that the Popes might begin the day by the granting of a favour.

The fees received in this office are distributed in various ways. After certain charges for the expenses of the office have been deducted, pensions are paid to religious establishments, communities, and colleges, to the penitentiaries at St. Peter's and St. John Lateran, to poor families, to bishops, prelates, ecclesiastics, agents of bishops, &c. Some of the sacred congregations and tribunals are aided from its funds, some of which are likewise paid over to the Pope's almoner for distribution, and another portion is set apart for excavations in the catacombs, and for expenses incurred in extracting the bodies of martyrs from those holy resting-places.

Before we close our account, we ought to mention that the congregations and tribunals do not usually give effect to their decrees or dispensations, but leave them to the bishop or to the ordinary courts for execution. In this respect their orders resemble our royal rescript, Let right be done, which is left to the ordinary tribunal for its legal effect.

Even in this brief account of the Sacred Congregations, our readers cannot have failed to appreciate the profound wisdom of the Popes who have instituted and directed them. The regulation of their respective attributions must depend in a great measure upon the foresight and intelligence of the Pontiff, and upon him also must depend the choice of the cardinals who compose them, and the prelates and advisers who assist their deliberations. The affairs which are brought before them require much penetration, and learning, deep, varied, and extensive. The works of Benedict XIV. show the versatility of talent and the diligent application which are needed in the congregations; and although he smoothed the way for those who were to follow him, difficult questions still spring up. As long as the world lasts such questions will not be wanting, and amongst the men who are now collected round the chair of St. Peter, we shall find many displaying erudition worthy of earlier times, a penetration suited to their station, and an abundant store of traditionary wisdom which lawyers prize so highly, maxims of government received from eminent men now no more, rules proved by the success of many trials. It was our lot to know amongst them in the late Cardinal Acton one whom

unceasing application bore to an early grave, who had brought to the arduous offices committed to him discernment and ability such as few have, a keen sense which enabled him to reach the merits of cases upon which the greatest lawyers had been employed, a profound knowledge of theology, and an extensive acquaintance with the canons of the Church and the constitutions of the Popes, as well as with civil and criminal law. It was the delight of his intimate friends of Gregory XVI., who tenderly loved him; of Cardinal Polidori, who admired his learning; and of Cardinal Lambruschini, under whom his diplomatic career was commenced-to turn to him in cases of more than usual importance: his opinions were given speedily, although deep thinking and much anxiety had gone before; and they were expressed with surprising clearness and copiousness of illustration. When he spoke in the congregations, he was eager and full of energy; and until he had stated every argument, and discussed every objection, he was not silent. Many heard of his virtues and of his alms-deeds, but few understood the great qualities, natural and acquired, which he possessed. He was dear to the royal family of France, he was esteemed and honoured by the court of Naples; and Gregory XVI. chose him to be his companion on that memorable day, when he opposed to the Autocrat of Russia the stern power of truth and the overwhelming majesty of the Apostolic See; and whilst we may believe that the recollections of that interview were neither dear nor welcome to the emperor, he did not conceal the satisfaction with which he had viewed the choice of the Holy Father.

Our readers will kindly forgive us for indulging at the close of these pages an affectionate remembrance of one so well versed in the subjects here detailed, who in the midst of splendour and dignity would talk of his own land, and of the home of his youth, and of the aged priest, still living, who prepared him for his first communion, and of our excellent prelates, some still spared to us, others now with God, who had been his friends or his directors. If the many and voluminous notes which he composed upon matters referred to him could be produced, another proof would be given, if such proof could be necessary, of the learning of which the Popes avail themselves in the decision of the smallest, as well as of the weightiest questions which are submitted to them.

ART. V.-Visits to Monasteries in the Levant. By the Hon. ROBERT CURZON, Jun. One Vol. 8vo. London: Murray, 1849.

THE

HE Levant has been tolerably well explored of late years. There are few parts of it into which some European tourist has not penetrated, frequently with the avowed. object of writing and publishing the results of his tour. It was hard to expect, therefore, that an author so late in the field as Mr. Curzon, should be able to bring forward much that had escaped the research of so many industrious predecessors: at most it could only be hoped, that novelty of style or greater accuracy of observation_might impart new interest to what was already familiar. Nevertheless, his volume will be found to contain much that has hitherto been but little known, and its principal subject is not only of considerable interest, but is in some respects entirely new.

Mr. Curzon's "Visits to Monasteries in the Levant" were begun about the years 1833 and 1834, and, if we may rely on his modesty, the account now presented to the public was not committed to paper for a considerable time afterwards. There are parts of the present volume, particularly in the earlier pages, that differ in nothing, not even in manner, from the ordinary book-making of Eastern tourists. The portion, however, which sustains the title prefixed to the volume, will deserve and repay a more attentive perusal. We can easily discover that the author, though he nowhere openly confesses his malady, was labouring at the time under the well-known disease called Bibliomania. But the precise form of the malady under which he laboured, was not that which may be cured by the common and ordinary supplies of "the trade," but that more aristocratic one which craves after the expensive luxuries of literature, and can be appeased but by vellum manuscripts with illuminated capitals, and venerable with the antiquity of a thousand years. This is a passion that votaries of slender purses must be excused for good and obvious reasons from indulging; but an English gentleman, with plenty of English gold, good recommendations,

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-and what recommendation, in such a case, can be better than the gold?-and with a fair share of zeal and perseverance in the cause, may gratify it not only with impunity, but with success. It were well that these elements of success were always employed in the pursuit of objects as harmless, if not as meritorious. It was in the pursuit of old books and MSS., that Mr. Curzon visited some of the most celebrated monasteries of the East, that were a little out of the way of travellers. He hoped that the seclusion and conservative character of these establishments had preserved uninjured many of the literary remains of the middle ages; and in this hope, as we shall now perceive, he was not disappointed.

And yet the causes that perhaps conduced more than all to preserve these remains of antiquity, were the want of a market, and an unconsciousness of their value. In this unconsciousness, the Greek monks contrast most disadvantageously with the Latin convents. We are sure that in no part of the Latin Church could the following incident be recorded of the inmates of any religious community.

"A Russian, or I do not know whether he was not a French traveller, in the pursuit, as I was, of ancient literary treasures, found himself in a great monastery in Bulgaria, to the north of the town of Cavalla; he had heard that the books preserved in this remote building were remarkable for their antiquity, and for the subjects on which they treated. His dismay and disappointment may be imagined, when he was assured by the agoumenos, or superior of the monastery, that it contained no library whatever, that they had nothing but the Church books and liturgies, and no palaia pragmata, or antiquities, at all. The poor man had bumped upon a pack-saddle over villanous roads for many days for no other object, and the library of which he was in search had vanished as the visions of a dream. The agoumenos begged his guest to enter with his monks into the choir, where the almost continual Church Service was going on, and there he saw the double row of longbearded holy fathers shouting away at the chorus of Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, which occurs almost every minute in the ritual of the Greek Church. Each of the monks was standing, to save his bare legs from the damp of the marble floor, upon a great folio volume which had been removed from the conventual library, and applied to purposes of practical utility in the way which I have described. The traveller, on examining these ponderous tomes, found them to be of the greatest value; one was in uncial letters, and others were full of illuminations of the earliest date; all these

he was allowed to carry away in exchange for some footstools or hassocks, which he presented in their stead to the old monks; they were comfortably covered with felt, and were in many respects more convenient to the inhabitants of the monastery than the manuscripts had been, for many of their antique bindings were ornamented with bosses and nail-heads, which inconvenienced the toes of the unsophisticated congregation who stood upon them without shoes for so many hours in the day. I must add, that the lower halves of the manuscripts were imperfect, from the damp of the floor having corroded and eaten away their vellum leaves. Ρ. χχίν.

The author, while relating the above story, states at the same time that he cannot vouch for the truth of it, but gives it as a true representation of the literary attainments of the Oriental monks. We trust, for their sakes, that it is an exaggerated one. The great disparity between them and the communities of the Latin communion may be at once discovered from the fact, that of no Latin convent could such a story be told with any semblance of probability. It is, no doubt, this utter unconsciousness of their real value that has led in very many instances to their preservation.

Mr. Curzon's first visit, as far as we may so speak from the materials before us, was to the monasteries of Egypt; and the result of his researches in the Coptic convent of Souriani in Nitria, we find described in the following extract. Before we give the words, however, we have to premise, that we shall draw copiously on the pages before us, and we have no doubt our readers will readily pardon the copiousness of our extracts in consideration of the interesting nature of the matter they contain.

In the evening I returned to Souriani, where I was hospitably received by the abbot and fourteen or fifteen Coptic monks. In the morning I went to see the church and all the other wonders of the place, and on making enquiries about the library, was conducted by the old abbot, who was blind, and was constantly accompa nied by another monk, into a small upper room in the great square tower, where we found several Coptic manuscripts. Most of these were 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 these was a superb MS. of the Gospels, with commentaries by the early fathers of the Church; two others were doing duty as coverings to a couple of large open pots or jars, which had contained preserves long since evaporated. I was allowed to purchase these