prose which is full of poetry and emotion conceptions of Scripture and thoughts upon the troubles of his time which might have sprung from the warm imagination of the early Christians in the East. He has often suffered for the fire of his sermons, and he possesses both the style of the consummate orator and the personal charm which keeps an audience under a spell. He has for many years been in the forefront of the Armenian movement; and it was he who pleaded the Armenian cause at the Congress of Berlin. A people whose spirit has been crushed and whose manhood has been degraded gather new life from such a teacher and learn to become men. But perhaps the most striking quality in a character which is at once complex and clear as the light of day is the ever-welling kindness and open-armed sympathy with which he shares the troubles of his fellow-men. As the throng press round him, the holder of their highest office, and endeavour to kiss his hand or gain a glimpse of his face, the mind travels back to that solemn scene in which the Greek king receives his stricken and distracted people: "O my poor children, known to me, not unknown is the subject of your prayer; well am I aware that you are sore afflicted all; yet, though you suffer, there is not one among you who suffers even as I. For the grief you bear comes to each one alone--himself for himself he suffers--and to none other else; but my soul mourns for the State and for myself and you." [140] Side by side with personal relations of greater freedom than I had anticipated towards this remarkable man, there grew up at Edgmiatsin and during the course of subsequent travel a fairly intimate acquaintance with the events of his life. He was born on the 5th of April 1820; and it is therefore in his seventy-fourth year that he ascends the throne of St. Thaddeus and of St. Gregory. His father and uncle were well-to-do citizens of Van, who had come to be known under the name of Khrimean because of a trade which they had conducted with the Crimea. The young Mekertich had a single brother and no sisters; and he appears to have been educated with some care by his uncle. His youth and early manhood were devoted to secular pursuits. For five or six years he acted in the capacity of an overseer in a weaving business. But already in 1841 he had become a traveller and a thinker; in that year he made a journey in the province of Ararat and visited Edgmiatsin. At the age of twenty-five he married and in due course became a father; but his wife died after giving birth to a daughter who only lived to be six or seven years old. To a layman of intellectual tastes among the Armenians of Turkey there is scarcely any other profession open than the honourable but ill-paid calling of a teacher. Shortly after his marriage Khrimean proceeded to the capital and earned his living by private tuition. His first book appeared in 1850, and consisted of a description in poetry of his travels in Ararat.