intelligible—"Ista oratoria sanctissima continentur in atrio Dominici sepulchri ad orientalem plagam. In lateribus vero ipsius ecclesiæ _duæ_ capellæ sibi adhærent præclarissimæ hinc inde, _Sanctæ Mariæ scilicet Sanctique Johannis in honore_, sicut ipsi participes Dominicæ passionis sibi in lateribus constiterunt hinc inde."