CURZON'S VISITS TO MONASTERIES..

Mn. CURZON is a bibliographer of the choicest class, who directs his at- tention to unique manuscripts, venerable for their antiquity, their illuminations, or the peculiarity of their letters, as well as to scarce books. Not content with perusing the catalogues of booksellers or ransacking the stalls of towns, he became his own " traveller " ; compassing land and sea to enrich his collection, and occasionally practising upon the monks of the East those convivial arts by which "commercial gentlemen" at home contrive to procure an order or the settlement of an account. The dates in his volume indicate that he spent upwards of five years in Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, and Greece, in search of literary treasures ; and he appears to have formed a collection both rich and rare. But read the moral of bibliography, in the origin of the volume. "I was staying by myself;" says the author in his preface, "in an old country-house belong- ing to my family, but, not often inhabited by them ; and, having no- thing to do in the evening, I looked about for some occupation to amuse the passing hours." The collection he had gathered together with so much trouble and cost was around him ; and, vanity of vanities ! "what had the owner thereof, but the sight of it with his eyes ?" He took them from their shelves ; he "turned over their wide vellum leaves, and ad- mired the antiquity of one, and the gold and azure whieh gleamed upon the pages of another"; though the inside furnished no charm to while away the time. But "the sight of these books," continues Mr. Curzon, "brought before my mind many scenes and recollec- tions of the countries from which they came ; and I said to myself, I know what I will do--I will write down some account of the most cu- rious of these manuscripts, and the places in which they were found, as well as some of the adventures which I encountered in the pursuit of my venerable game"; hence in course of time, and by the cissire of friends, arose the sightly volume before us. The Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant is a remarkable in- stance of the utility of a pursuit to a traveller. With the extaetion of Albania, the countries Mr. Curzon visited have been described till ..ords are wanting to vary the expression of triteness ; yet the pursuit of traveller imparts freshness to exhausted lands, and produces unexpected novelty, variety, and information. Mr. Curzon's object led him out of the beaten track to monasteries in the rarely travelled deserts of Egypt, to the mountains of Albania, the solitude of Mount Athos; and these visits were the cause of adventures by the way, and gave glimpses of the people in their unsophisticated state, that would not be found in roads frequented by tourists. The purpose of these visits, too,

• Visits to Monasteries in the Lerant. By the Hon. Robert Corson junior. With numerous Wood-cuts. Published by Murray.

was beyond those of the " mob of gentlemen" who go to a monastery to take their ease in their inn, or to say that they have been there. The library was a point of attraction; though sometimes even to enter it, still more to carry off its treasures involved negociations and much friendly communication with the monks, and often a sojourn in the mo- nastery. These various points of peculiarity, though furnishing new matter, would not of themselves suffice to make an interesting book ; as we saw in the case of the German Tischendorff's travels in search of a better text of the New Testamentt But Mr. Curzon has other qualifi- cations. He has studied bibliography in a liberal spirit, and extended his inquiries into its collateral arts, as well as into painting and architecture; he is acquainted with the ages which produced manuscripts, and with the history of the monks and monasteries whither he went to seek them. It follows that in the Visits to the Monasteries there is much matter par- taking of the essence of knowledge, as well as description and adventure. After all, means and materials are not of much use in forming an agree- able book to those who cannot use them : but Mr. Curzon can. He has a vivacious mind and a pleasant style, where the suavity of the Oriental is engrafted upon the freedom and frankness of the European gentleman. He is also well fitted for a traveller ; possessing the quiet resolution and endurance or " bottom " which characterize the British aristocracy, with their adaptability to circumstances and their generally unaffected manners.

The traveller's first excursion was in the desert region lying towards

the North-west of Cairo, memorable in the early ages for the devotion and the dirt of its ascetics. There are several Coptic monasteries still exist- ing in the district of the Natron lakes ; and at one of them Mr. Curzon had to begin the traveller's arts—not to strike a bargain, but in order to get access to the goods ; the Abbot denying the existence of his secret ware-room.

"The old blind Abbot had solemnly declared that there were no other hooks

in the monastery besides those which I had seen: but I had been told, by a French gentleman at Cairo, that there were many ancient manuscripts in the monks' oil-cellar; and it wits in pursuit of these and tlie Coptic dictionary that I had undertaken the journey to the Natron lakes. The abbot positively.denied the existence of these books, and we retired from the library to my room with the Coptic manuscripts which they had ceded to me without difficulty; and , which4 according to the dates contained in them, and from their general appearance, may claim to be considered among the oldest manuscripts in existence.-moth ancient certainly than many of the Syriac MSS. which I inn about to describe. "The Abbot, his companion, and myself, sat down together. I produced a bottle of rosoglio from my stores, to which [knew that all Oriental monks were partial; for though they do not, I believe, drink wine, because an excess in its indulgent* is forbidden by Scripture, yet ardent spirits not having been Invented in those times, there is nothing said about them in the Bible; and at Mount Sinai and all the other spots of sacred pilgrimage the monks comfort themselves with a little glass or rather a small coffee-cop of arrack or raw spirits, when nothing better of its kind is to be procarred. Next to the golden key, which masters so many locks, there is no better opener of the heart than a sufficiency of strong drink,— not too much, but exactly the proper quantity judiciously exhibited (to use a chemical term in the land of Al, Chica4, where alchemy and chemistry first had their origin). I have always found it to be invincible; and now we sat sipping our cups of the sweet pink rosoglio, and firing little compliments at each other, and talking pleasantly over our bottle till some time passed away, and the face of the blind Abbot waxed bland and confiding; and he had that expression on his countenance which men wear when they are pleased with themselves and bear good-will towards mankind in general. I had, by the by, a great advantage over the good Abbot, as I could see the workings of his features and he could not seft mine, or note my eagerness about the oil-cellar, on the subject of which I again' gradually entered. There is no oil there' said he. 'I am curious to see the., architecture of so ancient a room,' said f; for I have' heard that yours is a famous oil-cellar.' 'It is a famous cellar,' said the other monk. 'Take another' cup of rosoglio,' said I. 'Ali !' replied be, I remember the days when it over-' flowed with oil, and then there were I do not know bow many brethree hem with us. But now we are few and poor; bed times are clime over us; we are noa, what we used to be.' 'I should like to see it verymuch; said I; I have heard so much about it even at Cairo. Let us go and see it; and when we come back' we will have another bottle, and twill give you a few more which I have brought' with me for your private use.'

"This last argument prevailed."

The same cenvent afforded a refuge to some Abyssinian monks ;'eel whom and whose library there is a curious account. We must confines: our extract to one portion of it, descriptive of the labour which the in- vention of printing has saved ; for there is no reason to think that the care and anxiety of transcribing and illuminating is peculiar to the dark. skinned Christians of the country of young Nile. "The labour required to write an Abyssinian book is immense, and sometimes many years are consumed in the preparation of a single volume. They are al- most all written upon skins: the only one not written Upon vellum that I have met with is in my own possession ; it 38 on charta bombymna. The ink which they use is composed of gum, lamp-black, and water. It is jet black, and keep its colour for ever: indeed, in this respect all Oriental inks are infinitely superior to ours, and they have the additional advantage of not being corrosive or in- jurious either to the pen or paper. Their pen is the reed commonly used in the East, only the nib is made sharper than that which is required to write the Arabia character. The ink-horn is =tally the small end of a cow's horn, which is stuck into the ground at the feet of the scribe. In the most ancient Greek frescoes and illuminations this kind of ink-horn is the one generally represented, and it seems to have been usually inserted in a hole in the writing-desk: no writing-desk, however, is in use among the children of Habash. Seated upon the ground, the square piece of thick greasy vellum is held upon the knee or on the palm of the left hand.

"The Abyssinian alphabet consists of eight times twenty-six letters, 208 charac-

ters in all; and these are each written distinctly and separately like the letters of an European printed book. They have no cursive writing; each letter is therefore painted, as it were, with the reed pen; and as the scribe finishes each be usually makes a horrible face and gives a triumphant flourish with his pen. Thus he goes on letter by letter, and before he gets to the end of the first line lie is probably in

I perspiration from his nervous apprehension of the importance of his undertaking.

'Age is a good day's work • and when he has done it, he generally, if he is not t. tiff follows the custom of all little Arab boys, and awiogs his head or his '°'Y ".61.-.hde to side, keeping time to a sort of nasal recitative, without the help of which.. would seem that few can read even a chapter of the Koran, al-

though they may. • by heart. " Some of these

kipectater, ma, Page 857' pis are adorned with the quaintest and grimmest il- luminations conceivable. e colours are composed of various ochres. In gene- ral the outlines of the figures drawn first with the pen. The paint-brush is nude by chewing the end of a reed till it is reduced to filaments and then nib- bling it into a proper form: the paint-brushes of the ancient Egyptians were made in the same way: and excellent brooms for common purposes are made at Cairo by beating the thick end of a palm-branch till the fibres are separated from the pith, the part above, which is not beaten, becoming the handle of the broom. 'The Abyssinian having nibbled and chewed his reed till he thinks it will do, proceeeds to fill up the spaces between the inked outlines with his colours. The Blessed Virgin is usually dressed in blue; the complexion of the figures is a brownish red; and those in my possession have a curious cast of the eyes, which gives them a very canning look. St. John, in a MS. which I have now before me, is represented with woolly hair, and has two marks or gashes on each side of his fa e, in accordance with the Abyssinian or Galla custom of cutting through the skin of the face, breast, and arms, so as to leave an indelible mark. This is done in youth, and is said to preserve the patient from several diseases. The colours are mixed up with the yolk of an egg, and the numerous mistakes and slips of the brush are corrected by a wipe from a wet finger or thumb, which is generally kept ready in the artist's month during the operation: and it is lucky if he does not give it a bite in the agony of composition, when with an unsteady hand the eye of some famous saint is smeared all over the nose by an unfortunate swerve of the nibbled reed."

Not the least interesting portion of the Visits is the description of the sites and mode of building of the Oriental monasteries, and the historical suggestions they conjure up. In Western Europe, from the time the Northern invaders were converted to Christianity, religious edifices were tolerably secure—assauit and sack was the exception. Hence their sites are generally distinguished for their amenity, and when skill and labour had been brought to bear, for the fatness of the land. In the East, se- curity was the first object ; for the monks had Pagans, the heterodox, and the Moslems, successively to endanger them. Strength, rather than beauty of structure, and difficulty, or if possible inaccessibility of situa- tion, are the usual characteristics of Eastern monasteries. This appears more or less in the generality of those Mr. Curzon visited, and of some in Armenia, which he only alludes to in his introduction. The most singular are the monasteries of Meteora in Albania ; remarkable as show- ing to what shifts fanaticism and necessity will resort. "The scenery of Meteors is of a very singular kind. The end of a range of rocky hills seems to have been broken off by some earthquake, or washed away by the Deluge, leaving only a series of twenty or thirty tall, thin, smooth, needle- like rocks, many hundred feet in height ; some like gigantic tusks, some shaped like sugar-loaves, and some like vast stalagmites. These rocks surround a beau- tiful grassy plain, on three sides of which there grow groups of detached trees, like those in an English park. Some of the rocks shoot up quite clean and per- pendicularly from the smooth green grass; some are in clusters; some stand alone like obelisks: nothing can be more strange and wonderful than this romantic re- gion which is unlike anything I have ever seen either before or since. In Switz- erland) Saxony, the Tyrol, or any other mountainous region where I have been, there is nothing at all to be compared to these extraordinary peaks.

"At the foot of many of the rocks which surround this beautiful grassy am- phitheatre there are numerous caves and holes, some of which appear to be na- tural, but most of them are artificial; for in the dark and wild ages of monastic fanaticism whole flocks of hermits roosted in these pigeon-holes. Some of these caves are so high up the rocks that one wonders how the poor old gentlemen could ever get up to them; whilst others are below the surface; and the anchorites who burrowed in them like rabbits frequently afforded excellent sport to parties of roving Saracens. • •

"On the tops of these rocks in different directions there remain seven monas- teries out of twenty-four which once crowned their airy heights. How anything except a bird was to arrive at one which we saw in the distance on a pinnacle of rock, was more than we could divine; but the mystery was soon solved. Winding our way upwards among a labyrinth of smaller rocks and cliffs, by a romantic path which afforded as from time to time beautiful views of the green vale below us, we at length found ourselves on an elevated platform of rock, which I may compare to the flat roof of a church; while the monastery of Barlaam stood per- pendicularly above us on the top of a much higher rock, like the tower of this church. Here we fired off a gun, which was intended to answer the same pur- pose as knocking at the door in more civilized places; and we all strained our necks in looking up at the monastery to see whether any answer would be made to our calL Presently we were hailed by some one in the sky, whose voice came down to us like the cry of a bird ; and we saw the face and grey beard of an old monk some hundred feet above us peering out of a kind of window or door. He asked us who we were, and what we wanted, and so forth: to which we replied, that we were travellers, harmless people, who wished to be admitted into the monastery to stay the night; that we had come all the way from Corfu to see the wonders of Meteors, and, as it was now getting lute, we appealed to his feelings of hospitality and Christian benevolence.

"'Who are those with you?' said he. "'Oh, most respectable people,' we answered; 'gentlemen of our acquaintance, who have come with us across the mountains from Mezzova: [They were insur- gents or banditti, whom Mr. Curzon by a piece of luck had been able to engage.]

The appearance of our escort did not please the monk; and we feared that he would not admit us into the monastery: but at length he let down a thin cord, to which I attached a letter of introduction which I had brought from Corfu; and after some delay a much larger rope was seen descending, with a hook at the end to which a strong net was attached. On its reaching the rock on which we stood the net was spread open; my two servants sat down upon it; and the four corners being attached to the hook, a signal was made, and they began slowly ascending into the air, twisting round and round like a leg of mutton hanging to a bottle- jack. The rope was old and mended; and the height from the ground to the door above was, we afterwards learned, 37 fathoms, or 222 feet. When they reached the top, I saw two stout monks reach their arms out of the door and pull in the two servants by main force, as there was no contrivance like a turning- crane for bringing them nearer to the landing-place. The whole process appeared so dangerous that I determined to go up by climbing a series of ladders which were suspended by large wooden pegs on the face of the precipice, and which reached the top of the rock in another direction round a corner to the right. The lowest ladder was approached by a pathway leading to a rickety wooden platform which overhung a deep gorge. From this point the ladders hung perpendicularly upon the bare rock; and I climbed up three or four of them very soon; but, coming to one the lower end of which had swung away from the top of the one below, I had some difficulty in stretching across from the one to the other; and here, un- luckily, I looked down, and found that I had turned a sort of angle in the preci- pice' and that I was not over the rocky platform where I had left the horses, ha. that the precipice went sheer down to so tremendous a depth that my head to"‘g° when I surveyed the distant valley over which I was hanging in the air r° a BY on a wall. The monks in the monastery saw me hesitate, and call& -•°‘ to Inc

to take courage and hold on and making an effort, I overcame in dizziness, and .. court of the mo-

nastery; up to a small iron door, through which I crept int,

servants who had been

nastery; where I was welcomed by the monks and the te-

a not admitted ; but they hauled up by the rope. The rest of my party - bivouacked at the foot of the rocks in a shelter... p""'"°, and were perfectly con- tented with the coffee and provisions which lowered down to them."

Our attention has been chiefly directed to subjects in which the Visits originated ; but a great part of the work consists of the more general matter peculiar to books of travel,—description of scenery and manners, remarks upon the state of society, with incidents and adventures by the way. As we have explained already, Mr. Curzon's objects, leading hint continually from the beaten track, gave him much greater opportunities of observation than is usual with tourists; the length of time he remained in the country was another advantage; and his connexions a third,—for although be says little about them, and only incidentally, it is clear that his introductions were highly useful. Mr. Curzon also visited such parrs of the East as are described in his volume at a time (1833-37) when the people upon the great lines of travel were more uncorrupted than they are now, from the influx of Europeans, without much benefit to the natives; though "numerous vices and modes of cheating, besides a larger variety of drunken scenes, are offered for the observation of the curious, than existed in more unsophisticated times." Apart, therefore, from the sub- jects which give a peculiar character to the Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant, the volume may be recommended as a graphic and amusing book of travels.