the following anecdotes which happened during, or shortly before, my residence in the Levant:

Two Mainote robbers who had plundered a Greek priest in the Morea, on leaving him and carrying off his property, expressed to each other their fears lest, as they were known to him, he should excommunicate them. To deliver themselves from the danger of his dreaded anathema, they returned and murdered him.

Shortly before my arrival at Athens in May 1814, a Maltese vessel had been boarded by Albanian pirates off the island of St. George of Skyro, (at that time their strong hold). They were headed by a Greek Priest. Their first act was to murder the captain and crew, in all thirteen men. One only escaped, in the first instance by not being on deck, and afterwards from their finding he might be of use to them; for they sent him to announce that on the deposit of a certain sum the vessel and cargo (which they dared not sell) would be restored. On searching the vessel after the massacre, the robbers found on the spit the dinner which their victims had been preparing, and which they were beginning to eat, when their leader (who had been the instigator of the massacre, telling them that heretics deserved not mercy,) snatched the untasted morsel from their lips, and severely reproved them for thinking to eat meat on a fast-day.

A Greek of Smyrna, who had committed a murder, took refuge from justice in the house of an European merchant of that city; on the day of his concealment, his protector

humanely sent him part of his dinner, but he refused to eat it, alleging that as it consisted of meat, and that day was a fast-day, it would be a violation of the ordinances of his church; this hypocrisy so disgusted his host, that he immediately turned him out of his house.

While I was at the island of Cos in January 1816, I lodged in the house of the Greek Archbishop of the place: he was a corpulent man, of gross habits, which he had evidently acquired by long indulgence in "the fat slumbers of the church:" but he was rigidly exact in the outward ceremonies of his religion, every morning recited his prayers regularly, reading, or rather chanting, a part of the Bible, and, it being the time of the Greek fast which succeeds their Christmas, would, on no account, taste the meat and the milk dishes which my servant cooked for me, though he every instant had a longing for them, and perpetually expressed his regret that I had not arrived at a time when he might have shared my dinner; during my three days' residence in his house, I saw frequent instances of his rapacity on religious pretences; such are so common that I took little notice of them, but one of them was of a nature so impious, so disgusting, that I could not dispense myself from noting it in my journal: a Greek woman, very poor, who was on her death-bed, sent to the archbishop, begging him to send a priest to confess her before she died; he refused to do so, unless she previously sent him five hundred piastres, (about 251.) a sum utterly beyond her power to raise; she sent for

the Greek Codgia Bashi, (chief of the Greeks,) and deputed him to speak to the Archbishop: I was present when he came to make the bargain; he soon convinced the Archbishop that five hundred piastres were out of all question, and the demand was accordingly dropped to one hundred: the Codgià Bashi said the woman had not above fifty; "Then let her sell her furniture and ornaments," said the Archbishop; "But there is no time," replied the C. B., "she is dying." I shall never forget the cold brutal tone in which the Archbishop rejoined, "Well, let her die then

a good voyage to her.” (“ Ε καλὰ ἄς ἀπέθανη καλαβόδιον τῆ.”) At length the Codgià Bashi retired, refusing to give more than fifty piastres; but on his return to the woman, her fear of dying unabsolved overcame every other consideration, and she sent her ornaments, (bracelets and earrings, and the few sequins she wore about her neck): the Archbishop, after having leisurely considered and weighed them, and assured himself of their being worth the sum he had demanded, sent a priest to her. These scenes are so common that a relation of the woman who brought the first message, and afterwards accompanied the C. B, in bringing the second, expressed no sort of indignation, but bargained as if he had been buying corn: the woman was of bad character, having had three husbands, all Turks, of whom she had abandoned one, and the other two had abandoned her.

A French lady, of a very charitable disposition, whom I knew at Cyprus, told me that she was totally disgusted by

the shameless instances of the rapacity of the Greek clergy which her visits to the cottages of the peasants brought almost daily under her notice. One she mentioned to me ast having happened shortly before my arrival. A Greek widow with three children, in the lowest state of poverty, who was on her death-bed, was complaining to her of her inability to buy the medicines and comforts requisite for her situation. The lady, observing a very neat gilt Venetian looking-glass in her room, advised her to sell it and provide herself from the money it would fetch. She answered, that by advice of the Greek priest who attended her, she had bequeathed that glass to his convent. "Indeed! but surely you should "scrape together every thing you can for your children. "What resources do you leave for them?" "Oh!" she replied, "the Papa says that Heaven will take care of "them!"

It is not possible to give a stronger instance of Greek credulity than that which is exhibited in the pretended descent from Heaven of the Holy Fire into the supposed Sepulchre of our Saviour at Jerusalem. The flame is pretended by the priests, and believed by the vulgar, to descend from Heaven at the prayer of the Greek bishop. I was present at this scene in the Easter of 1815. There were two thousand Greek pilgrims (exclusive of Armenians, Syrians and Copts) then in the city. On the day after Good Friday, when the ceremony took place, the church was crowded by pilgrims, men and women, each carrying a taper to be

lighted by the heavenly flame. The Greek bishop entered the Sepulchre, accompanied by the Armenian patriarch, and by a Turkish soldier, whose well-paid silence is adduced as a proof of the miracle. Large sums were paid by the credulous to be placed near the window, from which the fire is given out. For twenty minutes the pilgrims were kept in suspense, and this interval was filled by cries of impatience, and by furious and even bloody efforts of those at a distance to remove and supersede the happy few who had obtained a place near the window. At length it opened, and a wild shout of enthusiasm followed the delivery of the fire. In a moment the whole building was in a blaze from the countless quantities of lighted tapers. The pilgrims, on receiving the fire, eagerly burnt their bosoms, their faces, and their beards, with it, and treasured up in their bosoms the candles which are religiously kept as relics to the day of their death, and descend to their children, who preserve them with reverence..

This is not the time for a detail of the ceremony; the blindness of the people is sufficiently proved by its existence. The scenes which then passed in Jerusalem, and those which I afterwards witnessed in the passage of the pilgrims to the river Jordan, are ample proofs of the accomplishment of the prophecies which predict the abomination of the holy places. I have by me the description of them, and can never forget them, but the details would fill a volume, and I know not when I shall find time to prepare it.