About the immense outer fortifications crawled the shadowy valleys of Tophet, of Brook Kedron and of Hinnom.

Thickly scattered like fallen patches of skies the pools of Siloam, Gihon, Shiloh, En-Rogel, the Great Pool, the Serpent's Pool and the Dragon's Well reflected the color of the mountain heavens.

Between them wandered the blue threads of certain aqueducts that supplied them.

Everywhere rose the shafts of monuments and memorials, old as the pride of Absalom, new as the folly of the Herods; everywhere the aggressive paganism of Rome and Greece, which would have paganized this monotheistic race out of very rancor against its uprightness, violated with insolent beauty the hieratic severity of the city's face.

Rich, bold, strong, beautiful, Jerusalem was at that hour, as viewed from the hill to the north, the perfection of beauty and the joy of the whole earth.
For a moment ambition struggled nobly in the breast of the man that overlooked it.