198 P A L P A L Hall, after a short illness, in the eighty-first year of his age. His remains were laid in Westminster Abbey. Although there was much in the official life of Lord Palmerston which inspired distrust and alarm to men of a less ardent and contentious temperament, it is certain that his ambition was not selfish but patriotic, that he had a lofty conception of the strength and the duties of England, that he was the irreconcilable enemy of slavery, injustice, and oppression, and that he laboured with inexhaustible energy for the dignity and security of the empire. In private life his gaiety, his buoyancy, his high-breeding, made even his political opponents forget their differences ; and even the warmest altercations on public affairs were merged in his large hospitality and cordial social relations. In this respect he was aided Avith consummate ability by the tact and grace of Lady Palmerston, the widow of Earl Cowper, whom he married at the close of 1839. She devoted herself with enthusiasm to all her husband s interests and pursuits, and she made his house the most attractive centre of society in London, if not in Europe. A Life of Lord Palmerston, by the late Lord Bailing, was pub lished in three volumes in 1870, which owes its chief merit to the selections from the minister s autobiographical diavies and private correspondence. The work, however, ends at the year 1840, when more than half his ministerial career remained untold. This bio graphy was resume! an 1 continued by Mr Evelyn Ashley in 1876, after the death of Lord Balling ; but the whole period from 1846 to 1865 is compressed into two volumes, and no doubt materials are in existence, though still unpublished, which will eventually supply a fuller account of the important part played by this eminent statesman for sixty years in the affairs of the British empire and of Europe. PALM SL T NDAY (Dominica in Palmis), the Sunday immediately before Easter (see HOLY WEEK), in the Roman Catholic communion is characterized by a striking ceremonial which takes place in church at the beginning of the high mass of the day. Branches of palms and olives or other trees having previously been laid in suffi cient quantity in front of the high altar, the anthem Hosanna is sung by the choir, the collect is said by the celebrant, and lessons from Exodus xv. and xvi. and Matt. xxi. are sung by the subdeacon and deacon respectively. The branches of palm and olive (held to symbolize " victory over the prince of death " and " the coming of a spiritual unction ") are then blessed with prayer and aspersion, whereupon the principal person of the clergy present approaches the altar, and gives a palm to the celebrant, who afterwards gives one to him, then to the rest of the clergy in the order of their rank, and finally to the laity, who receive kneeling. During the distribution appropriate antiphons are sung, and when it is over a procession begins for which there is another series of antiphons. At the return of the procession two or four singers go into the church, and, shutting the door, with their faces towards the procession, sing two lines of the hymn " Gloria, laus, et honor," which are repeated by the celebrant and others outside ; this continues till the end of the hymn. The subdeacon next knocks at the door with the end of the cross he carries ; the door is opened, and the procession re-enters the church. Then fallows mass, when all hold the palms in their hands during the singing of the Passion and the Gospel. There is evidence that the feast of palms (/?aum/ iopr-fj) was observed, in the East at least, as early as the 5th century, but the earliest mention of a procession similar to that which now takes place on Palm Sunday both in the Greek and in the Latin communion occurs in an Ordo Officii probably not earlier than the 10th century. PALMYRA is the Greek and Latin name of a famous city of the East, now sunk to a mere hamlet, but still an object of interest for its wonderful ruins, which its 1 Semitic inhabitants and neighbours called Tadmor. The i latter name, which is found in the Bible (2 Chron. viii. 5), and is written "iJDin and liO"in in Palmyrene inscriptions, has survived to the present day, and is now locally pro-
- nounced Tudmir or Tidmir. The site of Palmyra 1 is an oasis
I in the desert that separates Syria from Irak, about 50 hours I ride or 150 miles north-east from Damascus, 32 hours from Emesa, and five days camel journey from the Euphrates. 2 The hills which fringe the oasis mark the northern limit of the Hammad, the springless and stony central region of the great Syrian desert. The direct route between the Phoenician ports and the cities of Irak and the Persian Gulf would be from Damascus eastward through the Hammad, but this region is so inhospitable that for at least two thousand years caravans have preferred to make a detour to the north and pass through the oasis of Tadmor. At this point also the great line between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean is intersected by other routes connecting Palmyra with northern Syria on the one hand and with Bostra, Petra, and central Arabia on the other routes now deserted or little traversed, but which in ancient times were of very considerable consequence, especially in connexion with the overland incense trade. The oasis was thus naturally marked out as a trading post of some importance, but the commanding position which Palmyra held in the 2d and 3d centuries of our era was due to special causes. The rise and fall of Palmyra form one of the most interesting chapters in ancient history, and must be studied not only from ancient writers but from the numerous inscriptions that have been collected from the ruins of the city and the tombs that surround it. The oldest notice of Palmyra is in 2 Chron. viii. 5, when Tadmor in the wilderness is said to have been built by Solomon. But the source of this statement is 1 Kings ix. 18, and here the name is TMR, which cannot be read Tadmor, and from the context in which Judiwan towns are spoken of is almost certainly the Tamar of Ezek. xlvii. 19, xlviii. 28. It is indeed extremely improbable that Solomon, whose policy was to enrich Judah by developing the lied Sea traffic, and so carrying the trade of the East to the Mediterranean ports through his own country, would have encouraged the rival route by Tadmor, which lies quite outside the Israelite settlements, and passes through districts over which Solomon was unable to maintain even the recognition of suzerainty which David had extorted by his Syrian wars. After the time of Solomon the Red Sea trade was interrupted, and an over land caravan trade from Phoenicia to Yemen and the Persian Gulf took its place. But neither on the cuneiform inscriptions nor in the Old Testament writings prior to Chronicles, not even in Ezekiel s account of the trading connexions of Tyre, is there any mention of Tadmor ; up to the 6th century B.C. the caravans seem to have been organized by merchants of southern or central Arabia, and they probably reached Damascus by way of Duma (Jauf Beni Amir) and the W. Sirhan, without coming near the oasis of Palmyra (see especially Isa. xxi. 1 1 sy. ; Ezck. xxvii.). On the other hand Tadmor cannot have been a new place when the Biblical Chronicler ascribed its foundation to Solomon, and thus we shall hardly be wrong in connecting its origin with the gradual forward move ment of the nomadic Arabs which followed on the over throw of the ancient nationalities of Syria by the Chaldsean empire. Arabian tribes then took possession of the partly cultivated lands east of Canaan, and, as has been explained in the article NABAT/EANS, became masters of the Eastern 1 According to the Due de Luynes, the great temple is in 34 32 30" N. lat. and 35 54 35" E. long. 2 Pliny (viii. 89) gives the distances as 176 Roman miles from Damascus and 337 from Seleucia.
