The population is now from three to four thousand, and it can never have varied much.[2] The cold there is sharp in winter, and the climate very healthy.

The town, like all the small Jewish towns at this period, was a heap of huts built without style, and would exhibit that harsh and poor aspect which villages in Semitic countries now present.

The houses, it seems, did not differ much from those cubes of stone, without exterior or interior elegance, which still cover the richest parts of the Lebanon, and which, surrounded with vines and fig-trees, are still very agreeable.

The environs, moreover, are charming; and no place in the world was so well adapted for dreams of perfect happiness.

Even in our times Nazareth is still a delightful abode, the only place, perhaps, in Palestine in which the mind feels itself relieved from the burden which oppresses it in this unequaled desolation.