nod of any despot and were void of all independence of thought and action. That such a spirit often prevailed is undoubted. But if the Byzantines had the faults of our human nature, they were not altogether without some of its virtues. And whatever our opinions on the questions, political or ecclesiastical, that divided parties in Constantinople, may be; although we may think that good men in that city did not always take the wisest course; it is but common justice and fair play to recognise that there also was found, in the face of great difficulties, what we admire elsewhere--a sense of the rights of conscience, some demand for freedom of thought, the feeling that right and truth are the supreme authorities over human life, and that rulers, like other men, should do justly and love mercy. There, as well as elsewhere, men and women were found who preferred to suffer and to die rather than prove faithless to their convictions. The monastery of Studius is, moreover, celebrated for its attention to hymnology, counting its great abbot Theodore, his brother Joseph, and two monks, both named Simon, among the writers of sacred poetry. It had also a scriptorium in which the Scriptures and other religious works were copied. It was, moreover, famed as an “illustrious and glorious school of virtue,” and thither youths of the higher classes of society went for a part of their education. One of the attractions offered by the school was the facility with which students in an institution so near the fortifications could get out of the city to hunt in the open country. The relics preserved in the church drew devout pilgrims to its shrine from far and near. Many Russians visited the monastery on that account, and even entered the order of the Acœmetæ to live and die beside the sacred remains. The humble tombstone of one of these Russian monks is built in the base of the modern wall enclosing the ground behind the apse. It bears the inscription, “In the month of September of the year 1387, fell asleep the servant of God, Dionysius a Russian; on the sixth day.” The honour of burial in the cemetery in which the Sleepless were at last laid to rest was accorded also to men distinguished for their public services, as in the case of the patrician Bonus, who bravely defended Constantinople in 627 against the Avars and the Persians, while the Emperor Heraclius carried on his daring campaigns far away in Persia itself.