MOUNT ATHOS. 



217 



Though the sun was setting, and the road to the next monastery long 

 and dangerous, yet we resolved to proceed rather than pass the night 

 with so rude and inhospitable a body of caloyers as we found at Con- 

 stamoneta. Their Hegoumenos or Abbot is a native of Maina, the 

 ancient Eleuthero-Laconia. A beggar passing some months ago by 

 the door of this convent, asked the accustomed alms of bread and 

 wine, on which the porter told him that the Abbot had strictly for- 

 bidden him to distribute any more, as the convent was poor, and 

 scarcely able to support its own members. In the course of convers- 

 ation the beggar asked how the convent became so poor, and on the 

 porter's not being able to give a satisfactory answer, he replied, I will 

 inform you. There were two brothers who dwelt in this convent at 

 its first foundation, and on them its happiness solely depended. Your 

 tyrannical Abbot forced one of them into exile ; the other soon fled, 

 and with them, your prosperity. But, be assured, that until you recal 

 your elder brother, you will continue poor. What were their names ? 

 said the wondering caloyer. The expelled brother, replied the 

 beggar, was called &i%re, and the name of him who followed was 

 AoQjc-ETa: (Give, and it shall be given unto you. Luke, vi. 38.) 



We arrived late at Zografou, and finding the gates locked, were 

 told that, in the absence of the Abbot, they dared not open them at 

 such an hour. On putting, however, the Patriarch's recommendatory 

 letter under the door, a priest came and read it, and immediately 

 gave us admittance. This monastery was inhabited solely by Bulgari- 

 ans. They are apparently rich, as they are rebuilding the convent on 

 so grand a scale that the cost of the church alone is estimated at fifty 

 thousand piastres. The arches of the new colonnade are all of dif- 

 ferent diameters and heights ; and the capitals of the columns more 

 clumsy and shapeless than those of the darkest ages of the lower em- 

 pire. The ritual of the Bulgarian service is exactly comformable to 

 that of the Greek church, though the language of their liturgy and of 

 their canonical books is ancient Bulgaric or Illyric ; but as their only 

 printing-press is at St. Petersburgh, a number of Russian letters and 

 words have crept in, and their printed books have become very cor- 



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