“These countries, once so glorious and famous for their happy estate, are now, through vice and ingratitude become the most deplorable spectacles of extreme misery. The wild beasts of mankind have broken in upon them, and rooted out all civility, and the pride of a stern, and barbarous tyrant, possessing the thrones of ancient dominions, who aims only at the height of greatness and sensuality hath reduced so great and goodly a part of the world to that lamentable distress and servitude under which it now faints and groans. Those rich lands at this present time remain waste and overgrown with bushes and receptacles of wild beasts, of thieves and murderers; large territories dispeopled or thinly inhabited; goodly cities made desolate, sumptuous buildings become ruins, glorious temples either subverted or prostituted to impiety; true religion discountenanced and opposed; all nobility extinguished; no light of learning permitted, no virtue cherished; violence and rapine exulting over all, and leaving no security, save an abject mind and unlooked on poverty.” What would Mr. Sandys--this good Englishman--say if he were alive now and had seen what happened within the last hundred years; how these “wild beasts of mankind” again and again broke in upon the defenceless Christians, and the barbarous tyrants ordered their wholesale massacres; and how England protected and prolonged the lives of these wild beasts and barbarous tyrants over a hundred years; and how goodly cities have been made desolate and the ancient dominions have been turned into a veritable hell by the sword and the fire by these despots; and how England is now paying dearly for her past sins against humanity and Christianity for defending such a lowering faith, whose votaries defied Jesus to come and save His followers from the burning churches, after they had set fire to them to consume the helpless Christian men, women, and children who had fled thither for refuge from the sword? He would have said like others of his mold--England lacked men of Cromwell’s type. The friends of Armenia still hope that she may have yet a bright future before her, when peace and tranquillity is restored; that she may yield, or contribute many valuable discoveries and manuscripts from the old monasteries and ruined churches and furnish a fuller knowledge of the history of the early Christian churches in the east; and that they may swell the band of missionaries of the cross and render good to her foes for the evil she has received for centuries. FOOTNOTES: [1] Pliny agrees with the Armenian historians in bringing the eastern boundary to the Caspian Sea, and Herodotus makes Armenia to border on Cappadocia and Cilicia. [2] Lynch, “Armenia, Travels and Studies”; Vol. I. pp. 197-8. London, 1901. [3] Lynch, “Armenia,” Vol. I, p. 146. [4] Lynch, “Armenia,” Vol. II, p. 76. [5] Sayce, “The Races of the Old Testament,” p. 44. [6] Sayce, “Records of the Past,” Vol. II, p. 140.