of French adventurers took service
under La Valette, and remained for some time in Malta.

[1392] Vertot tells us that the projected expedition of Solyman against
Malta was prevented by the destruction of the grand arsenal of
Constantinople, which was set on fire by a secret emissary of La
Valette. (Knights of Malta, vol. III. p. 41.) We should be better
pleased if the abbe had given his authority for this strange story, the
probability of which is not at all strengthened by what we know of the
grand-master's character.

[1393] It was common for the Maltese cities, after the Spanish and
Italian fashion, to have characteristic epithets attached to their
names. La Valette gave the new capital the title of "_Umillima_,"--"most
humble,"--intimating that humility was a virtue of highest price with
the fraternity of St. John. See Boisgelin, Ancient and Modern Malta,
vol. I. p. 29.

[1394] "Plus de huit mille ouvriers y furent employes; et afin d'avancer
plus aisement les travaux, le Pape Pie V. commanda qu'on y travaillat
sans discontinuer, meme les jours de Fetes." Helyot, Hist. des Ordres
Religieux.

[1395] The style of the architecture of the new capital seems to have
been, to some extent, formed on that of Rhodes, though, according to
Lord Carlisle, of a more ornate and luxuriant character than its model.
"I traced much of the military architecture of Rhodes, which, grave and
severe there, has here both swelled into great amplitude and blossomed
into copious efflorescence; it is much the same relation as Henry VII.'s
Chapel bears to a bit of Durham Cathedral." Diary in Turkish and Greek
Waters, p. 200.

The account of Malta is not the least attractive portion of this
charming work, to which Felton's notes have given additional value.

[1396] Vertot, Knights of Malta, vol. III. p. 42.

[1397] Ibid., pp. 42-48.--Boisgelin, Ancient and Modern Malta, vol. I.
pp. 127-142.

[1398] An interesting description of this cathedral, well styled the
Westminster Abbey of Malta, may be found in Bigelow's Travels in Sicily
and Malta (p. 190),--a work full of instruction, in which the writer,
allowing himself a wider range than that of the fashionable tourist,
takes a comprehensive survey of the resources of the countries he has
visited, while he criticizes their present condition by an enlightened
comparison with the past.

[1399] "Lorsqu'on commence l'Evangile, le Grand-Maitre la prend des
mains du Page et la tient tonte dro