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churches. They date their origin from the very earliest ages, when the
"discipline of the secret" was observed, and when the ceremonies of the
communion were held to be of such a sacred and mysterious nature that it
was not permitted to the communicants to reveal what then took place--an
incomprehensible custom which led to the propagation of many false ideas
and strange rumours as to the Christian observances in the third and
fourth centuries, and was one of the causes which led to several of the
persecutions of the Church, as it was believed by the heathens that the
Christians sacrificed children and committed other abominations for
which they deserved extermination; and so prone are the vulgar to give
credence to such injurious reports, that the Christians in later ages
accused the Jews of the very same practices for which they themselves
had in former times been held up to execration.

In one part of the church I observed a rickety ladder leaning against
the wall, and leading up to a small door about ten feet from the ground.
Scrambling up this ladder, I found myself in the library of which I had
heard so much. It was a small square room, or rather a large closet, in
the upper part of one of the enormous buttresses which supported the
walls of the monastery. Here I found about a thousand books, almost all
manuscripts, but the whole of them were works of divinity. One volume in
the Bulgarian or Servian language was written in uncial letters; the
rest were in Greek, and were for the most part of the twelfth century.
There were a great many enormous folios of the works of the fathers,
and one MS. of the Octoteuch, or first eight hooks of the Old Testament.
It is remarkable how very rarely MSS. of any part of the Old Testament
are found in the libraries of Greek monasteries; this was the only MS.
of the Octoteuch that I ever met with either before or afterwards in any
part of the Levant. There were about a hundred other MSS. on a shelf in
the apsis of the church: I was not allowed to examine them, but was
assured that they were liturgies and church-books which were used on the
various high days during the year.

I was afterwards taken by some of the monks into the vaulted chambers of
the great square tower or keep, which stood near the iron door by which
we had been admitted. Here there were about a hundred MSS., but all
imperfect; I found the 'Iliad' of Homer among them, but it was on paper.
Some of these MSS. were