I have spoken of the _Arabian Nights_, and there is really a touch of them even in the Christian churches, perhaps increased with a tradition of early Christian secrecy.
There are glimpses of gorgeously tiled walls, of blue curtains and green doors and golden inner chambers, that are just like the entrance to an Eastern tale.

The Orthodox are at least more oriental in the sense of being more ornamental; more flat and decorative.
The Romans are more Western, I might even say more modern, in the sense of having more realism even in their ritualism.
The Greek cross is a cross; the Roman cross is a crucifix.
But these are deeper matters; I am only trying to suggest a sort of silhouette of the crowd like the similar silhouette of the city, a profile or outline of the heads and hats, like the profile of the towers and spires.

The tower that makes the Greek priest look like a walking catafalque is by no means alone among the horns thus fantastically exalted.

There is the peaked hood of the Armenian priest, for instance; the stately survival of that strange Monophysite heresy which perpetuated itself in pomp and pride mainly through the sublime accident of the Crusades.

That black cone also rises above the crowd with something of the immemorial majesty of a pyramid; and rightly so, for it is typical of the prehistoric poetry by which these places live that some say it is a surviving memory of Ararat and the Ark.
Again the high white headgear of the Bethlehem women, or to speak more strictly of the Bethlehem wives, has already been noted in another connection; but it is well to remark it again among the colours of the crowd, because this at least has a significance essential to all criticism of such a crowd.
Most travellers from the West regard such an Eastern city far too much as a Moslem city, like the lady whom Mr.Maurice Baring met who travelled all over Russia, and thought all the churches were mosques.
But in truth it is very hard to generalise about Jerusalem, precisely because it contains everything, and its contrasts are real contrasts.
And anybody who doubts that its Christianity is Christian, a thing fighting for our own culture and morals on the borders of Asia, need only consider the concrete fact of these women of Bethlehem and their costume.