whole Library had been thrown down this trap-door, and they had remained undisturbed, in their dust and neglect, for some centuries.’ [Sidenote: THE RESEARCHES IN THE LEVANTINE MONASTERIES OF MR. CURZON.] Ten years later, Mr. TATTAM himself continued these researches. But in the interval they had been taken up by the energetic and accomplished traveller Mr. Robert CURZON, to whose charming _Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant_ it is mainly owing that a curious aspect of monastic life, which theretofore had only interested a few scholars, has become familiar to thousands of readers of all classes. Mr. CURZON’S researches were much more thorough than those of any of his predecessors. He was felicitous in his endeavours to win the good graces of the monks, and seems often to have made his visits as pleasant to his hosts as afterwards to his readers. But, how attractive soever, only one of them has to be noticed in connexion with our present topic—that, namely, to the Convent of the Syrians mentioned already. ‘I found,’ says Mr. CURZON, ‘several Coptic MSS. lying on the floor, but some were placed in niches in the stone wall. They were all on paper, except three or four; one of them was a superb MS. of the Gospels, with a commentary by one of the early fathers. Two others were doing duty as coverings to large open pots or jars, which had contained preserves, long since evaporated. On the floor I found a fine Coptic and Arabic Dictionary, with which they refused to part.’ After a most graphic account of a conversation with the Father Abbot—the talk being enlivened with many cups of rosoglio—he proceeds to recount his visit to a ‘small closet, vaulted with stone, which was filled to the depth of two feet or more with loose leaves of Syriac MSS., which now form one of the chief treasures of the British Museum.’ The collection thus ‘preserved’ was that of the Coptic monks; the same monastery contained another which was that of the Abyssinian monks. ‘The disposition of the manuscripts in the Library,’ continues Mr. CURZON, ‘was very original.... The room was about twenty-six feet long, twenty feet wide, and twelve feet high; the roof was formed of the trunks of palm-trees. A wooden shelf was carried, in the Egyptian style, around the walls, at the height of the top of the door, ... underneath the shelf various long wooden pegs projected from the wall, ... on which hung the Abyssinian MSS., of which this curious Library was entirely composed. The books of Abyssinia are bound in the usual way—sometimes in red leather, and sometimes in wooden boards, ... they are then enclosed in a case, ... to which is attached a strap, ... and by these straps the books are hung on the wooden pegs, three or four on a peg, or more, if the books were small; their usual size was that of a small, very thick quarto.... Almost all Abyssinian books are written upon skins.... They have no cursive writing; each letter is therefore painted, as it were, with the reed-pen....