The Weekly Lancaster Gazette

Correspondence of the National Intelligencer.

The Lepers in Jerusalem.--In my rambles about Jerusalem I passed on several occasions through the quarter of the Lepers. Apart from the interest attached to this unfortunate class of beings (arising from the frequent allusion made to them in the Scriptures,) there is much in their appearance and mode of life to attract attention and enlist the sympathy of the stranger. Dirt and disease go revoltingly together here; gaunt famine stalks through the streets, a constant cry of suffering swells upon the dead air, and sin broods darkly over the ruin it has wrought in the gloomy and ill-fated spot. Wasted forms sit in the doorways; faces covered with white scales and sightless eyes are turned upwards; skeleton arms, distorted and fetid with the ravages of leprosy, are outstretched from the foul moving mass; and a low howl is heard, the howl of the stricken for alms; alms, oh, stranger, for the love of God! alms to feed the inexorable destroyer! alms to prolong this dreary and hopeless misery!

Look upon it, stranger, you who walk forth in all your pride and strength, and breathe the fresh air of heaven; and you who have never known what it is to be shunned by your fellow-man as a thing unclean and accursed; you who deem yourself unblest with all the blessings that God has given you upon earth; look upon all that you have conceived in your gloomiest hours--a misery that can be endured; learn that even the Leper, with death gnawing at his vitals and unceasing tortures in his blood, cast out from the society of his fellow-man, forbidden to touch in friendship or affection the hand of the untainted, still struggles for life, and deems each hour precious that keeps him from the grave.

The quarter of the lepers is a sad and impressive place. By the laws of the land which have existed since Scriptural times, they are isolated from all actual contact with their fellow-men; yet there seems to be no prohibition of their going out beyond the walls of Jerusalem, and begging by the road side. Near the gate of Zion, on the way to Bethlehem, I saw many of them sitting on the rocks, their hideous faces uncovered, thrusting forth their scaly hands for alms.--Their huts are rudely constructed of earth and stones, seldom with more than one apartment, and this so filthy and loathsome that it seemed unfit to be occupied by swine.--Here, they live and propagate, whole families together, without distinction of sex: and their dreadful malady is perpetuated from generation to generation, and the groans of the aged and the dying are mingled with the feeble wail of the young that are brought forth branded for a life of misery.

Strange and mournful thoughts arise, in the contemplation of the sad condition and probable destiny of these ill-fated beings.--Among many, there must be some in whose breasts the power of true love is implanted; love for woman in its purest sense, for offspring, for all the endearments of domestic life which the untainted are capable of feeling; yet doomed never to exercise the affections without perpetuating the curse; some, too, in whom there are hidden powers of mind, unknown save to themselves; ambition that corrodes with unavailing aspirations; a thirst for action that burns unceasingly, yet never can be assuaged; all the ruling passions that are implanted in man for great and noble purposes; never, never to give one moment's pleasure unmixed with the perpetual gloom of that curse which dwells in their blood.

As I plodded my way for the last time through this den of sickening sights, a vision of human misery was impressed upon my mind that time cannot efface. I passed when the rays of the sun were cold and the light was dim; and there come out from the reeking hovels leprous men, gaunt with famine, and they bared their hideous bodies, and howled like beasts; and women held out their loathsome and accursed babes, and tore away the rags that covered them, and pointing to the shapeless mass, shrieked for alms. All was disease and sin and sorrow wherever I went; and as I passed on, unable to relieve a thousandth of the misery, moans of despair and howling curses followed me, and the Lepers crawled back into their hovels to rot in their filth and die when God willed.