long and full beard, are characteristics which we associate with the Jewish nation, but which are not uncommon among the Armenians. What is more rare among this people is the spirituality and refinement which is written in every line of this handsome face (Fig. 48). But the whole character of the man would seem to have been moulded upon a Biblical model rather than upon that of the Christian hierarchy. He is the tried statesman to whom the people look for guidance in the abeyance of the kingly office. With him religion and patriotism are almost interchangeable terms; and the strong reality which he has given to the old Armenian history may be illustrated by an act which those who lack sympathy with such a character might almost regard as childish. In the cloister of Varag near Van, over which he has presided for many years, are buried the remains of Senekerim, king of the Van country, who abdicated his kingdom in favour of the Byzantine emperor, Basil II., and retired to the town of Sivas in Asia Minor, which he received in exchange. Over his tomb a wooden canopy had been erected and decorated in a manner befitting royal rank. But such honours, paid to so unworthy a monarch, shocked the keen sense of the patriot in Khrimean; he stripped the frame of its trappings and ornaments, and the structure stands bare to this day. The simple surroundings among which his life has been passed recall the setting of a Bible story. At a later stage of our journey, when we arrived in the town of Van, I was shown the house where he had resided and which he has now devoted to a school for girls. As I alighted to visit the school a man with the appearance and dress of a peasant stepped forward to hold the reins of my horse. Yet this individual was none other than the nephew of the Katholikos, and the brother of Khoren Khrimean, who has accompanied his uncle to Edgmiatsin, and who does the honours of the patriarchal household with so much dignity and natural grace. During our stay in Van, his native province, we were afforded an instance of the magnetic influence which through a long life Mekertich Khrimean has exercised upon his countrymen, and which takes the form of superstitious veneration among the humble and the poor. As we were winding up the slopes of Mount Varag on our way to the ancient monastery where he lived so long, teaching in the school which he had founded within its walls, and often taking this very path from the cloister to preach in the little church of Hankusner, on the outskirts of the gardens of Van, our attention was called to a spot where an assassin had lain in wait for him, deputed by his enemies to kill him as he rode unaccompanied towards the town. The story is told that when the man perceived him and raised his rifle to his shoulder, a sudden fear seized his limbs, his arm shook like a wand; and he fell upon his knees before his victim, whose look he had been unable to bear. As a writer Khrimean has expressed through the vehicle of a