According to custom, they were reading the Gospel for the day in a variety of languages, and a large concourse of Greeks thronged the church. The Archbishop of Ephesus was also present, and officiating with much pomp; and the aspect of the church, and of the whole scene, was the most festive imaginable. But at the large door of the building, a scene of a very different character was exhibited. A considerable number of female captives were ranged, and, if I recollect right, in a kneeling posture, along the outside. Their Turkish masters had indulged them so far, as to permit them, on this occasion, to survey the worship of their church and the persons of their countrymen. It was however, to them, a painful instead of a joyful spectacle. Their flowing tears and evident distress very clearly intimated how keenly they felt their separation from their friends and countrymen, and how painful was their whole condition of servitude.

The debasement of feeling, which their Turkish masters display on this subject, is another evidence how melancholy must be their state. On a journey which I made from Constantinople to Smyrna, in company of Hadji Mustapha, a native of Tunis, he spoke of the purchase he had lately made of a Sciot captive, with as much composure

as an Englishman might speak of the purchase of a horse or a dog. To calamities like these has the captive daughter of Scio, of Psara, of Haivali, of Missolonghi, and of many other places, been subject. The story of the capture of these islands and towns would probably resemble, in many points, the history of the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar: Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens :—the captive may adopt this language of the Book of Lamentations (ch. v. 2, 3, 5—8): We are orphans and fatherless; our mothers are as widows... Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest. We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread. Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities. Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.

CHAP. II.

CALAMITIES OF TURKEY.

Desolate state of the Morea, illustrated by Scripture-Tripolitza, and the open country, after the last incursion of Ibrahim Pasha-Towns demolished-Soil in a state of devastation-Highways abandoned - Khans burnt-Cattle destroyed-Churches in ruins-Olive-trees cut down-The inhabitants taking refuge in caves and mountains-Fires in Turkey-Terrible conflagration at Constantinople in 1825 -Families resident in the tombs of the Ancient Æginetans― Reflections on the comparative privileges of our countryRespect paid to Englishmen in Turkey-Execution of Divine menaces against sin, exemplified in the sufferings of the Oriental Church, and in the decline of Turkish power.

In regard to that territory, which for many years has suffered the horrors of revolution and anarchy, and been the theatre of Turkish warfare, I have often been struck to observe, how very accurately the descriptions of the state of Judea by the ancient Prophets are applicable to it. To the Greeks may be addressed the language: Your country is desolate; your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence; and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. I passed through the principal parts of the Morea, soon

after the last incursion of the Arab army. In the chief towns, and in a multitude of the country villages, not a dwelling remained entire. In Tripolitza, the capital, the work of demolition had been complete. Not only was the green grass growing amidst the ruins of the palace of the Pashas of the Morea, but every mosque, every church, every dwelling, and even every wall, had been thrown down. The destruction of Tripolitza seemed only second to that of Jerusalem: Not one stone shall be left upon another, which shall not be thrown down. And in what condition may the soil be supposed to have been?-in a state literally fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah concerning Judah (vii. 23): It shall come to pass, that every place shall be, where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings, it shall even be for briers and thorns... all the land shall become briers and thorns.

A description in the book of Judges (ch. v. 6), of the effects of hostile invasion, is a description true in regard to Greece: In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through by-ways. Passing from Argos to Tripolitza, and from the latter place to Mistra, two of the principal roads in the Morea, I found this language most correct. It was rare

...

to meet a traveller. I only met one between Tripolitza and Mistra; and the roads presented the appearance of having been long disused. I might bring forward facts to prove, that the very language of Jeremiah (ix. 10) is capable of application: For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the habitations of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up neither can men hear the voice of the cattle: both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled; they are gone. The habitations of the wilderness appear to express those solitary Khans or lodging-places for travellers, which are often at equal distances, in Turkey, between large towns. The Prophet clearly alludes to them in another place: Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people, and go from them! I observed that these habitations of the wilderness were uniformly burned up. The cattle had been destroyed to such an extent, that I was not only astonished at the immense quantity of their bones which met my eye, but the Greeks complained that they had not oxen to plow their land:

and the destruction of the storks at Argos, mentioned in my Journal, might seem illustrative of the expression, The fowl of the heavens are fled: I do not recollect to have seen