"Good heavens!" he exclaims, in intense disgust, "how little do those enthusiastic descriptions agree with what is now to be seen! To-day the convent garden is small, run to waste, miserably stocked. Instead of pinks and amaranths, which rejoiced the senses of the lucky Tournefort, I could discern in this Armenian 'paradise' naught besides turnips and cabbages, with here and there a stunted, unhealthy-looking mulberry or apricot tree, and the melancholy wild olive, with its flavourless fruits. No shade from the sun, nothing pleasant to the eye. And neither the interior of the convent nor that of the church exhibit any traces of the splendour vaunted by the old travellers. In the patriarch's reception-chamber, the windows are prettily painted in the Persian style; and here my guide expected, but in vain, to see me struck with wonder and admiration. In the same room is a bust of the Emperor Nicholas, dating, doubtless, from the early years of his reign, for it has no mustaches, and the breast wants breadth. In the next apartment, where the patriarch daily receives the higher clergy of the establishment, is a Madonna, after Raphael, so exquisitely embroidered in silk, that at a short distance it appears a painting. This piece of needlework was sent to the patriarch from Hindostan, by a pious Armenian woman. Then there is an ivory bass-relief of Abraham's sacrifice; and on the walls are depicted horrible scenes of martyrdom, especially the sufferings of St Gregory, buried alive in a deep well. A most artistically carved arm-chair, occupied by the patriarch upon state occasions, was also sent, only a few years ago, from Hindostan, whence, and from other foreign communities of Armenian Christians, far more gifts are received than from Tefflis and other neighbouring places inhabited by many rich Armenians. Behind this arm-chair is a full-length portrait of the Czar of all the Russias, of whom the prelates never speak but in a tone of anxious humility." The church of Eshmiadzini is rich in monkish legends and precious relics. It contains an altar, through which is a passage into subterranean excavations, and which stands on the exact spot where the Saviour is said to have appeared to St Gregory, armed with a club, and to have hurled the heathen gods and evil spirits into the chasm. To this day, when, as often happens, the wind whistles through the vaults, the bigoted and ignorant monks believe they hear the howling of the tortured demons. Eshmiadzini's relics are renowned far and wide amongst the scattered Armenian congregations of the East.