so that, riding along the blind alleys, you do not know whether there are houses or gardens on each side.

The bazaars are a contrast, from their life and bustle, to the narrow lanes through which they are approached. Here numbers of the real old-fashioned Turks are to be seen, with turbans as large as pumpkins, of all colours and forms, steadily smoking all manner of pipes.

I do not know why Europeans persist in calling these places bazaars: charchi is the Turkish for what we call bazaar, or bezestejn for an enclosed covered place containing various shops. The word bazaar means a market, which is altogether a different kind of thing.

The bazaars of Trebizond contain a good deal of rubbish, both of the human and inanimate kind. Cheese, saddles, old dangerous-looking arms, and various pedlery and provisions, were all that was to be seen. Many ruined buildings of Byzantine architecture tottered by the sides of the more open spaces, some apparently very ancient, and well worth examination. In the porches of two little antiquated Greek churches I saw some frescoes of the 12th century, apparently in excellent preservation; one of portraits of Byzantine kings and princes, in their royal robes, caught my attention, but I had not

time to do more than take a hasty look at it. The tomb of Solomon, the son of David, king of Georgia or Immeretia, standing in the courtyard of another Greek church, under a sort of canopy of stone, is a very is a very curious monument; and in two churches there are ancient coronas, which seemed to be of silver gilt, eight or ten feet in diameter, most precious specimens of early metal-work, which I coveted and desired exceedingly. They were both engraved with texts from Scripture, and saints and cherubims of the grimmest aspect, so old and quaint and ugly that they may be said to be really painfully curious. While on this subject I may remark that I am not aware where the authority is to be found for introducing the quantities of coronas which are now hung up in modern antique churches in England. I never saw one

in

any Latin church, except at Aix-la-Chapelle;

there are, I presume, others, but they certainly never were common or usual anywhere in Europe. All those I know of are Greek, and belong to the Greek ceremonial rite. I have never met with an ancient Gothic corona, and should be glad to know from whence those lately introduced into our parish churches have been copied.

On the other side of the town from the land

ing-place, a mile or so beyond the beautiful old walls of the Byzantine citadel, is a small grassy plain, with some fine single trees. This plain is situated on a terrace, with the open sea on the right hand, on a level of fifty or more feet below. The view from hence on all sides is lovely. The glorious blue sea-for it is not black here on the right hand; the walls and towers crumbling into ruin behind you, the hills to the left, at the foot of which, built on the level grass, are several ancient tombs, whether Mahomedan or Christian I do not know; they are low, round towers, with conical roofs, like old-fashioned pigeon-houses, but rich in colour, with old brick and stone and marble. Parasitical plants, growing from rents and crevices occasioned by time, are left in peace by the Turks, who, after all, are the best conservators of antiquity in the world, for they let things alone. There are no churchwardens yet in Turkey; there are no tasty architects, with contemptible and gross ignorance of antiquity, architecture, and taste, to build ridiculous failures for a confiding ministry in London, or a rich gentleman in the country, who does not pretend to know anything about the matter, and falls into the error of believing that if he pays well he will be well served, and that a

man who has been brought up to build buildings must know how to do it: and this knowledge is displayed in the production of the British Museum, the National Gallery, and other original edifices.

The spleen aroused in writing these words is calmed by the recollection of the ruins of the fortified monastery, as it would appear to have been, before my eyes at the further end of this charming open plain; a Byzantine gatehouse stands within a ditch surrounding a considerable space, in which some broken walls give evidence of a stately palace or monastery which once rose there; but there still stands towering to a great height the almost perfect church of St. Sofiathe Holy Wisdom, not the saint of that name, but the deity to whom the great cathedral of St. Sofia is dedicated at Constantinople. This church is curious and interesting in the extreme; it is most rich in many of the peculiarities of Byzantine architecture outside, and within there are very perfect remains of frescoes, in a style of art such as I have hardly seen equalled, never in any fresco-paintings. The only ones equal to them are the illuminations in the one odd volume of the Mnvoλoyia in the Vatican Library, and some in my own. There are several half-figures of emperors in brilliant

colours, in circular compartments, on the under sides of some arches, and numerous other paintings, of which the colours are so vivid that they resemble painted glass, particularly where they are broken, as the sharp outlines of what is left betoken that they would be still as bright as jewellery where they have not been destroyed by the plaster, on which they are painted, giving

way.

The position, beauty, and antiquity of this Christian relic in a Mahomedan land, give a singular interest to the church of St. Sofia at Trebizond. I longed to give this place a thorough examination. Perhaps a portrait of some old Comnenus would present itself to my admiring eyes. Many likenesses of bygone emperors, Cæsars, and princesses born in the purple, might be recovered in all the splendour of their royal robes and almost sacred crowns and diadems, to gladden the hearts of antiquarians enthusiastic in the cause, and who, like myself, would be ten times more delighted with the possession of a portrait, or an incomprehensible work of art of undoubted Byzantine origin, than with the offer of the hand, even of the illustrious Anna Comnena herself. Her portrait, after the lapse of 600 years, would be most interesting; but I do not envy the Cæsar who obtained the honour