t. Clemente at Rome, which contains all the
original fittings of the choir. The churches of St. Ambrogio at Milan,
of Sta. Maria Trastevere at Rome, the first church dedicated to the
Blessed Virgin; the church of St. Agnese near Rome, the first in which
galleries were built over the side aisles for the accommodation of
women, who, neither in the Eastern nor Western churches, ever mixed with
the men for many centuries; all these and several others in Italy afford
more instruction than those of the East--they are larger, more
magnificent, and in every respect superior to the ecclesiastical
buildings of the Levant. But the poverty of the Eastern church, and its
early subjection to Mahometan rulers, while it has kept down the size
and splendour of the churches, has at the same time been the means of
preserving the monastic establishments in all the rude originality of
their ancient forms. In ordinary situations these buildings are of the
same character: they resemble small villages, built mostly without much
regard to any symmetrical plan, around a church which is constructed in
the form of a Greek cross; the roof is covered either with one or five
domes; all these buildings are surrounded by a high, strong wall, built
as a fortification to protect the brotherhood within, not without
reason, even in the present day. I have been quietly dining in a
monastery, when shouts have been heard, and shots have been fired
against the stout bulwarks of the outer walls, which, thanks to their
protection, had but little effect in delaying the transit of the morsel
between my fingers into the ready gulf provided by nature for its
reception. The monks of the Greek Church have diminished in number and
wealth of late years, their monasteries are no longer the schools of
learning which they used to be; few can read the Hellenic or ancient
Greek; and the following anecdote will suffice to show the estimation in
which a conventual library has not unusually been held. A Russian, or I
do not know whether he was not a French traveller, in the pursuit, as I
was, of ancient literary treasures, found himself in a great monastery
in Bulgaria to the north of the town of Cavalla; he had heard that the
books preserved in this remote building were remarkable for their
antiquity, and for the subjects on which they treated. His dismay and
disappointment may be imagined when he was assured by the agoumenos or
superior of the monastery, that it contained no li