that it is frequently difficult to distinguish the Turkish from the Armenian family, both in Armenia and at Constantinople; only the Armenian is the inferior in all respects; he would be called in China a second-chop Turk; he is more quick and restless in his motions, and wants the dignity and straightforward bearing of the Osmanli. More than 100,000 Armenians are settled at Constantinople; these are not so ignorant, and are, even in appearance, different from those of their original country, who are a heavy and loutish race, while the citizens are thin, sharp, active in money-making arts, and remarkable for their acuteness in mercantile transactions. Each Turkish village elects its cadi, a sort of mayor; an Armenian Christian village elects its elder, who is called the Ak Sakal, or White Beard; he is the responsible person in all transactions with Government, and sometimes holds an arduous post.

The women live in a harem, like the Turkish women, separate from the men. The mistress of the house superintends the kitchen, the making of preserves, and salting winter stores; they wear the yashmak, or Turkish veil, at Constantinople, where the Armenian ladies are celebrated for their beauty and their fine eyes and black arched eyebrows. In Armenia, the women, when they

go out, wrap themselves up in a large piece of bunting, the same kind of stuff that is used in Europe for flags; being of wool, it takes a fine colour in dyeing. The ample wrappers of the women are sometimes of a bright scarlet, sometimes a brilliant white or blue. The effect of this veil is much more pleasing than those of Constantinople or Egypt. The Armenians are

not bad cooks: some of their dishes are excellent; one of mutton stewed with quinces leaves a very favourable impression on the recollections of the hungry traveller. The country people live underground in the peculiar houses which I have described; they are an agricultural peasantry, tilling the ground, and not possessing large herds of sheep or cattle, like the Turkomans, Koords, or Arabs; they are a heavy-looking race, but are hardy and active, and inured from youth to exercise and endurance, but even in these respects they are excelled by the Mahometan mountaineers.

The superiority of the Mahometan over the Christian cannot fail to strike the mind of an intelligent person who has lived among these races, as the fact is evident throughout the Turkish empire. This arises partly from the oppression which the Turkish rulers in the provinces have exercised for centuries over their Christian subjects: this

is probably the chief reason; but the Turk obeys the dictates of his religion, the Christian does not; the Turk does not drink, the Christian gets drunk; the Turk is honest, the Turkish peasant is a pattern of quiet, good-humoured honesty; the Christian is a liar and a cheat; his religion is so overgrown with the rank weeds of superstition that it no longer serves to guide his mind in the right way. It would be a work of great difficulty to disentangle the pure faith preached by the Apostles from the mass of absurdities and strange notions with which Christianity is encumbered, in the belief of the villagers in out-of-the-way places, among the various sects of Christians in the dominions of the Sultan. This seems to have been the case for many centuries, and it has produced its effect in lowering the standard of morality and injuring the general character of those nations who are subjects of Turkey and not of the Mahometan religion. For, of two evils, it is better to follow the doctrines of a false religion than to neglect the precepts of the true faith.

CHAPTER XVII.

Armenian manuscripts -Manuscripts at Etchmiazin-Comparative value of manuscripts Uncial writing-Monastic libraries-Collections in Europe -The St. Lazaro library.

ARMENIAN manuscripts are of extreme rarity, not only in Europe, but in Armenia itself, at Constantinople, or any other place. The unsettled state in which that distracted province has from time immemorial been sunk has prevented the development of the peaceful arts, and few of the monastic establishments of that country had wealth, or leisure, or convenience to copy and illuminate their books. The few fine manuwith seem to have

scripts which I have met been written for some of the Armenian princes, and were the works of scribes supported by exalted personages, who wrote under the shadow of their protection in the metropolitan cities, or in the patriarchal monastery of Etchmiazin. was prevented by illness when in the neighbourhood from visiting Etchmiazin, but there are preserved (or rather neglected) there, I have been

I

given to understand, more than 2000 ancient manuscripts. These are completely unknown, unless within these few years they have been examined by any Russian antiquarian; no other traveller has been there who was competent to overlook a dusty library, so as to give any idea, not of what there is, but even what it may be likely to contain. This, as my bibliographical friends are well aware, is a peculiar art or mystery depending more on a general knowledge of the first aspect of an old book than a capacity to appreciate its contents. A book written on vellum implies a certain antiquity immediately recognisable by the initiated. If it does not appear to be ancient, it is then more than probable that it contains the works of some author of more than ordinary consideration, to have made it worth while to go to the expense and labour of a careful scribe and a material difficult in those days to procure. An illuminated manuscript on vellum, if not a prayer-book, secures additional attention; independent of its value as a work of art, it must be of some consequence to have made it worth illuminating. A large manuscript as a general rule is worth more than a little one, for the same evident reason that its contents were considered at the time when it was written to have been of some im