202 



MOUNT ATHOS. 



English whom he had known there in terms of attachment. He 

 observed, that the Greek and English churches differed very little 

 from each other in the grand articles of their creed, and regretted 

 the causes of those divisions which broke and interrupted so much 

 the unity of Christian worship. He mentioned having baptized 

 the child of an English nobleman who was visiting Smyrna, the 

 father considering immersion more conformable to the practice of 

 the Apostles than sprinkling. 



Our inquiries respecting the library of the convent were always 

 evaded, and at length we were told that the manuscripts were merely 

 rituals and liturgies of the Greek church, and in very bad condition. 

 On pressing our request to be admitted to see them, and adding that 

 it had been the primary object of our visit, we were shown into a 

 room where these old tattered volumes were thrown together in the 

 greatest confusion, mostly without beginning or end, worm-eaten, 

 damaged by mice, and mouldy with damp. Assisted by three of 

 those whom I have mentioned, we took an accurate catalogue, exa- 

 mining each mutilated volume separately and minutely. We found 

 copies of the New Testament, not older than the twelfth and 

 thirteenth centuries, and a variety of theological works, of Chrysos- 

 tom, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzum, and others, and an infinity of 

 liturgies, canons, and church histories. The only interesting manu- 

 scripts we saw were two tragedies of iEschylus, the Iliad, a copy of 

 that very ancient poem the Batrachomyomachia * ; the works of 

 Demosthenes, Athenaeus, Lysias, Galen, some parts of Aristotle, 

 Hippocrates, and Plato ; two copies of the Apocalypse, and the 

 Jewish history of Josephus : but none of them bore marks of remote 

 antiquity. We requested permission to take them to England, for 

 the purpose of having them collated with our printed copies ; but the 

 Hegoumenos said, he could not grant it, without express leave in 

 writing from the Patriarch of Constantinople. 



* Cujus carminis auctor, si non Homerus, utique vetustissimus. Hemster. in Th. 

 Mag. 26. 



