I return from this detailed description of the cathedral and the chapels of the martyrs to the more general tenour of the contents of this chapter. Edgmiatsin is rapidly developing into a home of the higher education, and it enjoys the proud privilege of possessing an institution which is unique in all Armenia for the comparatively exalted standard of the course of study which it provides. The Academy at once dispenses the usual curriculum of a seminary and supplies a higher course, extending over three years. Such an excessive disporting in the realms of dangerous knowledge was only sanctioned by the Russian Government on the understanding that the privilege should be confined to candidates for the priesthood. The nature of their profession may have appeared a sufficient guarantee that the learning imparted would be strictly subordinated to "views." Besides, there was always the safeguard that the curriculum must be submitted to the Russian bureaucracy, and approved in due course by these aureoled arbiters, enthroned above the shifting mists and slippery quagmires among which poor Knowledge often faints and sometimes sinks. Her youngest and hardiest offspring, pertinacious Natural Science, has been excluded from these intellectual preserves; and I was assured that the mere mention of the name of this arch-enemy in a prospectus would produce the same effect among the august censors as a challenge from the prince of devils among the blessed. The course is confined to theology, history and literature, foreign as well as Armenian. To these subjects is added a study which the Germans have developed under the name of Pädagogik. Within this formula, I was given to understand, are included at Edgmiatsin, besides the art of the teacher, a certain general knowledge of philosophy and psychology. The students are obliged to pass a certain standard by examination at the end of each year.