de l'Acad. des Inscriptions; and Schlosser, Bildersturmendes Kaiser, p.
100.--M]

[Footnote 136: In the last century twenty large cedars still remained,
(Voyage de la Roque, tom. i. p. 68--76;) at present they are reduced
to four or five, (Volney, tom. i. p. 264.) These trees, so famous in
Scripture, were guarded by excommunication: the wood was sparingly
borrowed for small crosses, &c.; an annual mass was chanted under their
shade; and they were endowed by the Syrians with a sensitive power of
erecting their branches to repel the snow, to which Mount Libanus
is less faithful than it is painted by Tacitus: inter ardores opacum
fidumque nivibus--a daring metaphor, (Hist. v. 6.) Note: Of the oldest
and best looking trees, I counted eleven or twelve twenty-five very
large ones; and about fifty of middling size; and more than three
hundred smaller and young ones. Burckhardt's Travels in Syria p. 19.--M]

[Footnote 137: The evidence of William of Tyre (Hist. in Gestis Dei per
Francos, l. xxii. c. 8, p. 1022) is copied or confirmed by Jacques
de Vitra, (Hist. Hierosolym. l. ii. c. 77, p. 1093, 1094.) But this
unnatural league expired with the power of the Franks; and Abulpharagius
(who died in 1286) considers the Maronites as a sect of Monothelites,
(Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 292.)]

[Footnote 138: I find a description and history of the Maronites in the
Voyage de la Syrie et du Mont Liban par la Roque, (2 vols. in 12mo.,
Amsterdam, 1723; particularly tom. i. p. 42--47, p. 174--184, tom. ii.
p. 10--120.) In the ancient part, he copies the prejudices of Nairon and
the other Maronites of Rome, which Assemannus is afraid to renounce and
ashamed to support. Jablonski, (Institut. Hist. Christ. tom. iii. p.
186.) Niebuhr, (Voyage de l'Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p. 346, 370--381,)
and, above all, the judicious Volney, (Voyage en Egypte et en Syrie,
tom. ii. p. 8--31, Paris, 1787,) may be consulted.]

IV. Since the age of Constantine, the Armenians [139] had signalized
their attachment to the religion and empire of the Christians. [1391]
The disorders of their country, and their ignorance of the Greek tongue,
prevented their clergy from assisting at the synod of Chalcedon, and
they floated eighty-four years [140] in a state of indifference
or suspense, till their vacant faith was finally occupied by the
missionaries of Julian of Halicarnassus, [141] who in Egypt, their
common exile, had been vanquished by the arguments or the influe