cially adultery, but even that is accompanied by a veto against remarrying. Some of their marriage customs are curious, but are too indelicate to be specially mentioned. They reckon the birth of a daughter to be a great misfortune, and no rejoicings take place. The ignorance and superstition of the Armenians who inhabit the Russian, Persian, and Turkish provinces in Asia, are described as almost beyond belief; yet the Armenians in general are admitted to be greatly attached to the name of Christian, and to the doctrines of Christianity, so far as they understand them. The French traveller Tavernier gives various examples of the constancy of the Armenians in maintaining their religion against the persecutions of the Mahometans, of which the following is a specimen. The circumstance of an Armenian renouncing Christianity for the faith of the Koran rarely occurs, but when it does take place, and the person who has apostatized desires to return to the Church, he can only get absolution at the town or place where he abjured Christianity. It happened that a young Armenian, who had been sent to Smyrna with a considerable quantity of goods, turned Mahometan, that he might defraud his relatives of their property, and squander it in pleasure. After he had spent the most considerable portion of his goods in dissipation, he repented of his apostacy, and proceeded to the residence of the Grand Patriarch at Etchmiatzin, to be absolved from his crime. The Patriarch told him that he must, in conformity with the ecclesiastical law, apply to the Bishop of Smyrna, which he accordingly did, and was absolved in the usual manner. After undergoing the penance enjoined by that prelate, he went to the kadi, and with great resolution told him, that although some time previously he had become a Mahometan, he had now repented of his conduct, and of the foul crime he had committed in denying the Saviour of the world. The kadi, who imagined this declaration to be complete extravagance, was at first disposed to consider it lightly, and endeavoured to

reclaim the penitent by flattering promises, but when he heard him persisting in his resolution, and cursing and blaspheming the name of the Prophet, he ordered him to be taken to a public part of the city called The Piazza, where he was put to death by the angry populace. He suffered with great constancy, "for," adds Tavernier quaintly, "no persons go with more courage and joy to suffer for their faith than the Armenians."

This traveller relates a story connected with this subject, which, whether it be true in every particular or not, exhibits the habits and feelings of both the Turks and Armenians in a very striking manner. In the year 1651, he says, there happened to be a wedding between a young Turk and a virgin of the same nation. To this wedding an Armenian lady was invited, who was a particular friend of the bridegroom's mother. This Armenian lady had an only son of about twelve years of age, who earnestly desired to go along with her. At first she refused his request, knowing that no youths above five or six years of age are permitted to be in company with Turkish women or girls; but the lad being very importunate, and being seconded by an aunt, who, to please her nephew, told her she might allow him to go with her in a female dress, at length his mother consented to take him along with her in that apparel. The solemnities of the Turkish weddings generally continue three days, but the very first day an old gipsy Turk cast her eye on the young Armenian, and finding him too sparkish and nimble for a girl, suspected his sex; and calling his mother aside, told her that all the actions and gestures of the pretended girl clearly proved the said girl to be a boy in disguise. This charge the mother not only denied, but seemed greatly offended at the old woman's suspicions, who, equally incensed at her judgment being questioned, decoyed the youth among the eunuchs of the family, by whom he was examined, and the truth of the old woman's suspicions confirmed. She presently spread it through the house; the

guests all exclaimed with horror that the apartment was defiled, and that the Armenian lady, being a Christian, had done this intentionally as an insult to their law; and dragging mother, aunt, and the disguised lad, before the basha, demanded justice. That officer dismissed the mother and the aunt, and detained the youth a few days, in the hope that the rage of the people would subside. But he attempted to preserve him in vain, and although the father of the lad offered half his weight in gold as a ransom, the basha was obliged to deliver him up into the hands of the recently married woman's relations, who carried him to the marketplace, where they stripped him naked, and flayed him from the back of his neck down to his waist, and left him in that condition all night under a guard. The kadi and mollah exhorted the lad to turn Mahometan, and they would save his life, and his mother entreated him to the same effect; but neither tears, nor all the tender words which affection could utter, shook the constancy of the lad, who said that nothing grieved him so much as his mother's request that he should renounce his religion. On the following day his relentless persecutors still farther tormented him in a similar manner, but the basha, abhorring their cruelty, came with his guards, and ordered his head to be cut off.

The Armenians are principally scattered throughout the Turkish, Persian, and Russian provinces in Asia, and are consequently subject to the respective sovereigns of these empires. Their churches and convents are found in all the large towns and cities, and some rural districts exclusively are inhabited by Armenian Christians. In various districts and towns of British India, there are also Armenian churches and congregations. There is one at Madras, in which a grand funeral obsequy was performed on occasion of the death of George III. and George IV., according to the rites of this ancient Church. In Calcutta there is an institution called "The Armenian Philanthropic Institution," which

is supported by the clergy and laity of the Armenian communion in that city, and which affords instruction in geometry, geography, arithmetic, and grammar, taught in the Armenian and English languages, including Latin, to the pupils. A College, called the Eliazarian College, under the patronage of the Emperor of Russia, has been instituted at Moscow; in Paris the literature of Armenia has been successfully cultivated, and M. St Martin and M. De Sacy, with some other distinguished orientalists, have directed their attention to useful researches in the lore of that ancient and venerable language. The Armenian College in Venice has greatly contributed towards the revival of the Armenian language, and recently a general interest has been excited concerning this ancient Church. The late Bishop Heber admitted a deacon of the Armenian Church named Messop David, who had come from Mount Ararat to India in attendance upon one of the Bishops of his Church, as a foreign theological student into Bishop's College, Calcutta. "This young ecclesiastic," observes the Report of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge," pursued his studies with diligence and success, and obtained, both from Bishop Heber and Principal Mill, strong testimonies of approbation. Before he left the College, he completed a translation of the English Liturgy into the Armenian language, which is now (1834) in the press. After leaving India, he went into Persia, and established a flourishing school at Julpha near Ispahan; but being annoyed by the Persians, he removed into Armenia, and settled at the celebrated monastery of Etchmiatzin, where he has been appointed Professor of Arts in the College, and Vice-Secretary to the Armenian Patriarch. A correspondence has been entered into with him, which is likely to open a beneficial communication between the Society and the Armenian and other Oriental Churches. He is engaged in translating into his native language such works as are likely to promote Christian knowledge among his

countrymen, and to maintain the independence of his Church against the encroachments of the See of Rome."

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In 1829, a "Sketch of the History of Armenian Literature" was published at Venice, written in Italian by Placido Lukias Somal, Archbishop of Linnia, and Abbot-General of the Congregation of the Armenian Mechitarist Monks of St Lazarus in that city. This congregation is a branch of the Roman Catholic Armenians, who are condemned as heretics by the old Oriental Church, and who retaliate by reprobating the other great party who, refusing to acknowledge the Papal supremacy, persevere in the faith of their forefathers. This establishment, to which allusion is made in the preceding observations respecting the Armenian institutions in general, was founded in the year 1700 by Mechitar Pedrosian, a Catholic Armenian, at Constantinople, in which city the Catholic Armenians chiefly abounded, and he was soon afterwards appointed Abbot. But he was pelled to leave the Moslem capital, and he fled with his monks to the Morea, then subject to Venice, where he established his monastery, and an academy at Medon. Both institutions continued to flourish there for a time, until the Morea reverted to the Ottoman sway, when in 1717 the Abbot transferred his monastery and academy to Venice, and located it upon one of the numerous islands, called San Lazzaro, or St Lazarus, which constitute the substratum of the inhabited portion of that far-famed city, where it has since remained and flourished; in honour of its founder, it is called Mechitarist. This establishment, which has always been in great reputation, and has yielded eminent scholars in their own and other languages, has an excellent printing-press, from which issues a newspaper, permitted by the Turkish government to be circulated among its Armenian subjects under certain restrictions. The chief occupation of these Mechitarist monks at Venice is that of translating the classic works of France, Italy, England, and Germany, into Armenian, and thus

endeavour to illuminate Armenia by the brilliant light of European genius. The work which Archbishop Somal published in 1829 contains no Armenian compositions; it is simply an historical sketch, written in Italian, of Armenian literature, recording the epochs of its glory, its decay, and its revival, and enumerating its principal authors and their works. Among those authors upwards of two hundred and twenty are mentioned, besides those who are qualified as unknown, meaning thereby that their names only are known from being quoted by other writers. Those two hundred and twenty writers produced works on history, theology, sacred poetry, philology, geography, and mathematics, the productions in the two first departments of literature being more numerous than in the others. Yet it must be confessed that the researches into Armenian literature are unsatisfactory and unproductive. The Armenians themselves do not trace their literature farther back than about a century and a half before the Christian era, but the productions of those and succeeding times have been lost, although not altogether, since later Armenian writers have compiled from their works. The authors who lived in the fourth century of the Christian era are the first whose writings have been preserved, for Christianity then prevailed in Armenia, and her writers were princes and prelates. The fifth century was fruitful in authors, and has been appropriately termed the golden age of Armenian literature. In it flourished the principal historian of Armenia, Moses Chorenensis, whose narratives of his country are perhaps the most authentic of all other writers. Previous to this era the Armenians had no alphabet of their own, using the Greek, Syriac, and Persian characters as it suited their inclination; but an alphabet was invented by Mesrop Masdoty in the early part of the fifth century, consisting of thirty-eight letters, still called in honour of its inventor the Mesropian, and used as capitals, others of more convenient form having supplanted them in

common use. Schools were about this time instituted throughout Armenia, then an independent kingdom, and the scholars were employed in producing various translations of the Scriptures, and of the writings of Greece and Rome. In the sixth century, however, the Haican literature-so called from the reputed founder of the Armenian nation -began to decline, and from that time to the sixteenth century inclusive the declension was rapid, the very genius of the language becoming corrupted by attempts to assimilate it to the Latin. The repeated subjugation of the country by various nations tended to prevent the revival of literature until the seventeenth century, when Armenian schools and colleges arose in the East and West, and printing-presses were established in several towns. Since that period indications have been given that much important information will yet be pub lished respecting a country equally interesting to the historian, the theologian, and the lover of antiquities. Many valuable works must be mouldering in the Armenian convents and other depositories, although, from the testimonies of Morier and Porter, few or none appeared to be in the Patriarchal Library of Etchmiatzin. It may be proper to mention that an edition, perhaps the first, of the Armenian Bible, from the version of the Septuagint, was published at Amsterdam in 1666 by the command of the then Patriarch. That translation was the work of Oskan Wartabeid, a bishop of Armenia, assisted by one of his deacons. In 1668, the New Testament in the Armenian language was also published at Amsterdam, which, however, was merely a reprint of the edition of 1666. In 1698, another edition was printed in the same city at the expense of an Armenian archbishop named Goltham. The Septuagint version of the Bible was again printed and published at Constantinople in 1705, by the command of the Patriarch Nahabet; and in 1733, the edition published in 1666 at Amsterdam was republished at Venice by

the Mechitarist monks in that city, with notes and other additions by command of the Roman Catholic Patriarch Abraham. In more recent times other editions of the Scriptures, and works on various subjects, have issued from the Armenian press.

Present state of Armenia. The present state of the Turkish and Persian provinces of Armenia is so completely involved with the Turkish and Persian history, that we must refer the reader to the accounts of those countries under their proper heads. The same remark applies to the Russian provinces. The Russians, in their last war with the Persians, obtained the important Perso-Armenian province of Erivan, which is the Patriarchal seat of Etchmiatzin, near which the lofty Ararat rears its snowy summit. This province consists of the two territories of Erivan and Nakchivan, of which the city of Erivan is the capital and seat of government. All questions civil and criminal are decided according to the laws of Russia, but the Armenians are allowed their former privilege, which they enjoyed under the Persian rule, of adjusting differences among themselves. The province contains a population of one hundred and thirteen thousand or upwards, who may be divided into two classes-those who are permanent, and have fixed dwellings in the city of Erivan and the villages, and who are employed in agriculture; and the nomades, who wander about the country with their flocks.

There are calculated to be about eighteen hundred Mahometan families in the city, between three and four hundred Armenian families, and upwards of four hundred families from Azarbarchan, most of whom are Armenians, a very small number of them being Mahometans. The whole number of agricultural Armenian families in the province is rated at about four thousand seven hundred. The city or town of Erivan is situated on the rivers Zanghi and Kirboolak, and under the Persian sway was governed by an officer entitled sardar, equivalent to the rank of a general in

Great Britain. It contains a fortress of considerable strength, situated on the left bank of the Zanghi. There are in the city two thousand eight hundred houses, and fourteen thousand inhabitants. The Patriarchal seat of Etchmiatzin has its three churches surrounded by a stone wall. The last Patriarch, Ephraim, greatly exerted himself to adorn this seat of the Armenian primacy. It contains at present an oil-mill, a tile-kiln, extensive plantations of pulse and fruit trees, a prodigiously large cave, in which is preserved a considerable quantity of wine, which accrues from the possessions of the monastery, a school, a storehouse for corn, refectories for summer and winter which are capable of containing five hundred persons, a building of three storeys, with very convenient apartments, where a thousand travellers might be lodged, a bazar, stables, and other conveniences. The stationary inhabitants of Russian Armenia are principally occupied in tanning leather, soapmaking, and the manufactory of silk and cotton stuffs. They either dispose of these articles in the country, or export them to Persia, Turkey, and Georgia. The country people carry into these states their salts, cottons, rice, tobacco, wheat, barley, hemp, flax, and every kind of pulse.

The nomadic tribes, who wander throughout the province, traffic in cattle, carry on the caravan trade, and ransport the products of the soil. The nomades likewise derive considerable profit by employing their cattle to transport the stores of the Russian Government and the merchandize of the caravans, which traverse their country at all seasons of the year. Some of these tribes furnish the government with a great number of beasts of burthen every year. Generally speaking, the breeding of cattle is the chief occupation of these pastoral tribes. In the province of Erivan, about twenty-five hundred nomade families pay scarcely any attention to agriculture, and subsist by their flocks and herds alone. It is calculated that they possess about twelve thousand oxen, eleven

thousand cows, and one hundred and forty thousand sheep, goats, and horses. They have comparatively few buffaloes. The Armenians principally use buffaloes in ploughing, eight pairs of which are often seen attached to their unwieldy implements, while the Tartars prefer oxen in their field labour. They are calculated to possess about five thousand asses, which are used to transport their goods, but they have few camels, there being no more than a few hundreds of those animals throughout the whole province, and these are almost exclusively the property of the Mahometans. It is computed, therefore, as nearly as possible, that there are in the whole Armenian province of Erivan thirty thousand buffaloes, one hundred and two thousand oxen, two hundred and ninety thousand sheep and goats, and twenty-four thousand horses and asses.

Notwithstanding the general mildness of the government in the provinces which Russia has conquered, an Armenian priest, named Isaac Catour, who recently visited British India (Asiatic Journal, April 1835), states that the Christian population of Armenia hate de Russians more than the Mahometans, and that a general wish prevails among them for the English to take them under their protection. It appears that in their late war with Abbas Mirza, shah or king of Persia, the Russians proposed to many of the Armenians to settle as a colony on the other side of the Caspian, and forced them to march back with their army, promising them houses and lands in the Russian territory similar to what they should leave behind them. The Armenians accordingly left their native plains, and were quartered in the Russian towns bordering on the Caspian until settlements could be provided for them; but after a residence of two years nothing was done, peace with Persia was proclaimed, and the wanderers returned home to find their houses pillaged and their lands laid waste.

This Armenian priest has also given the following summary description of his