by this document the privileges and exemptions of the Sumelas convent and its possessions; and, amongst other precious tokens of Imperial liberality, bestowed on them the right of defending themselves as best they could against the Turkoman inroads, which the sham empire was unable to check, even at but a day's distance from the capital. At the head of the 'Bull,' a long narrow strip of rolled paper, appear the portraits of Alexios and his wife, the Empress Theodora, holding between them on their joined hands a small model church, much as ecclesiastical donors love to appear in Western monuments of a corresponding age: the characters of the writing are large and fine drawn; the Imperial autograph, in huge red ink letters, sprawls below; but the gold seals once appended have long since disappeared from the foot of the scroll. The most remarkable feature in this memorial of later Byzantine times (published at full length by Fallmereyer in 1843) is the inflated verbosity of the style; a verbosity subsequently adopted with many other vices of the degraded empire by the victorious Ottomans.

Of more real importance, though inferior in antiquity, is the paper next unrolled before our eyes, namely, the firman of the Sultan Selim II., also confirmatory, but this time to good purpose, of all the old monastic rights, privileges, and exemptions. It is remarkable that in this document the handwriting conforms to the stiff and old-fashioned Naskhee of Arab origin, instead of the elegant semi-Persian Divanee of later official use. The quotations from the Koran that garnish it from first to last exemplify a tone frequently adopted by the Osmanlee rulers in their day of power. Certainly no miracle is needed to account for the concession of this favour, one in entire accordance with Turkish and even with Ma

hometan usage everywhere. The Sumelas monks have, however, a legend ready to hand, and thus it runs: Once on a time Sultan Selim came on a hunting-party to this neighbourhood, and while pursuing his chase up the Melas ravine beheld for the first time the great monastery. To become aware of its existence and resolve its destruction were one and the same thing in the mind of the tyrant. But before he could so much as form his guilty thought into words of command, he was stricken with paralysis, and laid up a helpless sufferer in a village close by. There he might have remained to the end of his wicked life, had not the Panagia graciously appeared to him in a vision, and suggested the expiation of his crime and the simultaneous recovery of his health by means of the document in question, further accompanied by the douceur of the great circular chandelier that we have already seen suspended before the sanctuary; and, to borrow Smith the weaver's logic, the firman and the chandelier are both alive at this day to testify the prodigy: 'therefore deny it not.' Anyhow, the firman of Selim II. proved a more efficacious protection to the monastery and its land than the 'Bull' issued by the Comnenian emperor; and its repeated renewals by succeeding Sultans, from Selim II. to Abd-elMejeed, form a complete and not uninstructive series in the Mariamana archives, to which we refer the denouncers of Turkish intolerance and Islamitic oppression.

Here were also many other curious documents and manuscripts laid up, say the monks; but a fire which some years since consumed a part of the convent, and pilfering archæological pilgrims, are assigned as the causes of their disappearance. A Greek Testament, supposed to be of great antiquity, was shown us; but the paper on which it is written, and the form of the characters,

bring its date down to the fourteenth or thirteenth century at earliest.

We go the round of what else remains for notice in the cavern: a fine carved reading-desk, eagle-supported, for the lessons of the day; three or four more Panagias, all miraculous; more church-plate; a painted screen, and the like; but these objects have no exceptional interest, and we soon find ourselves again in the dazzling sunlight of the paved court outside. Next we roam about the old buildings,' timber the most, with huge overhanging eaves, and something of a Swiss cottage appearance. But nowhere does any inscription, carving, or the like indicate date or circumstance of construction, nor has any diary or log-book' of events ever been kept within these walls. The memories of the monks, mere uneducated peasants they, form the only chronicle; and memory, like other mental faculties, has but a narrow range when deadened by the sameness of a life that unites agricultural with conventual monotony. Little is here known of the past, and that little is uncertain in epoch and apocryphal in detail, if not in substance. Nor has the establishment ever undergone what, had it taken place, would have been of all other things a sign-mark in its annals-the profanation of the spoiler. Roving bands, Kurde or Turkoman, have indeed been often tempted by the report of hoarded treasures to prowl about the woods of Sumelas, and have cast wistful eyes at the Panagia's rock-perched eyrie; but the narrow path that winds up the precipice is available only at the good-will and permission of the convent inhabitants themselves; and from all other sides, around, above, the birds that flap their wings against the sheer crag of a thousand feet and more could alone find access to Mariamana; while a blockade, if attempted, would be indefinitely baffled by the

capacious store-rooms and cisterns of the fabric. From the Ottoman Government itself the monks, like most of their kind in other parts of the empire, have experienced nothing but protection, or, better still, non-interference; and the freedom of their hospitality, while it does credit to the convent, bears also good witness to its inviolate security. This hospitality is indeed proportioned in some degree to the rank and social position of visitors or pilgrims, but no one is wholly excluded from it, nor is any direct recompense exacted or received from rich or poor,' Greek' or stranger. Of course the shrine gets its offerings-small ones, as a rule, from Greeks; larger from Russians and Georgians; most munificent in any case when prayers are believed to have been heard. The birth or convalescence of a child contributes to the wealth no less than to the fame of the Panagia. But payment for board and lodging is unknown, however numerous the guests, and however long their stay. Indeed, so scrupulous are the monks regarding the gratuitousness of their welcome, that when, after having deposited our offerings in the church, we wished before leaving the convent, some hours later, to make an additional and more general donation, it was at first absolutely refused, and was at last only accepted under the assurance that it had been originally meant for the sanctuary, where its presentation at the foot of some shrine or other had been, said we, unintentionally omitted.

Yet hospitality is after all a virtue that has no necessary connection either with present civilisation or with future progress; one that to fail in is a reproach, but to possess no very high praise. Besides, it is, with comparatively rare exceptions, a quality too common in the East for special commendation; Kurdes, Turkomans, Arabs, Armenians and

the rest are all hospitable after their kind, some profusely so. What particular merit then shall we assign to the monks of Sumclas to justify the existence of a not inconsiderable number of men, and of widely extended demesnes, withdrawn from the natural current of life, and the 'ringing grooves' of the onward world? Learning these monks certainly neither store up in themselves, nor encourage in others; of moral science and teaching they are wholly ignorant; in agricultural industry they do not exceed the average or tend to improve the practice; from a religious point of view they represent and aid to maintain one of the grossest compounds of fable, bigotry, and superstition that has ever disgraced the inventors. Individually benevolent, hospitable, industrious even, they belong to a system essentially narrow, retrograde, odious. If this be the 'Cross' of the East, what advantage has it over the 'Crescent?' And is it from night like this we are to look for the dawn of a better day in the regions of the Levant? If there is little to commend in the Turkish Government symbolised by the Mosque at Trebizond, was the rule of Alexios III., the feeble and ostentatious patron of Sumelas, a whit better? nay, was it not the more sterile, the more corrupt, the more worthless of the two? Whatever may be the handwriting on the wall of the Ottoman palace, the 'Tekel' of 'Greek' rule and 'Greek' mind is unmistakably inscribed on the memorials of the Byzantine past; nor do the wonderworking pictures and rocking cradles of Mariamana tend to reverse,

rather they deepen and confirm the sentence.

It is now mid-day; and before we redescend into the valley, thence to attempt some sketch of the picturesque building from the opposite side, we stand a few minutes in the gallery, and take a last look at the lovely scene before us, now bathed in the silent splendour of a southern noon. Far aloft stretch the bare snow-streaked heights where passes the summer track to Beyboort and Erzeroom; below the dense treetops are pierced here and there by fantastic rock pinnacles, splinters detached centuries ago from the precipice on either side; ten of these grey islets in the leafy depth are crowned by as many little white chapels; they also belong to the Mariamana jurisdiction, and in cach of them, when the appropriate anniversary comes round, the festival of its peculiar saint, Eugenius, John, or some one else of the ten spiritual guardians of Trebizond, is duly celebrated by the Basilian monks of Sumelas. Far beneath rushes and foams the Alpine torrent, the waters of which we have thus traced backwards from their marshy exit at Trebizond almost to their fountain-head.

Austria and Prussia? In the Plenum, that is the full meeting of the Diet, which had to transact the more important business, some proportion, it is true, was aimed at by giving two, three, or four votes to the larger States, and by combining the tiny ones in fixed groups. But even then the kings of Bavaria, Würtemberg, Saxony, and Hanover enjoyed perfect equality with the two preponderating governments. Thirdly, the Bund, which amounted to a perpetual defensive alliance, guaranteed by all Europe, had to act more in an international than a national character. The main source of all its defects and incurable faults was the irremovable antagonism of its two chief members, representing not only considerable German States, but European Powers. Hence our federation continued entirely unfit to create organs of common administration, of judicial, diplomatic, military and commercial centralisation, which should really be at once German and national. Individual sovereignty was obtained by each State, especially those which owed their modern existence more to the grace of Napoleon than to the grace of God. Each member of the Confederation, as far as it could, chose to retain its own independent tribunals, despatched its own foreign ministers, supported its army, or at least some plaything under that name, and painted its turnpikes in the colours of its Serene Highness. And yet the framers of the Vienna settlement were no fools. On the contrary they dealt rather cunningly with the dynastic self-importance and the other much more influential centrifugal powers by which the population in its various subdivisions has been distracted from the very beginning. There were certain members of the Confederation linked to foreign states, as Holstein, Luxemburg, and down to 1837 Hanover. Two only possessed in themselves the ability of either

growing out of or growing into federal Germany.

Look at Austria, at that strange cluster of multifarious dominions and races, around the German centre on the Danube. Has any method of keeping them together proved suc cessful except ruling by divisionexcept setting the Hungarians, the Germans, the Slavonians, the Italians against each other? The: House of Hapsburg, by calling in the aid of the Jesuits during the Reform ation period and by submitting to: concordats in more recent times, had blocked up the natural channels of intellectual and social progress. Hence the intercommunion of the German kindred, and as a consequence its cultivating expansion all along the great river,__were checked during centuries. Prince Metternich adhered to such traditions but too faithfully. In his opinion the safety of Austria required that her preponderance in the Bund should be continued, although his master in 1814 had refused the reassumption of the imperial crown. For this reason no liberal, truly constitutional government was allowed to the single States; and when after all it struck root here and there, when the national spirit grew with a national literature, the Frankfort Diet was obliged to act as the supreme police court against what was considered dangerous for the community at large. Kings, dukes, and princelings of every description were indulged in the gratification of their dynastic ambition; and in pursuance of her purpose Austria, in spite of the original Vienna draft, never to the very last would yield to Prussia a turn in the presidency of the Diet, but opposed her with a majority of votes thus cleverly obtained, though Prussia had entered the Bund with about sixteen, and Austria with only eight millions of Germans. According to Prince Metternich and his successors, Ger