PRINCIPAL SIGHTS IN CONSTANTINOPLE

The most remarkable things to be seen are: Mosques—St. Sophia, Ahmedieh, Suleimanieh and Chora Mosques, which are the four principal ones, and of which St. Sophia and Chora are of Byzantine architecture, and the other two Turkish. Other mosques to be seen are—SS. Sergius and Bacchus (St. Sophia the less), Mehmed Pasha’s mosque, Rustem Pasha’s mosque, and the Valid eh mosque, the last three having beautiful tiles.

Tombs—The tomb of Sultan Selim II., of Sultan Mahmud II., of Suleiman the Great, the tomb of Shah-Zadeh, and of Sultan Muhammad II., the Conqueror. Museums —The Imperial Museum of Antiquities, the Church of St. Irene, the Treasury (in the Old Seraglio), the Museum of Ancient Costumes (in the Hippodrome), and Yildiz Palaces and Gardens (see p. 159) Obelisks and Columns. The Obelisk of Theodosius, the Serpent Column, and the Colossus in the Hippodrome, the Porphyry or Burnt Column, Marcian’s Column, the Column of Theodosius II., and the Column of Arcadius. Cisterns—The Philoxenos,

and the Basilica. Walls—The Seven Towers and the Walls of Constantinople. Bazaars—The Grand Bazaar and the Egyptian Bazaar. Processions—The Selamlik, the Procession of the Holy Camel, the Sultan’s procession to the Hirka-i-Sherif Mosque in the old Seraglio every 15th of Ramazan. Excursions—The Golden Horn, the Bosporus, the Forest of Belgrade, the Sweet Waters of Europe, the Sweet Waters of Asia, the Princes’ Islands, and Brusa.

The Bazaars: Shopping.—The bazaars are situated at Stambul private istanbul tour, between the second and third hills, i.e. between the Burnt Column and the Stambul fire tower. They cover an area of several acres, and consist of long, narrow, vaulted streets, roofed by small domes admitting the light through small windows and bull’s-eyes.

Byzantine era

With the exception of the central part called the “ Bezesten,” which dates from the Byzantine era, the bazaars were built by Sultan Bayazid II. about 1500 A.D. They are reached through more than one hundred entrances, and are occupied only in the daytime. The total number of the shops, which are not State property, but are owned by individuals, is about 4000.

Tourists and visitors shopping in the bazaars, or at any of the native shops, should not pay the price asked, as, except at some of the large shops where the prices are fixed, tradesmen are in the habit of asking high prices of strangers. A golden rule is to offer one-third of the prices asked at curiosity shops, and give a little more only when one is sure his firs offer will not be accepted. The prices asked vary according to the amount of notice a customer may bestow on any article shown him. A refusal on the dealer’s part to take the price offered him means nothing, and if a customer leave the shop, he will invariably find the tradesman at his heels, and ready to close with his offer, before he has gone many yards farther on.

Hans.—-These, numbering some 180, are, for the most part, large square buildings enclosing a courtyard, originally erected by different sultans and private individuals, for the accommodation of Turkish and other merchants and travellers. Only men are allowed to dwell in them. A great many European merchants or their agents now have their offices and warehouses in these Hans. The massive iron-plated doors are always closed at sunset and are not opened till sunrise. The two largest Turkish Hans are the Buyuk Yeni Han and Yalideh Han, near the Bazaar and War Office. They suffered considerable damage during the earthquakes of July 1894.

The Selamlik or Sultan’s Procession to the Mosque takes place every Friday about noon. Visitors are allowed to go near the Mosque where the Sultan is to go and see him driving in state, as well as the various troops which come for the parade. It is unnecessary to wait and see him again when he comes out of the Mosque as the time he stays there is uncertain. Tourists can view the whole procession from their carriage, or enter into the courtyard of the Mosque in which the ceremony is going to take place, and thus see hiih and the Palace courtiers as well as the various generals from near.

Dervishes. — Whirling or Dancing Dervishes. The best Mevlevi, or Dancing Dervishes, are to be seen at their convent, 539 Grande Kue, near the Pera terminus of the Underground ltailway. Performance on Fridays, at 8.30 (Turkish time) throughout the year. Entrance 2\ piastres per head (5d.). Visitors are expected to take off their hats. Sticks, umbrellas, and kodaks must be left at the door in charge of the doorkeeper. Sketching or taking notes is not allowed.

This order of Dervishes was founded in 1245 A.D. by Mevlana Jellal-ed-din Muhammad, a descendant of the prophet’s father-in-law, Abu-bekr, 4

Every member has to perform a severe novitiate, lasting 1001 days, before being finally admitted into the order. Their gyrating dance is intended to personify the planetary system revolving round the sun, and is supposed by many to be a survival of Hindu mysteries.

ZLATYU BOYAJIEV' PERMANENT EXHIBITION

ZLATYU BOYAJIEV’ PERMANENT EXHIBITION

(Stoyan Chomakov House), 18 Saborna Street

The exhibition displaying the work of the great artist Zlatyu Boyadjiev (1903 – 1976) was opened in 1980 in this representative period-house. The multitude of canvases, some of imposing size, is displayed in all rooms of the big two-storey house. In the courtyard in front of the house there is monument to the honoured artist .

The noble Revival house, where the exhibition has been set out, was built for Dr. Stoyan Chomakov in 1860. It was a very modern-looking house for its time although it was a solid sym-metrically designed building with facades decorated in the classical style widely spread in Europe at the time. Dr.Chomakov was one of the first academically trained physicians in Plovdiv and was a champion for an autonomous Bulgarian church in the Revival bulgaria private tours.

After the Liberation the heirs gave the house as a present to King Ferdinand. In the 50s of the 20th c. it housed a branch of the Ivan Vazov Public Library until the time it was entirely renovated and given over for the setting up of the exhibition of the works by Zlatyu Boyadjiev.

‘GEORGI BOJILOV – SLONA’ PERMANENT EXHIBITION

(Skobelev House), 1 Knyaz Tseretelev Street

This Revival house is adjacent to the Hippocrates Pharmacy. Kostadin Kaftanjiyata, a Bulgarian from the town of Stara Zagora, built it in the 60s of the 19th century. In the years after the Liberation and until her death here lived Olga Sko- beleva (1823 -1880), mother of the Russian General Skobelev. She became known for her charity work in aid of the victims of the Turkish atrocities in South Bulgaria during the April Rising and the Liberation War. In gratitude for her concern for the orphaned children in Thrace, the Bulgarians have called her ‘Mother Skobeleva’. A memorial park has been dedicated to her off the Istanbul highway in the outskirts of Plovdiv.

At present the house is occupied by the Plovdiv branch of the ‘Future for Bulgaria’ Foundation. It was with the contribution of the foundation that in 2003 a permanent exhibition of the work of the prominent artist Georgi Bojilov-Slona was arranged. The end-wall of the house, facing Saborna Street is decorated with a commemorative panel dedicated to the artist and executed in paintings and mosaics to the design of Dimiter Kirov.

Apart from the period houses of great artistic and architectural value, Old Plovdiv possesses some buildings of lesser architectural merit but associated with significant events in the past. These are historic places marked with commemorative inscriptions. On Saborna Street opposite the Holy Virgin Cathedral stands the house of Dr. Rashko Petrov, a physician with a medical degree and a prominent revolutionary, who participated in the First Bulgarian Legion in Belgrade in 1862.

There he became friends with Vasil Levski – the ‘Apostle of Liberty’, who often stayed at Dr. Petrov’s house when in Plovdiv. Right after the Liberation War in 1878 the house was the seat of the interim Russian representation headed by the Imperial Commissioner Prince Alexander Dondukov-Korsakov. Next-door to Dr Rashko’s place is the house where Dr Konstantin Stoilov, an eminent Bulgarian politician and statesman, Prime Minister of Bulgaria from 1894 to 1899, was born.

THE BULGARIAN BLACK SEA

The Black Sea is a half-enclosed kidney-shaped sea linked with the Mediterranean by the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.

It is bounded on the west by the Balkan Peninsula, on the north and east by the Russian plain and the Caucasus and on the south by the coast of Asia Minor in Turkey. It has low salinity and a high transparency — up to 16-20 m at an average depth of 1,690 m. The temperature of the water in summer averages 23° C.

The Bulgarian coastline (378 km) is less indented than the eastern and southern parts, but is very picturesque. The woody, gentle slopes of the Balkan and Strandja Mountains are covered with vineyards, orchards, trees and shrubs, and are known as the Bulgarian Riviera. Along the entire coast is an almost unbroken strip of fine sand and the sea is clean and shallow sightseeing turkey. Holiday resorts range from old and romantic fishermen’s settlements to the most modern complexes — all with lush greenery, fine sand and clear sea.

Nesebar

SHABLA – KAVARNA – BALCHIK – ALBENA – GOLDEN SANDS – DROUZHBA – VARNA (109 km)

Dourankoulak is the first Bulgarian village associated with the peasant revolt of May 1900. East of the village is Dourankoulak lake abounding in fish The large island in the lake has remains from various historical periods from the Stone Age to the 9th-11th century. Between the village and the beach is the Cosmos camp site for 500 tourists. There is a restaurant at the camp site.

South of Dourankoulak and 24 kilometres from the border is the town of Shabla (pop. 5,000). There was a Thracian settlement here in the 6th-5th century B.C. and it was a seaport in Roman times. The people of Shabla took an active part in the 1900 peasant revolt. About five kilometres east of the town is the Shabla Touzla, a tiny lake separated from the sea by a strip of sand. Its radioactive mud has curative properties. The Dobroudja camp site has a restaurant and a shop.

A road forks from Shabla leading to the sea. After about six kilometres it turns south along the coast to the village of Tyuelenovo, near which are several caves cut into the rocks by the sea and several colonies of seals have taken refuge here. Near the village of Kamen Bryag is the picturesque area of Yal] at a with beautiful rocks and caves. There is an ancient fortress and other interesting architectural and natural places.

Republika Square

There are also various other museums in Pleven to be seen. Hotels: Pleven, 2 Republika Square, three stars, 12 floors, 9 suites, 333 beds (tel. 2-00-62), restaurant, day bar and night club, information bureau, rent-a-car office. Rostovna Don, 2

S.Alexiev St., two stars, 12 floors, 3 suites, 11 single and 95

double rooms, restaurant, bar, cafe, information office, rent’ a-car office tel. (2-70 95). Kailuka, 2 stars, 3 floors 156 beds, 6 suites, restaurant, bar, information office, rent-a-car office (phone 2-55-50).

The Kailuka camp site — 20 bungalows.

Fhe Balkantourist bureau is on 3 Buckstone St., tel. 41-19.

Car-repair shop: 2, Industrialna St., tel. 37-61.

Union of Bulgarian Motorists: 6a Radetski St., tel. 37-93

From Pleven take the main road E-83 and continue east towards Byala (pop. 10,922). The town is mentioned in 17th century documents. In 1907 one of the first museums in the country dedicated to the Russo-Turkish War of Liberation 1877-1878 was founded here in the building which held the headquarters of the Russian Army in 1877. The Russian nurse Baroness Yulia Vreyska is buried in the museum yard. Byala’s most important sight is the bridge over the River Yantra, built 1865-1867 on orders by Rousse vali Midhad Pasha. The bridge is 276 m long, 9 m wide and has 14 arches with relief figures.

Danubian port of Rousse

52 km along the E-85 main road is the Danubian port of Rousse (pop, 178,000 situated to the east of the mouth of the Roussenski Lorn river, opposite the Romanian town of Gyurvevo (Ghiurghiu). This is Bulgaria’s fourth largest town sofia daily tours, In Roman times a garrison was stationed here and the fortress was called Sexaginti (port of 60 ships). During the barbarian invasions in the 6th-7th centuries the fortress was destroyed and the population withdrew 26 km to the south of the Danube where the mediaeval fortress town of Cherven was built, resembling Tsarevets in Veliko Turnovo.

After the Ottoman invasion it was destroyed and a new fortress called Rouschouk here was built. 7 he town could be entered through five stone gates with iron doors — the Kyuntoukapou gate still exists. In 1864 Rouschouk became the centre of the Danubian province which included Nish, Sofia and Vidin. It had broad paved streets with curbed pavements and street lights delivered from Vienna; an old people’s house, a hospital, a post office, two large western style hotels were also built which are still to be seen. The first railway line in Bulgaria, Rouschouk-Vama, was built in 1866. Rouschouk became one of the great revolutionary centres and a link between revolutionaries in Bulgaria and emigrants in Romania. Many fighters for national independence are associated with the town.

Russian liberators entered the town on February 20, 1878. In the first years following liberation, Rousse had the highest population in Bulgaria, and had more factories, banks and consulates than Sofia, Today the town is one of the largest industrial centres in the country with shipyards and oil refineries.

The River Roussenski Lorn

The manifestations of this Renaissance, the penetration and revival of interest in antiquity, the striving to bring contemporary art closer to it, are plainly visible in the murals of one of the rupestral churches near the village of Ivanovo, Rousse district. The River Roussenski Lorn, cutting deep into the soft limestone rocks, has formed a wide canyon here, sunoundcd by walls up to 50 m. in height. Many caves were foimed in these almost perpendicular rocks, and in the 13th and 14th centuries entire colonies of monks and hermits lock refuge in them, enlarging the natural caves, and adapting them to use as cells or churches. In these rock cells, chapels and churches inhabited by Hezychasts and mystics who had given up life, far from the centres of cultural life, an art made its way, the votaries of which had a totally different attitude to the reality around them.

They sought this reality, they tried to attain it and recreate it in their work. This was the art of people who knew how to enjoy life, all that nature, and man in the first place, has created. So man appears in these murals not only in the person of biblical characters with their garments and poses painted according to the strict canons of church painting, but chiefly as a living natural form with his specific dynamics, with his free characteristic and expressive movements city tour istanbul. Man’s living body appears for the foist time partly naked here (some of the servants in the scene of Christ’s betrayal), and quite naked in the presentation of the two Atlantes.

Roussenski Lorn

The bodies are instinct with life and strength. They are not the withered, tortured and powerless bodies we have known so far. The artist who painted the Ivanovo murals was a great artist, and life on earth was closer to his heart than life in paradise after death, the life of which the inhabitants of the rupestral hermitage above the banks of the Roussenski Lorn dreamt and preached. This well-schooled artist was acquainted with classicism and entirely taken up with its new trends in Bulgarian art; he gave full expression to them in his work on the rupestral church of Ivanovo, where the attempt to return to the aesthetics of antique art are clearly apparent.

Art in West Bulgaria was of a totally different character at that time. Here the influence of the Turnovo school was comparatively slight. It was chiefly masters from the western regions of Bulgaria, from Macedonia, who worked here. Under the influence of their art a local school came into being, which was based on the traditions of a folk art with the linear and mainly decorative style typical of it, inbued with a sound and fresh, though often naive and primitive, realism. The mmals of the Zemen Monastery, 70 km. to the south of Sofia on the road to Radomir, are typical examples of this art. The church is a small cruciform- cupolaed one, with a square foundation, three apses to the east and a cupola on a high drum. Theouter walls are divided into sec – ticns by three recessed arches, the central one of which is higher, and they stress the inner structure of the church.

The wallpaintings in the church are well preserved. Of thesix portraits of laymen those of Despot Deyan of Kyustendil and Despotitsa Doya are the best preserved. The church was decorated with these frescoes in their day, a little after 1354. They are real individual portraits. Doya has the fire features of a refined bolyar beauty. Many details in her costume, of an ethnographic nature, complete the realistic image of this Despotitsa, or Princess.

People’s Republic of Bulgaria

Of all the colonies mentioned above, only part of those along the west coast of the Black Sea are today within the boundaries of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria — Apollonia, Anchialo, Mesambria, Odessos and Dionysopolis. Their location on the shores of the two big Black Sea Bays of Bourgas and Varna proved so favourable from a geographical and economic point of view, that life never died out here. With changed aspects and names these settlements continued their existence without interruption throughout the Middle Ages and the period of Ottoman bondage; they exist to this day, as some of the most important and romantic cities of the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. It is precisely this circumstance which makes a complete and systematic archaeological study of the cultural strata of the earlier settlements impossible. They lie deep beneath the foundations of the different districts of the modern towns.

The oldest of these colonies was Apollonia, founded probably at the end of the 7th century by the Miletan Greeks. It was situated on the site of present day Sozopol, upon a smal peninsula in the southernmost part of the Bay of Bourgas. Several islands lie around it. Certain ancient authors speak of Apollonia as a town the larger part of which was on an island. Accidental archaeological finds on the neighbouring island of Kirik confirm this piece of information tours bulgaria.

The Dorian colony of Mesambria

The Dorian colony of Mesambria, founded about 510 by settlers from the city of Megara, was similarly situated on the site of present- day Nessebur. It rose upon a rocky peninsula, linked by such a narrow isthmus with the mainland, that it is more like an island with steep shores, sometimes from 13 to 16 m. high.

We have almost no definite conceptions as to the outer architectural appearance of the Greek Black Sea colonies along the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, nor of their private and public buildings, fortifications, etc. There can be no doubt, however, that their aspect as cities was no different in general lines from that of the aspect and character of the remaining Greek polises. They had their town squares and rich public buildings, both civic and religious. There was no lack here of palestrae so necessary for the physical training and amusement of the free and wealthy citizens, nor gymnasiums, in which the sons of these citizens were taught.

There was no lack of bouleutorions, where the full-fledged citizens held their meetings, nor of theatres, where different public ceremonies were held and plays were performed. Finally there was no lack of old Greek temple architecture, the most typical representative of the Greek art of building. From written data we know that there was a Temple of Apollo latros (The Ftealer) in Apol- lonia, for which a colossal bronze statue of this god was cast by Cala- mis, the well known Athenian sculptor, who worked in the first half of the 5th century B. C. There was a temple of Apollo in Odessos, and also in Mesambria. On an inscription from the latter city, the theatre is also mentioned, where festivals were held in honour of Dionysus Painting and sculpture were highly developed in these cities. An interesting archaic statue found in the surroundings of Apollonia and dating back as early as the 6th century B. C. is in the Bourgas Museum.

Buyuk Djarniya

From the Turkish BuyukDjarniya (15th century) — at the corner of Legue and Alexander Stamboliiski Blvd; Banya Bashi Djamiya (16th century), opposite the Central Supermarket; the Black Mosque (16th century), now the Seven Saints’ Church – at the comer of Graf Ignatiev and Tsar Shishman streets.

Small churches with interesting mural paintings: St Nikolai – Tsar Kaloyan St.; St Petka – in the courtyard of the building on the corner of Stamboliiski Blvd and Tsar Kaloyan Street; St Petka Samardjiiska — in the pedestrian sub-way on Lenin Square.

More recent monuments: Monument to the Liberators, Narodno Subranie Square, to the memory of the Russian liberators of Bulgaria from Ottoman mle, the work of the Italian sculptor Arnoldo Zocchi; Alexander Nevsky Memorial Church, on the square of the same name (in its basement the Crypt houses an original exhibition of icons); Monument to the Soviet Army — in the park between Rousski Blvd, Tolbukhin Blvd and Evlogi Georgiev Blvd; the Obelisk to those who fell in the antifascist struggle – on the common grave in Freedom Park; the Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum – on the Ninth of September Square; Lenin’s Monument – on Lenin Square.

Museums: Archaeological Museum – Alexander Stamboliiski Blvd; Ethnographic Museum – The Ninth of September Square (in the former royal palace); Natural Science Museum, 1 Rousski Blvd; Museum of the Revolutionary Movement in Bulgaria, 14 Rousski Blvd; National Military History Museum, 23 Skobelev Blvd; Church History and Archaeological Museum, 19 Lenin Square; Museum of Bulgaro-Soviet Friendship, 4 Klement Gottwald Blvd; Museum of the History of Sofia, 27 Exarch Yossif Street ephesus sightseeing; Dimiter Blagoev Museum- House, Lajos Cossuth Street; Georgi Dimitrov Museum-House, 66 Opulchenska Street; Alexander Stamboliiski Museum- House, 44 Souhodol Street; Ivan Vazov Museum-House, 10 Ivan Vazov Street; Petko and Pencho Slaveikov Museum- House, 138 Rakovski Street; Peyo Yavorov Museum-House, 136 Rakovski Street; Hristo Smyrnenski Museum-House, 116 Emil Shekerdjiiski Street; Nikola Vaptsarov Museum-House, 37′ Angel Kunchev Street

National Art Gallery — Ninth of September Square, in the former royal palace.

The National Assembly

Interesting buildings: The National Assembly, the University of Sofia, the National Theatre, the Palace of Justice, the Central Home of the People’s Army, the Ministry of Defence, the Holy Synod Building, the Bulgarian National Bank, Universiade Hall, the Central Supermarket, etc.

Parks: Freedom Park, Hristo Smyrnenski Park (Western Park), Vladimir Zaimov Park, Park of the Doctors’ Monument, etc.

Major hotels: Park Hotel Moskva – tel. 45-51-21; Sofia, 4-Narodno Subranie Square — tel. 87-88-21; Balkan, 2 Lenin Square – tel. 87-65-43; Bulgaria, 4 Rousski Blvd —tel. 87-19-77; Pliska, 87 Lenin Blvd — tel. 72-37-21; Hemus, 31 Georgi Traikov Blvd – tel. 66-14-15; Slavia, Hippodrouma Housing Estate – tel. 52-55-51; Serdika, 2 Vladimir Zaimov Blvd – tel. 44-34-11; Slavyanska Besseda, 127 Rakovski Street tel. 88-36-91; Vitosha, 9 Isker Street- tel. 88-01-12; Sevastopol, 116 Rakovski Street – tel. 87-59-41; Preslav, 3 Triaditsa Street – tel. 87-65-86; Lyulin, 2 Triaditsa Street, tel. 88-56-42.

Well, the time has now come to get away from it all and go back to Mother Nature to take a breath of fresh air and mull over your impressions. Sofia is blessed in this respect, too, for its surroundings are of unique scenic beauty.So get your car ready and let’s go! The first place to go to, of course, is Mount Vitosha, the capital’s outstanding landmark and an integral part of its landscape. Moreover, on the way there is a little gem that you simply can’t afford to miss.

You’d hardly suspect that the little unassuming Boyana Church in a village in the foothills of Mount Vitosha, a mere six miles from the city centre, is one of Bulgaria’s foremost monuments of medieval art. But just go inside and you’ll have another ‘think’ coming for there you will find 13th-century murals that are veritable masterpieces of medieval art.

After leaving this little art treasure, you’ll be in the very heart of the mountain in less than half an hour. There you may visit Kopitoto (The Hoof),a modern hotel with restaurant built on a big rock projecting out into space, offering you a wonderful panoramic view of Sofia and the whole surrounding plain. If you drive on for another ten minutes, you will reach the famous Zlat- ni Mostove (Golden Bridges), a picturesque spot with a veritable

river of stones washed by the waters of a real river, and where you will find a very cosy Tyrolese-style restaurant.

Work of much anxious discrimination

Now the action and reaction of these two competing sets of impulses undoubtedly makes the protection of our ancient buildings a very complex and very difficult problem. Both sets are very powerful, both act in varying degrees, and the final compromise between the rival sets of claims is necessarily the work of much anxious discrimination. I venture to maintain that the complication and antagonism is such that no hard-and-fast doctrine can be laid down. Each case must stand on its merits. Each decision must be the laborious reconcilement of conflicting interests. Our cause has suffered from over-arbitrary dogmas and some affectation of contempt for the plain necessities of material existence. Every one outside the Tuileries laughed at Edmond About, when he told the Romans of to-day that the only thing left for them was ‘ to contemplate their ruins.’ I wish myself that they had contemplated their ruins a little longer, or had allowed us to contemplate them, instead of seeking to turn Rome into a third-rate Paris. But we shall be laughed at if we ever venture to tell the nineteenth century that it must con-template its ruins.

The trust imposed on the century is not to contemplate its ruins, but to protect its ancient buildings. Now that will be done if the century can learn to feel the true sacredness of ancient buildings, if it will admit that the building stands on the same footing with picture, statue, and poem, that it is unique, inimitable, irreplaceable; and, above all, has its own consecration of place, continuity, and record. Admit this first, and then we will consider the claims of the present, their convenience, and their means. But the burden of proof ought always to be pressed imperiously against those whose claim is to destroy, to convert, or to extend.

Ancient building

When every other means fail, when irresistible necessity is proved, it may be a sad duty to remove an ancient building, to add to it, or to incorporate it. But this can never justify what we now call restoring,’ a process which makes it as much like the original as Madame Tussaud’s figures are like the statesman or general they represent. It can never justify re-decoration — cutting out ancient art-work and replacing it by new work or machine work. It can never justify archaeological exercises — I mean the patching on to old buildings new pieces of our own invention, which we deliberately present as fabrications of the antique. These things are mere Wardour Street spurious bric-d-brac, no more like ancient buildings than a schoolboy’s iambics are like Yeschylus. How often do committees, dean and chapter, public offices, and even Parliament itself private turkey tours, treat our great national possessions as if they were mere copy books, on the face of which our modern architects were free to practise the art of composing imitations of the ancients. Such buildings become much like a Palimpsest manuscript; whereon, over a lost tragedy of Sophocles, some wretched monk has scribbled his barbarous prose. How often is the priceless original for ever lost beneath the later stuff!

In these remarks I have strictly confined myself to general principles: first, because I do not pretend to any special or technical knowledge which would entitle me to criticise particular works, but mainly because I believe our true part to be the maintenance of general principles. If we fall into discussions of detail we may lose hold of our main strength. We have to raise the discussion into a higher atmosphere than that of architectural anachronism. We cannot pitch our tone too high. It is not architectural anachronism which we have to check: it is the safety of our national records, our national self-respect, the spirit of religious reverence that we have to uphold. We have to do battle against forgery, irreverence, and desecration. Let us raise a voice against the idea that any work of art can ever, under any circumstances, be really ‘ restored; ’ against the idea that any ancient art-work can usefully be ‘imitated,’ against the idea that ancient monuments are a corpus vile whereon to practise antiquarian exercises; against the habit of forging spurious monuments, as the monks in the Middle Ages forged spurious charters; finally, against the idea that the convenience of to-day is always to outweigh the sacredness of the past.

The Musie Dupuytren

This Conciergerie, with the hall of the Cordelier Club, the Musie Dupuytren, is the only extant building in Paris, which is closely associated with great scenes of the Revo-lution. The Bastille is gone, the Tuileries, the Hotel de Ville, the Hall of the Convention in the R. de Rivoli, the Jacobin Club, the prisons, the Temple, Abbaye, La Force, Chatelet, and the rest. So, too, the tombs of Mirabeau, Voltaire, Rousseau, Marat, Louis xvi., and Marie Antoinette no longer hold their bones, and cenotaphs record the spot where they were laid. Etiam periere sepulchra. New Haussmannic streets cover the soil, wherein the ashes of Danton and Vergniaud, Charlotte Corday and Madame Roland, moulder unknown. Of the Revolution no buildings remain but only sites; and the only edifices, which survive to speak to us of the September massacres and the Terror, are the dining-hall of the followers of St. Francis and the palace of St. Louis, the knight and crusader.

In spite of destruction and reconstruction, the history pf the great edifices of old Paris is wonderfully instructive, even that of the buildings which have wholly disappeared. But they must be studied in the learned and elaborate works, such as those of Dulaure, Piganiol, Viollet-le-Duc, Lacroix, Lenoir, Guilhermy, Fournier, Hoffbauer, Fergus- son, Hamerton, in the Histoire Generale, and in Paris a travers les Ages, in the splendid series of etchings and engravings of old Paris, which may be found in the library of the Carnavalet Museum, and in our British Museum. Bastille, Louvre, Hdtel de Ville, Tuileries, Luxembourg, the Citd, St. Germain, St. Genevilve, would each require an essay, or a volume with maps and plans and restorations, to make them intelligible private tours istanbul. But those who seek to know what Paris has been in the long succession of ages may still revive it in their minds, with the aid of the mass of literature that is open to them, and if they will study not only the extant churches, but such works of domestic art as the Hotel Cluny, and Hotel de Sens, Hotel la Valette, the house in the Corn’s la Reine, and the Hotel Carnavalet.

Ducerceau and M6ryon

A careful study of Silvestre, Ducerceau, and M6ryon will give some idea of old Paris, with its vast walls, gates, towers, castles, its crowded churches, its immense abbeys, its narrow winding streets, its fetid cemeteries, gloomy courts and impasses, its filthy lanes, and its bridges loaded with houses. We may linger about the old remnants of churches, the flotsam and jetsam of the Mediaeval Catholicism, such bits as the tower of St. Jacques, and the portals of the two St. Germains and of St. Nicolas des Champs, the old churches of St. Jnlien le Pauvre, and St. Martin des Champs, the church of St. Sdverin, and the chapel of the Chdteau de Vincennes.

Then let us study the tombs in St. Germain des Pris, of St. Denis, St. Etienne du Mont: and then we may go on to the tomb that all Englishmen visit — the tomb which I always feel to be the grandest of all sepulchral conceptions (to be set beside the tomb of Theod- oric at Ravenna, and the tomb of Cecilia Metella on the Appian way), almost the one work of modern art, which is at once colossal, noble, and pathetic — I mean the mighty vault beneath the dome of the Invalidcs, where the greatest soldier and the worst ruler of our age sleeps at last in peace, guarded by the veterans of France.

We need not deny to modern Paris the gift of charm; we may admit that her museums and libraries, her collections, and her treasures are inexhaustible to the fit student; but far more impressive is the history of this memorable city, with its vast range of time, of variety, of association — with its record of the dawn of Western civilisation, of Catholicism and Feudalism, of the Renascence, and the modern world, of the Revolution of the last century, and the Imperialism of this century — with its dust enriched with the bones of those who in things of the soul and in things of war, in the love of beauty, and in the passion for new life, have dared and done memorable deeds, from the days of Genevieve and Clotilda, the Louis and the Henrys, down to the two Napoleons, and the three Republics.

This glorious vision

This glorious vision, if not the most beautiful, is the most varied and fascinating of its kind in Europe. Some prefer the bay of Naples, or the bay of Salamis, or of Genoa; but neither Naples, nor Athens, nor Rome, nor Genoa, nor Venice, have, as cities, anything of the extent, variety, and complexity of Constantinople, if we include its four or five suburbs, its magnificent sea landscape, its bays, islands, and mountains, in the distance. For Constantinople does not stand upon an open sea like Naples, or Genoa, but on a great marine lake with its shores, vine- clad hills, headlands, and pearly mountain ranges in the far horizon. Like Athens or Venice, it has a seaport without an open sea outside. And as a city, it is vastly more grand and varied than Venice, Athens, Florence, or Edinburgh. Hence, Constantinople combines such sea views as we find round the Western islands of Scotland or of Greece, with the summer sky and vegetation of Italy, and the mountain ranges which fill the horizon from the plains of Lombardy.

Was it more beautiful in the age of the Empire than it is to-day? Perhaps from a distance, from the sea, the Stamboul of to-day is a far more striking sight than the Byzantium of the Caesars. The minarets, an Eastern and Moslem feature, are the distinctive mark of the modern city, and do much to break the monotony of the Byzantine cupolas local ephesus tour guides. There are four or five mosques which repeat and rival the church of the Holy Wisdom, and some of them have nobler sites.

Nor were the towers and battlements of ancient architecture to be compared in beauty and in scale with those of Mediaeval and Moslem builders. But the city, as seen within, in the Isaurian and Basilian dynasties, we may assume in the five centuries which separate Justinian from the First Crusade, must have greatly surpassed in noble art, if not in pictorial effect, the Ottoman city that we see. The enormous palace and hippodrome, the basilicas, churches, halls, and porticoes, with their profusion of marble, mosaic, bronzes, and paintings, their colossal figures, obelisks, and columns, the choicest relics of Greek sculpture, the memorial statues, baths, theatres, and forums — must have far surpassed the decaying remnant of Stamboul which so often disenchants the traveller when he disembarks from the Golden Horn.

III. Antiquities of Constantinople,

Constantine created his New Rome in 330, as never ruler before or since created a city. It was made a mighty and resplendent capital within a single decade. Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Mauritania, were despoiled of their treasures to adorn the new metropolis. Constantine built churches, theatres, forums, baths, porticoes, palaces, monuments, and aqueducts. He built, adorned, and peopled a great capital all at a stroke, and made it, after Rome and Athens, the most splendid city of the ancient world. Two centuries later, Justinian became the second founder of the city. And from Constantine down to the capture by the Crusaders, for nearly nine centuries, a succession of Emperors continued to raise great sacred and lay buildings. Of the city before Constantine little remains above the ground, except some sculptures in the museum, and foundations of some walls, which Dr. Pas- pates believes that he can trace.

Of Constantine and his immediate successors there remain parts of the hippodrome, of walls, aqueducts, cisterns, and forums, some columns and monuments. Of the Emperors from Theodosius to the Crusades, we still have, little injured, the grand church of Sophia, some twenty churches much altered and mostly late in date, the foundations of palaces, and one still standing in ruins, and lastly the twelve miles of walls with their gates and towers. The museums contain sarcophagi, statues, inscriptions of the Roman age. But we can hardly doubt that an immense body of Byzantine relics and buildings still lie buried some ten or twenty ‘ feet below the ground whereon stand to-day the serails, khans, mosques, and houses of Stamboul, a soil which the Ottoman is loth to disturb.

Into Imperial Rome

At every turn we come on some new crime against humanity done by fanaticism or greed. Into Imperial Rome there was swept, as into the museum of the world, the marbles, the statues, the bronzes, the ivories, the paintings and carvings, the precious works of human genius for some six or seven centuries — everything of rarity and loveliness that could be found between Cadiz and the Black Sea.

There were tens of thousands of statues in Greek marble, and as many in bronze; there were marble columns, monoliths, friezes, reliefs, obelisks, colossi, fountains. Halls, porticos, temples, theatres, baths, were crowded with the spoils of the world, rich enough to furnish forth ten such cities as London, Paris, or New York. It is all gone. There are but a few fragments now that chance has spared. Twenty sieges, stormings, pillages, a hundred conflagrations, the barbarous greed of the invading hordes, the barbarous fanaticism of the first Christians, the incessant wars, revolutions, riots, and faction fights of the Middle Ages, the brutal greediness of popes, cardinals, their nephews and their favourites — worst of all, perhaps, modem industrial iconoclasm — have swept away all but a few chance fragments.

Greek art of the great age

In the time of Pliny there must have been still extant thousands of works of the purest Greek art of the great age. There is now not one surviving intact in the whole world; and there are but two — the Hermes of Olympia and the Aphrodite of Melos — of which even fragments remain in sufficient preservation to enable us to judge them. Every other work of the greatest age is either, like the Parthenon relics, a mere ruin, or is known to us only by a later imitation. Of the bronzes not a single complete specimen of the great age survives. And this loss is irreparable. Even if such genius of art were ever to return to this earth again, it is certain that the same passion for physical beauty, the same habit of displaying the form, can never again be universal with any civilised people. And thus by the wanton destructiveness of successive ages, one of the most original types of human genius has become extinct on this earth, even as the mastodon or the dodo are extinct mystical bulgaria tours.

But masterpieces of marble and bronze were dross in comparison with the masterpieces of the human soul, of intellect, purity, and love, that have been mangled on this same spot and in sight of these supreme works of genius. The Christian pilgrim from some Irish or American monastery, from Santiago in Chile, from Armenia or Warsaw — the Catholic missionary on his way to die in China, or Polynesia, or Uganda — prostrates himself in the dust where Paul was beheaded and Peter crucified, where Gregory and Augustine prayed, and in the Colosseum he sees nothing but a monstrous black ruin; but he kneels in the arena where the blood of martyrs was poured forth like water, which has witnessed such heroic deaths, such revolting crimes. Each zealot —Catholic, Protestant, or sceptic — remembers only his own martyrs. Romans massacred Gaul and Goth; Polytheists martyred Christians; Papal creatures tortured Republicans, Protestants, and Reformers; emperors’ men slew popes’ men, and popes’ men slew the emperors’ men; Colonnas and Orsinis, Borgias and Cencis, Borgheses and Barberinis have poured out blood upon blood, and piled up crime on crime, till every stone records some inhuman act, and witnesses also to courage and faith as memorable and quite as human.

Traveller of 1889

Turn to our traveller of 1889. Berri, says Miss Betham- Edwards, has been transformed under a sound land system. It has indeed a poor soil; but, even in the ltriste Sologne,’ plantations, irrigation canals, and improved methods of agriculture are transforming this region. So rapid is the progress that George Sand, who died but the other day, would hardly recognise the country she has described so well. Here and there may be seen, now used as an outhouse, one of those bare, windowless cabins which shocked Arthur Young, and close at hand the ‘neat, airy, solid dwellings ’ the peasant owners have built for themselves.

Here Miss Betham-Edwards visited newly-made farms, with their spick-and-span buildings, the whole having the appearance of a little settlement in the Far West. The holdings vary from 6 to 30 acres, their owners possessing a capital of 5000 to 8000 and even 25,000 francs, the land well stocked and cultivated, the people well dressed, and signs of general content and well-being delightful to contemplate.

And as to metayage, ‘that miserable system which perpetuates poverty,’ Miss Betham-Edwards finds it now one of the chief factors of the agricultural progress of France, creating cordial relations between landlord and tenant. The secret of this curious conflict between two most competent observers is this: mitayage—the system under which the owner of the soil finds land, stock, and implements, the tiller of the farm finds manual labour, and all produce is equally shared — depends for its fair working upon just laws, equality before the law, absence of any privilege in the owner, and good understanding as between men who alike respect each other private tours istanbul.

Large tracts in France

With these, it is an excellent system of farming, very favourable to the labourer; without these, it may almost reduce him to serfdom. It may thus be one of the best, or one of the worst, of all systems of husbandry. As Arthur Young saw it under the ancient system of privileged orders, it was almost as bad as an Irish tenancy at will. Under the new system of post-revolutionary equality, it has given prosperity to large tracts in France.

From Autun in Burgundy, Arthur Young travelled across the Bourbonnais and the Nivernais, and he found the country ‘villainously cultivated’; when he sees such a country ‘in the hands of starving metayers, instead of fat farmers,’ he knows not how to pity the seigneurs. To-day, his editor finds ‘fat farmers’ innumerable, for metayage has greatly advanced the condition of the peasants. The country that lies between the mouths of the Garonne and the Loire is precisely that part of his journey which wrings from Arthur Young his furious invective against the great lords whom he wished he could make

‘to skip again.’ Now, the Gironde, the Charente, and La Vendde are thriving, rich districts, intersected with railways; ‘ and, owing to the indefatigable labours of peasant owners, hundreds of thousands of acres of waste land have been put under cultivation.’

Or turn to Brittany, which Arthur Young calls ‘a miserable province ’; ‘ husbandry not much further advanced than among the Hurons ’; ‘the people almost as wild as their country ’; ‘ mud houses, no windows ’; ‘ a hideous heap of wretchedness ’ — all through ‘ the execrable maxims of despotism, or the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility.’ And this is the rich, thriving, laborious, and delightful Brittany which our tourists love, where Miss Betham-Edwards tells us of scientific farming, artificial manures, machinery, ‘the granary of Western France,’ market gardens, of fabulous value, and a great agricultural college, one of the most important in Europe.

Ferdinand of Arragon

It may surprise some readers to treat the thirteenth century as the virtual close of the Middle Ages, an epoch which is usually placed in the latter half of the fifteenth century, in the age of Louis xi., Henry VII., and Ferdinand of Arragon. But the true spirit of Feudalism, the living soul of Catholicism, which together make up the compound type of society we call mediaeval, were, in point of fact, waning all through the thirteenth century. The hurly-burly of the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth centuries was merely one long and cruel death agony. Nay, the inner soul of Catholic Feudalism quite ended in the first generation of the thirteenth century — with St. Dominic, St. Francis, Innocent in., Philip Augustus, and Otto iv., Stephen Langton, and William, Earl Mareschal.

The truly characteristic period of mediaeval- ism is in the twelfth, rather than the thirteenth, century, the period covered by the first three Crusades from 1094, the date of the Council of Clermont, to 1192, when Coeur- de-Lion withdrew from the Holy Land. Or, if we put it a little wider in limits, we may date true mediaevalism from the rise of Hildebrand, about 1070, to the death of Innocent HI. in 1216, or just about a century and a half. St. Louis himself, as we read Joinville’s Memoirs, seems to us a man belated, born too late, and almost an anachronism in the second half of the thirteenth century sofia city tour.

We know that in the slow evolution of society the social brilliancy of a movement is seldom visible, and is almost never ripe for poetic and artistic idealisation until the energy of the movement itself is waning, or even it may be, is demonstrably spent. Shakespeare prolonged the Renascence of the fifteenth century, the Renascence of Leonardo and Raphael, into the seventeenth century, when Puritanism was in full career; and Shakespeare — it is deeply significant — died on the day when Oliver Cromwell entered college at Cambridge. And so, when Dante, in his Vision of 1300, saw the heights and the depths of Catholic Feudalism, he was looking back over great movements which were mighty forces a hundred years earlier. Just so, though the thirteenth century contained within its bosom the plainest proofs that the mediaeval world was ending, the flower, the brilliancy, the variety, the poetry, the soul of the mediaeval world, were never seen in so rich a glow as in the thirteenth century, its last great effort.

Thirteenth century as a whole

In a brief review of each of the dominant movements which give so profound a character to the thirteenth century as a whole, one begins naturally with the central movement of all — the Church. The thirteenth century was the era of the culmination, the over-straining, and then the shameful defeat of the claim made by the Church of Rome to a moral and spiritual autocracy in Christendom. There are at least five Popes in that one hundred years — Innocent HI., Gregory ix., Innocent iv., Gregory x., and Boniface vm.—whose characters impress us with a sense of power or of astounding desire of power, whose lives are romances and dreams, and whose careers are amongst the most instructive in history. He who would understand the Middle Ages must study from beginning to end the long and crowded Pontificate of Innocent HI. In genius, in commanding nature, in intensity of character, in universal energy, in aspiring designs, Innocent HI. has few rivals in the fourteenth centuries of the Roman Pontiffs, and few superiors in any age on any throne in the world.

His eighteen years of rule, from 1198 to 1216, were one long effort, for the moment successful, and in part deserving success, to enforce on the kings and peoples of Europe a higher morality, respect for the spiritual mission of the Church, and a sense of their common civilisation. We feel that he is truly a great man with a noble cause, when the Pope forces Philip Augustus to take back the wife he had so insolently cast off, when the Pope forces John to respect the rights of all his subjects, laymen or churchmen, when the Pope gives to England the best of her Primates, Stephen Langton, the principal author of our Great Charter, when the Pope accepts the potent enthusiasm of the New Friars and sends them forth on their mission of revivalism.

Abundantly open to the English reader

This most delightful of all story-books is abundantly open to the English reader. There are several translations, and for some purposes Herodotus, whose style is one of artless conversation, may be read in English almost as well as in the Greek. In the elaborate work of Canon Rawlinson we have a good translation, with abundant historical and antiquarian illustrations by the Canon and by Sir Henry Rawlinson, with maps, plans, and many drawings. Herodotus preserves to us the earliest consecutive account that the West has recorded of the ancient empires of the East. And, although his record is both casual and vague, it serves as a basis round which the researches of recent Orientalists may be conveniently grouped, just as Blackstone and Coke form the text of so many manuals of law, in spite of the fact that both are so largely obsolete. To use Herodotus with profit we need such a systematic Manual of Ancient History as that of Heeren.

This book, originally published in 1799, and continued and corrected by the author down to the year 1828, although now in many respects rendered obsolete by subsequent discoveries, remains an admirable model of the historical summary. Unfortunately it requires so many corrections and additions that it can hardly be taken as the current text-book, all the more that the English translation itself, published in 1829 at Oxford, is not very easily procured. For all practical purposes, the book is now superseded by Canon Rawlinson’s Manual of Ancient History, Oxford, 1878, which follows the plan of Heeren, covers nearly the same period, and treats of the same nations. It is, in fact, the Manual of Heeren corrected, rewritten, supplemented, and brought up to that date, somewhat overburdened with the masses of detail, wanting in the masterly conciseness of the great Professor of Gottingen, but embodying the learning and discoveries of three later generations private tour istanbul.

Egyptology and Assyriology

But Egyptology and Assyriology are unstable quicksands in which every few years the authorities become obsolete by the discovery of fresh records and relics. Professor Sayce, the principal exponent of the untrustworthiness of Herodotus, assures us that Canon Raw- linson and his coadjutors have now become obsolete themselves, and that the history of the plains of the Nile and the Euphrates must again be rewritten. But the tendency to-day is, perhaps, inclined to treat the discoveries on which Professor Sayce relies as neither so certain nor so important as he was once disposed to think. For the general reader it may be enough to rely on Max Dunker’s History of Antiquity (6 vols., translated 1878; see vols. i. and ii. for Egypt and Assyria).

There is another mode, besides that of books, whereby much of the general character of Oriental civilisation may be learned. That is, by pictures, illustrations, models, monuments, and the varied collections to be found in our own Museum, in the Louvre at Paris, and other collections of Oriental antiquities. Thousands of holiday-makers saunter through these galleries, and gaze at the figures in a vacant stare. But this is not to learn at all. The monuments and cases, wall-paintings and relics, require patient and careful study with appropriate books. The excellent handbooks of our Museum will make a good beginning, but the monuments of Egypt and Assyria are hardly intelligible without complete illustrated explanation. These are, for Egypt, the dissertations, notes, and wood- cuts by various Egyptologists in Canon Rawlinson’s English Herodohis; in Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s great work on the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, 1837; and his Handbook for Egypt, 1858.

Our earliest teachers

We have done much towards understanding the past when we have learned to value and to honour such men.

It is almost better to know nothing of history than to know with the narrow coldness of a pedant a record which ought to fill us with emotion and reverence. Our closest friends, our earliest teachers, our parents themselves, are not more truly our benefactors than they. To them we owe what we prize most — country, freedom, peace, knowledge, art, thought, and higher sense of right and wrong. What a tale of patience, courage, sacrifice, and martyrdom is the history of human progress! It affects us as if we were reading in the diary of a parent the record of his struggles for his children. For us they toiled, endured, bled, and died ; that we by their labour might have rest, by their thoughts might know, by their death might live happily. For whom did these men work, if not for us ? Not for themselves, when they gave up peace guided tour ephesus, honour, life, reputation itself—as when the great French republican exclaimed, ‘May my name be accursed, so that France be free!’ not for themselves they worked, but for their cause, for their fellows, for us. Not that they might have fame, but that they might leave the world better than they found it. This supported Milton in his old age, blind, poor, and dishonoured, when he poured out his spirit in solitude, full of grace, tenderness, and hope, amidst the ruin of all he loved and the obscene triumph of all he despised.

It supported Dante, the poet of Florence, when an outlaw and an exile he was cast off by friends and countrymen, and wandered about begging his bread from city to city, pondering the great thoughts which live throughout all Europe. This spirit, too, was in one, the noblest victim of the French Revolution, the philosopher Condorcet; who, condemned, hunted to death, devoted the last few days of his life to serene thought of the past, and, whilst the pursuers were on his track, wrote in his hiding-place that noble sketch of the progress of the human race.

THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY

Let us now try to sketch the outline of this story, link century to century, continent to continent, and judge the share each has in the common work of civilisation. To do so, we must go back to ages long before records began. It is but of the latter and the shorter portion of the duration of progress, that any record has been made or preserved. Yet for a general view, sufficient materials of certain knowledge exist. If we write the biography of a man we do not begin with the year of his life in which his diary opens; we seek to know his parentage, education, and early association. To understand him we must do so. So, too, the biography of mankind must not confine itself to the eras of chronological tables, and of recorded events.

In all large instances the civilisation of an epoch or a people has a certain unity in it — their philosophy, their policy, their habits, and their religion must more or less accord, and all depend at last upon the special habit of their minds. It is this central form of belief which determines all the rest. Separately no item which makes up their civilisation as a whole, can be long or seriously changed. It is what a man believes, which makes him act as he does. Thus shall we see that, as their reasoning powers develop, all else develops likewise; their science, their art break up or take new forms ; their system of society expands ; their life, their morality, and their religion gradually are dissolved and reconstructed.

Let us, then, place ourselves back in imagination at a period when the whole surface of the earth was quite unlike what it is now. Let us suppose it as it was after the last great geologic change — the greater portion of its area covered with primeval forests, vast swamps, dense jungles, moors, prairies, and arid deserts. We must not suppose that the earth had always the same face as now. Such as it is, it has been made by man ; the rich pasturages and open plains have all been created by his toil — even the grain, and fruits, and flowers that grow upon its soil have been made what they are by his care. Their originals were what we now should regard as small, valueless, insipid berries or weeds. As yet the now teeming valleys of the great rivers, such as the Nile, or the Euphrates, or the Po, were wildernesses or swamps.

The rich meadows of our own island were marshes ; where its cornfields stand now, were trackless forests or salt fens. Such countries as Holland were swept over by every tide of the sea, and such countries as Switzerland, and Norway, and large parts of America, or Russia, were submerged beneath endless pine-woods. And through these forests and wastes ranged countless races of animals, many, doubtless, long extinct, in variety and numbers more than we can even conceive.

Constantinople the literary centre of the whole region

Having an authorized printing office, the printer may print neither book, newspaper, nor picture, without the signed approval of the censors of the press. These two rules force men to make Constantinople the literary centre of the whole region of its influence. For in provincial towns officials shrink from responsibility, and refer the would-be printer or author to Constantinople for the final decision upon the merits of his petition. Difference of language makes Beyrout a centre for printing in Arabic, and the American Mission and the Bible Societies print there large numbers of books in that language. There are also newspaper presses at Smyrna and Salonica. But in all the vast interior provinces of Turkey printing presses are found in the Government headquarters alone. For this reason the people of all that great region where the Turkish and Armenian and Greek languages are used look to Constantinople for their books, if they have any.

If Turkish or Greek or Armenian men and women in Turkey are ever to be stirred in any large sense to intellectual or spiritual life, the impulse must come through books issued at Constantinople by people who know intellectual and spiritual life. If the view already given is true, of the lacks in both these directions seen among the people of the city, a burden of responsibility falls upon missionaries as educated Christian men and women private tours balkan. The Missionary Societies should concentrate at this one point all necessary means and forces for making the press instruct and help the people of this Empire. Excuse for failure to do this can only be found in ungreediness of the people to be reached by the press, or in the effectiveness of a native press already thoroughly occupying the ground, or in some obstacle of the local laws.

The press laws of Turkey

The press laws of Turkey do not form such an obstacle as one might expect. They limit the field and the style of literature produced under the censor’s care. But they are not obstacles on the whole to the missionary, unless he wishes to write controversial books. And these arc commonly best unwritten. As to the preparedness of the people, all classes of the population of Turkey offer a living example of the punishment which neglect of reading brings upon itself. After a time, talkers who do not read have travelled so far from their original starting point, that their language is quite apart from that of those who meanwhile have been shut up with their books. Then comes the punishment of the people who have neglected reading. Any one of them who now tardily decides that he would like to read, cannot do it. The language of the books is a strange language to him, although it is the one which his ancestors deserted when they stopped reading.

This calamity fell upon all the peoples of Turkey after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Up to that time the Greeks still had preserved the essential grammatical forms of the magnificent Greek literature which is still schoolmaster to the civilized world in literary expression. Now, they can only read their ancient writings by patient study with grammar and dictionary.

Until the middle of the 15th century the Armenians too, had a literature. But in the catastrophes of the Turkish invasion, they, too, lost the power of using it. Until the fourteenth century, the Turks themselves had beginnings of a literature written with Arabic letters, and making much use of Arabic and Persian expressions.

But, having devoted themselves, like a good many other people of the Middle Ages, to war rather than to study, long before the end of the eighteenth century common Turks could not understand the book language any more than they could understand the Arabic in which their religious books are written.

Necessarily exceptions to such broad statements

There are necessarily exceptions to such broad statements. In Constantinople one does not fail to meet Greeks and Armenians who are bright and entertaining and obliging, or Mohammedans who are noble and courteous, and thoughtful enough to make their acquaintance an acquisition. But every study of the people in mass is a revelation of arrested development, absence of initiative, and general uselessness by reason of narrow selfishness. The city, and with it the millions to whom the city is model seem hostile to what is best in the world’s work. High-sounding phrases of lofty principle are heard in the city. Custom provides for this much of concession to the sensibilities of others. But the centuries seem to have frayed off the last semblance of meaning from the words. To quote a remark of a sage official in India which applies to the whole of Asia “ Whilst the mouth is proclaiming its enlightenment and progress, the body is waddling backward as fast as the nature of the ground will permit.” The bane of Constantinople is not solely poverty of resources. It is poverty of ideals.

It is quite impossible for one having any pretensions whatever to general good will toward men, to come in contact with the good and attractive qualities of these people, without wishing for some means of helping them to get rid of the bad. Such a benevolent bystander, questioning how the people of this city may be led to measure their real needs, may naturally incline to believe that contact with Western civilization is the speediest agency for waking them up. The contagious energy of the West must in time modify this sluggish content in what has been and in the belief that respect to the fathers demands that the children shall not expect to be better daily tours istanbul.

Principles of civilization

The main thing needed seems to be to isolate the principles of civilization from the religious principle somewhat persistently associated in the West with the advance of civilization. The way is prepared for this by the fact that in Constantinople a sort of compromise seems to have taken place between the claims of a medley of rival religions in order to permit commercial intercourse. The captain of a Turkish steamboat on the Bosphorus illustrated the feeling that undue assertion of religious prejudice alone disturbs the placidity of the business world. A small boy had found surreptitious access to the whistle of the boat, and made it give forth a blast both deafening and untimely. The captain, rushing from his post to seek the culprit, instead of asking who did this thing, voiced his disgust and his belief that religion was at the bottom of all ills by the shout “ Whose religion have I got to curse now?”

If civilization so isolated is the redemptive and elevating agency that will bring forth progress in Turkey, Constantinople is the place in which to watch the process.

For with all of its shrinking from adopting modern theories, Constantinople frankly and warmly admires their fruits in other nations. No Turk, Jew, nor Christian in all the city hesitates to tell the curious inquirer of his boundless affection for civilization. When talking of the problem of progress in his country every Turkish official naively gauges it by comparison with England, France, Germany, or America. It never occurs to him that, by choosing such types of the highest development of man, Asia and Islam are rendering an interesting and suggestive homage to Christianity and the West.

Subjected to the Beyrout quarantine

“Then shall we be subjected to the Beyrout quarantine, on arriving at Alexandria?”

“ Shouldn’t wonder at all, sir—unless they let the days of tho voyage count.”

I now saw that we wore trapped; and this did not tend to enliven the voyage that evening.

Our only other second cabin companion was a French priest — a thin grirn-looking fellow of five or six-and-twenty, so spare in form that he looked as if he had been allowed to grow up between two boards. He was constantly absorbed in a little dirty volume on Theology, moving his lips and muttering as he read. He was also affectedly humble — insisting upon pouring out wine for us at dinner, and abstaining from it himself, -with an unpleasant smile. In addition to this, he was remarkably grimy to look upon private guide turkey; and never undressed during the voyage. But he had groat faith. I could not bring him to understand that we wore to be put into quarantine at Alexandria; he said, it was impossible. I put the case as practically before him as I could, but he only smiled grimly, and said I should see. I brought the captain down at last, as it became a matter of personal principle that he should be convinced; but even this was unsuccessful. He said we were all wrong; and then returned to his thumbed volume.

She left the Archipelago

The next day, the 29th, there was a pretty stiff wind, and the boat began to toss, as she left the Archipelago. We passed many islands; all desolate-looking light reddish-brown rocks, impressing one with notions of great dreariness. It rained towards afternoon, and, at the first spit, all the Turks bundled up their carpets, crept under their long awning, and never appeared again for the rest of the journey. One or two of the Frank deck passengers made friends with the lieutenant, and came down into our cabin. These were an Italian physician, driven from Yerona by troubles, and going to practice in Alexandria; a young Hollander, travelling for an Amsterdam house of commerce; M. Abro, the Pasha’s dragoman, a very intelligent and communicative person, wearing the full Turkish costume; and the Count Stefano de, a young Ionian, speaking a little English, and first astonishing us by whistling “Patrick’s Hay” and “The girl I left behind me,” as he walked up and down the deck that morning. He had, however, learnt these tunes from the bands of our regiments at Corfu. He was very musical, with a beautiful tenor voice, and proved, both on board and in our subsequent quarantine, a capital fellow.

He had known Mademoiselle Angri, the contralto last year at our Royal Italian Opera, and told me many curious anecdotes connected with her early career—her father having been, as I understood, mess- man at Corfu, and keeper of the billiard tables. He said her popularity had been unbounded in the islands; and the greatest anxiety was evinced to know how she succeeded in London, when she had left them. lie added, they were all perfectly convinced that she was the greatest contralto in the world ; but then he had not heard Alboni, nor, indeed, had the report of her Venetian triumphs come down the Adriatic.

I have said that the engineer was an Englishman, as, indeed, the majority are, in the Levant boats. He had been on the stations between Cairo and Constantinople a long time ; and now knew no other world. One night, I was asking him about the capabilities of the transit boats on the Mahmoudieh Canal and the Nile, when he told me this anecdote, which I have put down as well as I can recollect, in his own words.

“ Lor’ bless you, sir,” he began—“the power of the boat hasn’t much to do with it! When Manned Ali started his boat on the Nile, Abbas I’acha started one as well, and tried to beat him ; and did it too, though this was not nigh such a good boat. When Manned Ali’s boat was on ahead, Abbas Pacha used to come down and say, ‘ Mr. Horton,’ he used to say, ‘ we must lick my uncle’s boat;’ (leastwise he did not say lick, but lie meant it in his tongue, as I might say), and then he used to go on and say, ‘ Mr. Horton,’he’d sar, ‘we’ll have a bottle of champagne together,’ says he. Now, they say the Mustapluis don’t drink, but, Lord bless us, I’ve had Abbas so overcome, as the saying is, down in the cabin, that we’ve often shut the doors to keep it a secret. Well, he’d send down the champagne, and then Abbas’ boat would creep up to Marmed’s, and then he’d send down another bottle, and then we’d get alongside ; and then another, and we’d go right ahead. I don’t mean to say that we used to put the champagne in the boiler; but, you may depend upon it, that it did more than the coals, and so it will, any day.”

Austrian dispatch

^ The man who had taken the letter into the Arsenal came back in a quarter of an hour, and told us that the eflendi was over at the Marine, a building adjacent. I sent it in by a messenger, who presently returned, and said that Sali Pacha wished to see me. I was accordingly ushered in, the ceremony of taking off my shoes being dispensed with, and found this gentleman, who has an important post in the Turkish navy, sitting on a divan at the end of a large room, looking on to the Golden Horn, and swinging the string of beads, to which 1 have before alluded. To my delight he spoke Bnglish perfectly, and was well acquainted with our metropolis. We had an agreeable chat for a few minutes, on comparison between London and Stamboul ; and then lie took charge of my hitter, telling me that the Effie was at Smyrna, but that lie would take my address, and I might calculate on its being safely delivered.

So the document was at last, to a certain extent, on its right mission; which, but for this gentleman’s courtesy, I do not suppose it would ever have been. The trouble I had in getting rid of it may show the difficulty of presenting a Turkish letter of introduction. Stampa subsequently told me that it was.a wonder how anything in the way of publicity or correspondence at Constantinople was managed at all, with streets having no names, and hundreds of people the same. lie said that a post delivery was unknown. If the people did not go after their letters they never got them; but that sometimes, even under these circumstances, they got somebody else’s, which appeared to answer just as well. Amongst the Franks this is all excellently managed. There is a letter-box, both for the Austrian and French mails; besides our own steamers. I believe the Austrian dispatch is the quickest, but the police in that empire have an ugly knack of opening all the letters that go through their hands.

An honest English dinner

That evening, a few of my kind English friends, resident at Constantinople, collected in a snug little house, on the bold hill beyond the large burying ground at Peru, and gave me a dinner — an honest English dinner, of joint and pudding, and goodly beer. It was a pleasant meeting, so far from home. It was capital to hear make the headlands over the Holden Horn echo again, through the open windows, with a tine old English sea-ballad, and thaugh with such heartiness, at the latest London jokes, that his amiable wife told me afterwards she had never known him so inclined to leave the East and return again; so much had wo stirred up his old home feelings by songs and stories. Even “Jeannette and Jeannot,” and “When other lips,” came out bran spick-and-span new; and a scene from “Box and Cox,” played extempore, with dreadful interpolations and deficiencies, was pronounced so fine a thing, that L wonder, upon the strength of the applause, the performers did not, from that moment, renounce all other pursuits but the drama.

Then we had small speeches, and homely toasts; not dismal conventional affairs, but little heartfelt bits, that came well into such companionship; and be sure that there were many in England to whose health and happiness we drank that night, three thousand miles away. And when another guest arrived late, and told us daily ephesus tours, on diplomatic authority, that the Sultan had determined not give up the poor Hungarian people who had come to him for shelter, there was such a thorough-bred British cheer, that I think that if the Emperor of Russia had heard it, it would have knocked him completely over, powerful gentleman as he is.

Our lanterns glimmered along the street of Pera that evening at an unwonted hour, quite astonishing the -watchmen; and as wo crossed the great burying ground, the dogs were sleeping about it so thickly, that they looked collecting like a flock of sheep. But they did not annoy us; onH|ie contrary, one poor animal followed us, in a most humble manner, as far as the circus; when, probably reflecting that he would overpass hig own boundaries if he came further, he gave a dismal howl of parting salutation, and was immediately lost in the darkness.

Beards assumed a most venerable appearance

It was very hot, and the road was very dusty—indeed, the whole country about appeared parched up to the last degree of drought. We put up the windows, but the dust still got in, and, before long, our beards assumed a most venerable appearance. We stopped to bait at a little wine-shed, half-way on the road, where there was a well, and where one or two Albanians, lounging about under a rude trellis of grapes, made an effective “bit.” Here we had some iced lemonade, which appeared to be all the establishment afforded, with some lumps of Turkish sweetmeat; and then we dragged on again for another half-hour, in the heat and dust, until we were deposited at the door of the Hotel d’Qrient — a fine house, furnished in the English fashion, and formerly a palace, as the toutcr had informed us. Demetri now told us that he let horses, with English saddles, to travellers; and that, if wo wished to see all the “ lions,” we must hire some, otherwise there would not bo time to do so. So we had up some stumbling ponies from the town, for which we were to pay a dollar each; and then started to visit the wonders, and be back to dinner by five o’clock.

“ Athens in six hours” is rather quick work to be sure; however, after I had been taken the round of the usual sights, I should have been sorry to have remained there much longer. But the exceeding beauty of the ruins can scarcely be overpraised; albeit, the degree of enthusiasm, real or conventional, with which one regards them, must depend entirely upon such early classical training as the traveller may have been fortunate enough to have

undergone. Yet I doubt whether I could have gazed upon those of graceful remains with greater delight than I did on this occasion, had I gone through any further preparation to visit them, than had been afforded by an ordinary public school education. Apart from their histories and their associations — their lovely symmetry, the effect of their clean sandstone color against the bright blue sky, their admirable position, and the horizon of finely swelling purple hills almost surrounding them, broken to the south-west by the silver harbor of the Piraeus, were quite sufficient to call up the most vivid sensations of delight. Their beauty, also, was enhanced by the picturesque people who idled about them — all was so artistic, so sunny, so admirably thrown together, that whichever way the eye was turned, it appeared to rest on the reality of some exquisite drop-scene.

Elgin marbles

Guardians are stationed where there is anything to knock off and carry away more portable than the Elgin marbles. The interior of the temple of Theseus is used as a museum; and the fragments arc of greater interest, oven to the most ordinary traveller, than such as he may elsewhere encounter. Here we made a luncheon from some singularly fine grapes and fresh figs, with bread, spread on part of a column, and then proceeded to the Acropolis, which Demetri had properly kept for the last visit. From hence the view was most superb, but it wanted the relief of green. Everything, for miles round, was baked up.

The channel of the Ilyssus was without water, and the barley which covers the undulating ground had all been cut, leaving only the naked hot reddish tracts of land rose festival tour. The guardians had a sort of habitation below the Propykea, and cultivated a few vegetables in small artificial gardens, the leaves of which looked quite refreshing. Amongst the masses of marble ruins which the Turks had tumbled down from the Parthenon, to make cannon-balls from, or grind up for mortar, several wild plants trailed and flourished. One of these bore a green fruit, which, being ripe, burst, into dust the instant it was touched, however gently, by the foot; and the guides appeared more anxious to call the attention of the visitors to this fact, than to the solemn glories of the Acropolis.

The superintendence of the monks

From the church, we traversed the court, in which were many fine goats; and a boy with a light iron collar round his neck—merely to show that he was a culprit—was at work, under the superintendence of the monks. This appeared to me to be a far better road to reform than the prison at Constantinople. Then we went up stairs and along an open gallery, into which the cells opened. One of these had a divan round three sides of it, with a wooden press on the other : and this was all the furniture. The walls and ceiling were of wood, and none of it was painted. The windows commanded beautiful views of the entire island, or nearly so—the sea of Marmora, and the opposite coast of Scutari; but it must have been a sad lonely and exposed place in winter.

We took our seats on the divan, concerning which article, by the way, I may just allude to an odd contradiction in our language. We call a couch to sit or lie upon, a sofa; and by a divan wc generally mean a room appropriated to smoking; now, by a sofa the Turks mean a particular room, and their divan is a long soft settle to recline on. In a little time an elderly woman brought up some rakee and preserved quince; and afterwards coffee. Pipes were also offered to the guests; and then, contributing a trifle each to the box of the convent, we took our leave.

Different to that of the scowling priests

I am sure these monks were good creatures. They were evidently very poor indeed; but there was a cheerful courtesy about them, very pleasing; and the mild intelligence of their faces was very different to that of the scowling priests who haunt the Italian cities. This convent was their world: they seldom left it, and the casual arrival of strangers was possibly their greatest excitement; for, in reality, their position was far more lonely than that of the Great St. Bernard monks, who see as much and as varied company, during the “ season,” as a Rhine hotel-keeper. Europe had been rent by convulsions, and was still in the throes of fresh troubles, hut Prince’s Island was too much out of the way for any one to disturb its tranquillity ; and so the inmates of the old convents lived on, calmly enough, waiting for death, and if they knew no great joys, they had but few sorrows.

We had great excitement all the way down the hill. The descent was on smooth grass, and our saddles were not of a first-rate description, but kept slipping on to the donkeys’ necks ; and then we all went down together. This happened to each of us three or four times. The stirrups also were fastened to the same strap, which played loosely through the saddle; so that if you made too great an inclination on one side, without counteracting it, you came over that way. I never tumbled about so much as on that short journey; hut the grass was soft, and it made fun enough city tours istanbul.

We went to another convent, close to which was a covered wooden platform, like a steward’s stand at the races, only much lower. Here three or four handsome girls were dancing a polka to their own voices, and an old monk was looking on. As they saw us approach, they stopped, and flew off, like startled deer, into the adjoining woods. We sat with the priest a little time, and made him a present of some sweetmeats, which a travelling vendor passed with at that minute. He told us that the girls had come up from the village, and that it did him good to see them dancing.

I do not wonder at this.

Calling back their pretty faces,

I do not think there are many who would not also have felt considerably better from a glimpse of them.

We spent a pleasant idle day in the woods, and got back to the village between four and five, when its most novel and characteristic feature presented itself. The whole population had turned out, to walk about in their finest clothes, up and down the promenade in front of the wooden coffee-houses. All the seats and narghiles were engaged, as well in the cafes as on the sea-view platform opposite. Some of the people had evidently taken up their positions at an early hour, to have a good place: others formed little groups in the porticos; others flitted and vended about from one party to the other.

Bailiffs dispossess

“ From henceforth we command that our provosts am I bailiffs dispossess no man from the season which he hold; without full enquiry, or Our own especial order; and that they impose upon Our people no new exactions, taxes an imposts; and that they compel no one to come forth to d service in arms, for the purpose of exacting money from him for We order that none who owes Us service in arms shall b summoned to join the host without sufficient cause, and that those who would desire to come to the host in person should not be compelled to purchase exemption by money Daymen “ Moreover, we forbid Our bailiffs and provosts forever com, wine and other merchandise from being taken out c Our kingdom, save for sufficient cause; and when it is convenient that these goods should not be taken out of the kingdom, the ordinance shall be made publicly, in the council of worthy and competent elders, and without suspicion of fraud or misdoing.

“ Similarly We ordain that all bailiffs, viscounts, provosts, me mayors do remain, after they have left office, for the pace of forty days in the land where such office has been exercised remaining there in person, or by deputy so that . hey may answer to the new bailiffs in respect of any wrong one to such as may wish to bring a complaint against them.”

By these ordinances the king did much to improve the condition of the kingdom.

REFORM OF THE PROVOSTSHIP OF PARIS

The provostship of Paris was at that time sold to the citizens of Paris, or indeed to any one; and those who bought he office upheld their children and nephews in wrongdoing; nd the young folk relied in their misdoings on those who copied the provostship. For which reason the mean people were greatly downtrodden; nor could they obtain entice against the rich, because of the great presents and if its that the latter made to the provosts tour bulgaria.

Whenever at that time any one spoke the truth before the roost, and wished to keep his oath, refusing to perjure himself regarding any debt, or other matter on which he was found to give evidence, then the provost levied a fine upon hat person, and he was punished. And because of the great justice that was done, and the great robberies perpetrated 1 the provostship, the mean people did not dare to sojourn I the king’s land, but went and sojourned in other provost- lips and other lordships. And the king’s land was so departed that when the provost held his court, no more than ender twelve people came thereto.

With all this there were so many malefactors and thieves 1 Paris and the country adjoining that all the land was full f them. The king, who was very diligent to enquire how are mean people were governed and protected, soon knew he truth of this matter. So he forbade that the office of provost in Paris should be sold; and he gave great and good ages to those who henceforward should hold the said office, aid he abolished all the evil customs harmful to the people; nd be caused enquiry to be made throughout the kingdom o find men who would execute good and strict justice, and 0t spare the rich any more than the poor.

Colt’s Crossing

On the following day the host lay at a place called the “ Colt’s Crossing,” where the water is very good, and there with they water the plants from which sugar comes. When we were encamped, one of my knights came to me and said: “ Lord, I have lodged you in a fairer place than you were lodged in yesterday.” “mother knight, who had chosen my yesterday’s camping-ground, sprang upon him in wrath, and cried: “ You are over-bold in speaking of any thing I may have done! ” And he sprang upon him and took him by the hair. Then I sprang upon him in turn, and hit him with my fist between the two shoulders, and he let go. And I said to him: “ Quick, out of my quarters, for, so help me God, you shall never again be follower of mine.”

The knight went away, showing great dole and sorrow, and brought to me my Lord Giles le Bran, the Constable of France; and for the great repentance that my Lord Giles saw in the knight on account of the folly he had wrought, he besought me, as instantly as he could, to take him back into my household. And I replied that I would not take him back unless the legate released me from my oath. To the legate they went, and told him of the matter; and the legate answered that he had not power to release me, because the oath was reasonable; for the knight had well deserved his punishment. And these things I relate to you so that you may keep from taking any oath which in reason it were not convenient to take; for, as the wise man says, “ Who swears lightly, lightly forswears himself.”

EXPEDITION AGAINST BELINAS AND JOINVILLE IN ERIL

On the following day the king went and encamped before the city of Assur, which in the Bible is called Tyre. There the king called together the men of note in the host, and asked them if it would be well to go and rake the city of Belinas before he went to Sayette. We all thought it would be well if the king sent his people thither; but no one advised that he should go thither himself; and with great difficulty was he dissuaded therefrom. Finally it was decided that the Count of Eu should go, and mv Lord Philip of Montfort, the Lord of Assur, my Lord Giles le Bran, Constable of trainee, my Lord Peter the Chamberlain, the Master of the temple and his brethren, and the Master of the Hospital and is bretliren also.

Emir presented his letters of credence

The king told the emir to say what was his will; and the emir presented his letters of credence, and spoke thus: “ My lord sends me to ask if you know him ? ” And the Kir answered that he did not know him, for he had never him; but that he had often heard tell of him. “ And senex that you have heard tell of my lord,” said the emir, “ marvel greatly that you have not sent him so much of you substance as would keep him for your friend like as Emperor of Germany, the King of Hungary, the Soldan Babylon, and the rest do year by year, because they of a certainty that they can only keep their lives as long ; my lord pleases. And if it does not suit you to do this, cause him to be acquitted of the tribute that he owes to tl Hospital and to the Temple, and he will cry quits with you (Now at that time the Old Man of the Mountain paid a tribe to the Temple and to the Hospital, for the Templars are Hospitallers stood in no fear of the Assassins, seeing that the Old Man had nothing to gain by the death of the Master , the Temple or of the Hospital, inasmuch as he knew well that if he caused one to be killed, another, equally goo would be put in his place. Wherefore he had no wish 1 sacrifice his Assassins in a service where there was nothing be gained.)

The king answered the emir that he would see him again the afternoon.

When the emir returned, he found the king seated so that le Master of the Hospital was on the one side of him and le Master of the Temple on the other. Then the king told emir to say again what he had said in the morning. And le emir replied he had no intention of repeating what he id said save in the presence of those who had been with the ng in the morning. Then the two masters said: “We you to repeat what you said.” And he answered late as they commanded it he would do so. Then the two asters caused him to be told, in the Saracen tongue, that he told come on the morrow and speak to them at the hospital.

When he came to them on the morrow the two masters I used him to be told that his lord was very rash in daring address such rude words to the king: and they caused n to ne told further, that if it were not for the king’s moor, to whom they had come as envoys, they should have drowned in the foul sea of Acre, in their lord’s despite. And we command you to return to your lord, and to come ick here within fifteen days, bringing to the king, on the of your lord, such letters, and such jewels, that the king ay hold himself appeased, and have you in his good grace.”

DEATH JOINVILLE REJOINS

INTERVIEW BETWEEN JOINVILLE AND THE ADMIRAL OF THE GALLEYS THE SICK PUT TO DEATH JOINVILLE REJOINS THE OTHER PRISONERS AT MANSOURAH

The chief emir of the galleys sent for me and asked me if I were cousin to the king; and I said “No,” and told him how and why the mariner had said I was the king’s cousin. And he said I had acted wisely, for otherwise we should all have been put to death. And he asked me if I was in any manner of the lineage of the Emperor Frederic of Germany, who was then living. I replied that I thought my lady mother was the emperor’s cousin-german. And he said that he loved me the more for it.

Citizen of Paris

While we were at meat, he caused a citizen of Paris to be brought before us. When the citizen came in, he said to me: “ Lord, what are you doing? ” “ Why, what am I doing? ” said I. “ In God’s name,” said he, “ you are eating flesh on a Friday! ” When I heard that, I put my bowl behind me. And the emir asked my Saracen why I had done so, and he told him. And the emir replied that God would not take what I had done amiss, seeing I did it unwittingly. And you must know that this same reply was given to me by the Legate after we were out of prison; and yet, notwithstanding, I did not afterwards forbear to fast on bread and water, every Friday in Lent; wherefore the legate was very wroth with me, seeing that I was the only man of substance that had remained with the king.

On the Sunday after, the emir caused me, and all the other prisoners taken on the water, to be landed on the bank of the river. While they were taking my Lord John, my good priest, out of the hold of the galley, he fainted, and they killed him and threw him into the river. His clerk fainted also, by reason of the sickness of the host that was upon him, and they threw a mortar on his head, so that he died, and they threw him into the river.

While the other sick people were being disembarked from the galleys in which they had been kept prisoners, there were Saracens standing by, with naked swords, who killed those that fell, and cast them all into the river. I caused them to be told, through my Saracen, that it seemed to me his was not well done; for it was against the teachings of paladin, who said you ought never to kill a man after he taken of your bread and of your salt. And the emir, answered that the men in question were of no account, seeing hey were helpless because of the sickness they had upon hem.

IN FRONT OF THE SARACENS

THE CRUSADERS DISEMBARK IN FRONT OF THE SARACENS

My Lord Baldwin of Rheims, a right good man, who had come to land, requested me, by his squire, to wait for him; and I let him know I should do so willingly, for that a right good man such as he ought surely to be waited for in like case of need, whereby I had his favour all the time that he lived. With him came to us a thousand knights; and you may be assured that, when I landed, I had neither squire, nor knight, nor varlet that I had brought with me from my own country, and yet God never left me without such as I needed.

At our left hand landed the Count of Jaffa, who was cousin-german to the Count of Montbeliard, and of the lineage of Joinville. It was he who landed in greatest pride, for his galley came all painted, within and without, with escutcheons of his arms, which arms are or with a cross of gules patee. He had at least three hundred rowers in his galley, and for each rower there was a targe with the count’s arms thereon, and to each targe was a pennon attached with his arms wrought in gold.

While he was coming it seemed as if his galley flew, so did the rowers urge it forward with their sweeps; and it seemed as if the lightning were falling from the skies at the sound that the pennants made, and the cymbals, and the drums, and the Saracenic horns that were in his galley. So soon as the galley had been driven into the sand as far up as they could drive it, both he and his knights leapt from the galley, well armed and well equipped, and came and arrayed themselves beside us.

I had forgotten to tell you that when the Count of Jaffa landed he immediately caused Ids tents and pavilions to be pitched; and so soon as the. Saracens saw them pitched, they all came and gathered before us, and then came on again, spurring hotly, as if to run in upon us. But when they saw that we should not fly, they shortly turned and went back again.

On our right hand, at about a long-crossbow-shot’s distance, landed the galley that bore the ensign of St. Denis. And there was a Saracen who, when they had landed, came and charged in among them, either because he could not hold in his horse, or because he thought the other Saracens would follow him; but he was hacked in pieces.

ST. LEWIS TAKES POSSESSION OF DAMIETTA

When the king heard tell that the ensign of St. Denis was on shore he went across his ship with large steps; and maigre the legate who was with him he would not leave from following the ensign, but leapt into the sea, which was up to his armpits. So he went, with his shield hung to his neck, and his helmet on his head, and his lance in his hand, till he came to his people who were on the shore customised private istanbul tour. When he reached the land, and looked upon the Saracens, he asked what people they were, and they told him they were Saracens; and he put his lance to his shoulder, and his shield before him, and would have run in upon the Saracens if the right worthy men who were about him would have suffered it.

The Saracens sent thrice to the Soldan, by carrier-pigeons, to say that the king had landed, but never received any message in return, because the Soldan’s sickness was upon him. Wherefore they thought that the Soldan was dead, and abandoned Damietta. The king sent a knight forward to know if it was sooth that Damietta was so abandoned. The

knight returned to the king and said it was sooth and that he had been into the houses of the Soldan. Then the king sent for the legate and all the pi elates of the host, and all chanted with a loud voice  Deumlaudamtts. Afterwards the king mounted his horse, and we all likewise, and we went and encamped before Damietta.

Very unadvisedly did the Turks leave Damietta, in that they did not cut the bridge of boats, for that would have been a great hindrance to us; but they wrought us very much hurt in setting fire to the bazaar, where all the merchandise is collected, and everything that is sold by weight. The damage that followed from this was as great as if which God forbid! some one were, to-morrow, to set fire to the Petit-Pont in Paris.

Now let us declare that God Almighty was very gracious to us when He preserved us from death and peril on our dis-embarkation, seeing that we landed on foot and affronted our enemies who were mounted. Great grace did our Lord also show us when He delivered Damietta into our hands, for otherwise we could only have taken it by famine, and of this we may be fully assured, for it was by famine that King John had taken it in the days of our fathers (in 1219).