Christianity brought with it into Armenia a great love for learning. After the conversion of the nation, Armenian youths flocked into the schools of Alexandria, Constantinople and Athens. Most of them engaged in translating valuable works from the Greek and other languages into the Armenian. A writer speaks of these translators in this manner: “Some of them attained celebrity in this chosen pursuit. To this tendency we owe the preservation, in Armenian, of many works that have perished in their original languages.” “Hundreds of other translations from Syriac and Greek writers soon followed (the translations of the Bible), some of which are extant only in Armenian.” The original works consist of theological and expository discourses, commentaries, histories, sacred songs, devotional works, etc. “The existing literature of the Armenians dates from the fourth century and is essentially and exclusively Christian.” This “literature is rich and continuous, uninterrupted through all the middle ages. It has furnished the philosophers, historians, theologians, and poets.” The catalogue of the works in the library of Etchmiadsin contains about 5000 titles. “They (the Armenians) are a people of fine physical development, often of high stature and powerful frame, industrious and peaceable, yet more jealous of their rights and liberties than any other Oriental race. They passionately cherish the memory of their fathers, and preserve the use of their national language, which belongs to the Indo-European family, and possess a _literature of considerable importance_.”[78] “These Armenians are a superb race of men ...; their physiognomy is intelligent. They are the Swiss of the East. Industrious, peaceable, regular in their habits, they resemble them also in calculation and love of gain. The women are lovely; their features are pure and delicate, and their serene expression recalls the beauty of the women of the British Islands or the peasants of Switzerland.”[79] “By nature the Armenians are deeply religious, as their _whole literature and history_ show. It has been a religion of the heart, not of the head. Its evidence is not to be found in metaphysical discussions and hair-splitting theology, as in the case of the Greek, but in a brave and simple record written with the tears of saints and illuminated with the blood of martyrs.”[80] There is no nation in the world which has suffered as much persecution, oppression, injustice and martyrdom as the Armenians, yet there is not a nation, even with less advantages, that can compare with them in education. They are like the Jews also in this respect that wherever there is a sufficient number, they have a church and close by is a school. There is less illiteracy among the Armenians than among some Roman Catholic countries.