Emperor is a god upon eart

Then, surveying the city’s situation, the movement of ships coming and going, the splendid fortifications, the crowded population made up of various nationalities, like streams coming from different directions to gush from the same fountain, the well-ordered troops, he exclaimed, “ Verily, the Emperor is a god upon earth; whoso lifts a hand against him is guilty of his own blood.” Upon the death of Athanaric, which occurred about a fortnight after he reached Constantinople, Theodosius buried the body of his guest with royal honours in the Church of the Holy Apostles, and, by this act of chivalrous courtesy, bound the Goths more firmly to his side.

The barbarians, however, were by no means the only disturbers of the peace of the Empire with whom Theodosius found it necessary to deal. Society in the Roman world was distracted by the conflict between pagans and Christians on the one hand, and by the keener strife between Christian sects on the other, and it was the ambition of Theodosius to calm these troubled waters.

Empire was comparatively an easy task

For this laudable end he employed the questionable means of edicts for the violent suppression of heathenism and heresy. To destroy the old faith of the Empire was comparatively an easy task, although it involved him in a war with the pagan party in the West But to uproot the tares of heresy was a more formidable undertaking; they were so numerous, vigorous, and difficult to distinguish from the true wheat For the space of forty years, the views of Arius on the Person of Christ had prevailed in Constantinople, and the churches of the city were in the hands of that theological party.

Only in one small chapel, the Church of Anastasia, was the Creed of Nicaea upheld there by Gregory of Nazianzus, and despite his eloquence he was a voice crying in the wilderness. But Theodosius, having been won over to the Nicene Creed, determined to make it the creed of the State.

History of electrification

That was mainly due to the increased share of industry, mainly due to the high energy-intensive character of metallurgical and chemical industries.

Industry

The other economic branches, such as transport, communications, agriculture and construction, had a small share in electricity consumption. The Bulgarian railways electrification started in 1963 and all main railways were electrified during the years that followed.

It is worth noting that by the end of the period reviewed (1970) all settlements in the country had been electrified. 5298 population centers (93.9%), giving residence to 99.6% of the Bulgarian population, were electrified.

In terms of operation, at the beginning of the fifties a dis-patching service was created. Over the years that fol-lowed, it developed at three levels: National Dispatching Center in Sofia, regional dispatching centers (Sofia, Plovdiv and Gorna Oryahovitsa), and district dispatching units at the electricity supply enterprises and their branches. An automatic dispatching service and a telecommunication system covered 35 of the most important sites. Automatic frequency control system and exchange capacity control system were modeled.

By 1970, with the overall electrification of the country, the daily load curve of the electrification system consid-erably changed by seasons and time of the day.

The ratio between maximum and minimum loads signifi-cantly increased. In December 1970 the average monthly load minimum was 48°/o of the maximum, and the average annual load was about 40%. That necessitated the construction of load-following power plants, including pumped-storage hydro power plants.

Load curves on typical days in August and December I 971

During the reviewed period 1948-1970 the electrification in Bulgaria developed at a considerably high rate thanks to the following four main factors:

1.Nationalization of electrification.

2.Increasing the number of graduates of the State Technical University-engineers and architects of all specialties, as well as opening of technical schools for technicians training.

3.Faster development of national electrical industry in order to meet the requirements of the country and exports to other countries.

4.Establishment of Energoproject in 1948 – research institute of project investigations and engineering design. This institute became the center for training experts not only for the Bulgarian electrification, but for project engineering and construction abroad, as well. A number of other specialized research institutes also appeared in that field, closely connected with electrification, such as the Research and Design Institute of Electrical Industry, Techenergo.

Bulgarian hands and Bulgarian attacks

The strategic value of Yeles was fully appreciated by the Bulgarian commanders, and heavy reinforcements were evidently poured into the Yardar trench at that point. All efforts of the Allied armies failed to achieve their purpose; Yeles remained in Bulgarian hands and Bulgarian attacks on the poorly equipped Serbs defending Katchanik gorge proceeded without serious interruption. When it became apparent that the Katchanik position could not long be held, the Serbian armies at the north and east fell back toward the Ipek basin, while those farther south retired on the Monastir basin.

All danger to the Teutonic occupation of the Morava- Yardar trench north of Yeles was thus removed, and the remainder of the campaign consisted in squeezing the remnants of the shattered Serb forces and their Montenegrin allies westward through Albania and southward through Montenegro to the sea; and in driving the Anglo-French army and the Serbs near Monastir back upon the Saloniki defenses. The first of these movements progressed with exceeding slowness because of the difficult character of the country; and the terrors of the Serbian retreat over rugged mule paths and through wild mountain gorges in the cold and snow of winter can scarcely be imagined. But from the standpoint of strategic geography the second movement alone merits special consideration.

Yardar valley toward Veles

When the French and English pushed up the Yardar valley toward Veles they seized as their base for a great armed camp the triangle of mountainous ground lying between the Yardar Biver and one of its tributaries known as the Tsrna, the latter a stream which must not be confused with the river of same name emptying into the Trinok in northeastern Serbia. The position had certain topographic advantages which enabled it to be held for a long time in the face of superior forces; but suffered from one serious disadvantage which ultimately compelled its evacuation. Both the mountain ridges and the river trenches afforded admirable natural defenses. The gorge of the Tsrna is steepsided and the stream unfordable.

The only practicable bridge, a few miles above the river’s mouth, was destroyed by the French after they had failed in an effort to move westward and join the Serbs, who were fighting at Babuna Pass to prevent the Bulgars from getting into Monastir basin. For defensive purposes the larger Yardar Biver, protecting the east side of the triangle, was strategically important, because it is both wide and unfordable and its valley is steepsided,—in one place a veritable gorge.

Napkin carried by the same person twice

I said everything I could to testify my gratitude, and presented him at the same time with a remarkable telescope, with which he was very much delighted ; the more so, as he had lately broken the only one in his possession, and had not had an opportunity of replacing it. I likewise presented him with a pistol which from its peculiar construction could fire seven balls one after another, with one loading; it cost me one hundred guineas. But Capitan Pasha, not wishing to be behind hand with me in point of generosity, sent me the following day a most beautiful pelice, and a whole bottle of otto de rose, which in England as well as in Turkey is worth four hundred pounds, as it required no less than twelve acres of roses to produce that quantity.

We were then served by a vast number of attendants with fifty different kinds of refreshments, such as cakes, sweetmeats, etc. Each article was served by a different servant, all dressed in the richest robes of embroidered satin : another slave carried an embroidered muslin napkin richly ornamented with gold and silver fringe and spangles : nor was a napkin carried by the same person twice, and this was changed as often as a different kind of sweetmeats was offered ; this sort of luxury being carried so far that we were not permitted even to wipe ourselves a second time with the same napkin. There could not be less than two hundred attendants, all armed with a fine case of pistols, and a sabre large and sharp enough to cut off the head of an ox.

After this procession of sweetmeats, coffee was served, and then otto of roses to perfume the beard. Pipes came afterwards, and I having by this time learned to smoke, shewed myself quite an adept in the art. Having stayed about an hour and a quarter, we took our leave and asked permission to see the Pasha’s stables, which he readily granted, and which was considered as the greatest honour he could pay us ; as the Turks, among other superstitious notions, firmly believe that if a Christian cast his eyes on their children and horses, the two principal objects of their affection and attention, they are thereby exposed to the danger of losing their eyes.

Assistance of ropes

We descended from this first great apartment, by the assistance of ropes, about sixty fathoms lower, where we landed ourselves in nearly the same kind of chamber we had left above. Having provided ourselves with straw, we had it lighted, and in a few moments the whole place was illuminated. Reversed pyramids of petrified water, thirty and forty feet in length, hanging from the ceiling everywhere, and reflecting the light in different colours, had the most beautiful appearance, and struck the imagination with the most sublime ideas. The air still retained its salubrity, and the only unpleasant circumstance that occurred to us was the number of bats, which everywhere flew against us and interrupted our solitary meditations.

We remained in this second chamber till all our straw was consumed, and then proceeded on our journey by the help of ropes which were fastened at the entrance. We descended almost perpendicularly fifty fathoms. I now began to find my body rather heavy for my arms to support much longer ; and with some impatience asked my guide below me whether we should soon get to the bottom. He answered me that we had already reached it. I made haste to follow him, and soon found myself on my legs. I remained some time panting for breath and much exhausted. As soon as my friend W— had joined me, the rest of the party having already deserted us, we proceeded to the spot which our guide informed us was the bottom.

This last apartment was not half the size of the other two, and the crystallizations had totally altered their form. Instead of the long petrified icicles, the whole ceiling and sides of this chamber appeared covered with large bunches of grapes, of different colours, red, white and blue, as exact as if the fruit itself had been hung up everywhere. I broke off several, and have kept them since as a great curiosity.

Our guide now told us that we had seen all that was worth visiting, and advised us, on account of the foulness of the air, to go no lower. I asked him if he had ever known anyone to have gone farther. He said he had himself gone about twenty feet lower, and afterwards found it impossible to proceed, as the passage became too small for a man’s body. I was however determined to go on, and lighting a new torch, I ordered him to lead the way. We descended with much difficulty, as the air began to be quite mephitic. Our torches went out, but happily we had left a large flambeau burning at the entrance of the second cave, which my guide was obliged to fetch, leaving me all the time in the dark. I began to be much incommoded with the damp, as we were in the most violent heat, occasioned by the hard exercise of lowering ourselves by ropes.

Greater abundance

I saw nothing here so curious as what we left some hundred feet above our heads : the crystallizations were smaller, and the water in greater abundance, dropping from all quarters. Our guide was pressing us to return, when I perceived a small aperture, which he wished to prevent my seeing. I asked him why he had not shewn it. He said that no one had ever been lower, except the two soldiers, who two years ago, had attempted to force themselves into this hole ; that, indeed, they had succeeded in getting in, but never found their way back.

On examining the size of the hole, I thought it sufficiently large for the dimensions of my body. I thrust my head and shoulders into it medicine and art, and perceived that at the distance of five or six feet it took a different direction, and appeared to go perpendicularly downwards. I ascertained this fact by throwing my torch into it, which disappeared suddenly : we heard it for some seconds falling with a hollow noise, which at last subsided, and on looking into the hole, I perceived a very clear light at a great distance. I was therefore determined to endeavour to proceed a little farther, and if possible to go to the bottom.

When we examined our rope we found that we had only about the sixth part of the two hundred fathoms remaining. I fixed it round my shoulders and between my legs, and began to let myself down : the hole grew so small that it required much strength and resolution to proceed. I did not lose courage, but forcing myself forward I found I was, after a struggle of a few minutes, as low as the torch, and to my great surprise at the bottom, where no human being had ever yet been.

Supplementing and completing Whaley’s

The second additional MS. has an interest and importance of quite another kind, being an independent account of the Journey to Jerusalem written by Capt. Hugh Moore, Buck Whaley’s travelling companion from Gibraltar to the Holy City, and from thence back to Dublin. This MS. was written on board ship, as the writer mentions, and it has been preserved in the author’s family ever since. Mr. H. Armytage Moore, of Rowal lane, co. Down, the grandson of the writer, has generously lent it to me for the purpose of supplementing and completing Whaley’s own account of this portion of the Memoirs.

A peculiar value is given to this MS. by the fact that in it there is no attempt to conceal the names of the persons with whom the travellers came in contact ; and with its assistance I have been enabled to fill up a large number of blanks which occur in Whaley’s narrative, or to confirm conjectural additions which I had already made from other sources of information. Some extracts from the original will be found in the Appendix. It commences at Gibraltar on the 6th November, 1788, and covers much the same ground as Whaley’s journal as far as St. Jean d’Acre on the return journey from Jerusalem. Here it comes to an end somewhat abruptly. That it is incomplete is shown by the interesting Itinerary which is found on one of its last pages, and which contains a resume of the entire journey, with dates and distances, from Gibraltar to Jerusalem and from thence to Dublin.

Quite different from Whaley’s

The language used in this journal of Capt. Moore is quite different from Whaley’s ; but now and again there are passages which show that one of the writers must have copied from the other, or that both had incorporated material derived from a common source. Moore’s account of Constantinople, its public buildings, antiquities, and other objects of interest, occupying some forty pages of the MS., is all in French, transcribed, as he says himself, from “ an Itineraire ” made by Mons. Grand, “ a young Frenchman of observation ” to whom he had been introduced by Sir Robert Ainslie, the British Ambassador at the time.

By way of explanation for its insertion, he states that he had himself been prevented from getting more than a cursory view of the Turkish capital owing to his constant attendance upon his comrade Whaley, who was an invalid during most of the time they spent there. Whaley’s own description of much that he saw in Constantinople must necessarily have been derived largely from second-hand information, as he was obviously less able to go about the city than Capt. Moore.

People to Christianity

Ultimately he was defeated; then followed the conversion of his people to Christianity, which for a period restrained their barbarous rapacity; after this, for two centuries, they were under the yoke and bondage of the Tartars; but the prophecy, or rather the omen, remains, and the whole world has learned to acquiesce in the probability of its fulfilment. The wonder rather is, that that fulfilment has been so long delayed. The Russians, whose wishes would inspire their hopes, are not solitary in their anticipations: the historian, from ‘ whom I have borrowed this sketch of their past attempts, writing at the end of last century, records his own Gibbon.

expectation of the event. “ Perhaps,” he says, “ the present generation may yet behold the accomplishment of a . . . prediction, of which the style is unambiguous ana^unquestionable”. The Turks themselves have long been under the shadow of its influence; even as early as the middle of the seventeenth century, when they were powerful, and Austria and Poland also, and Russia distant and comparatively feeble, a traveller tells us, that “ of all the princes of Christendom, there was none whom the Turks so much feared, as the Czar of Muscovy”.

Favour of Russia

This apprehension has ever been on the increase; in favour of Russia they made the first formal renunciation of territory which had been consecrated to Islamism by the solemnities of religion, a circumstance which has sunk deep into their imaginations; there is an enigmatical inscription on the tomb of the Great Constantine, to the effect that “ the yellow-haired race shall overthrow Ismael”; moreover, ever since their defeats by the Emperor Leopold, they have had a surmise that the true footing of their faith is in Asia; and so strong is the popular feeling on the subject, that in consequence their favourite cemetery is at Scutari on the Asiatic coast.

Their horses or their waggons

So was it with their ancestors, the Tartars; now dosing on their horses or their waggons, now galloping over the plains from morning to night.

However, these successive phases of Turkish character, as reported by travellers, have seemed to readers as inconsistencies in their reports; Thornton accepts the inconsistency. “ The national character of the Turks”, he says, “ is a composition of contradictory qualities. We find them brave and pusillanimous ; gentle and ferocious; resolute and inconstant; active and indolent; fastidiously abstemious and indiscriminately indulgent. The great are alternately haughty and humble, arrogant and cringing, liberal and sordid”. What is this but to say in one word that we find them barbarians ?

According to these distinct moods or phases of character, they will leave very various impressions of themselves on the minds of successive beholders. A traveller finds them in their ordinary state in repose and serenity; he is surprised and startled from their being so different from what he imagined; he admires and extols them, and inveighs against the prejudice which has slandered them to the European world. He finds them mild and patient, tender to the brute creation, as becomes the children of a Tartar shepherd, kind and hospitable, self-possessed and dignified, the lowest classes sociable with each other, and the children gamesome. It is true; they are as noble as the lion of the desert, and as gentle and as playful as the fireside cat. Our traveller observes all this; and seems to forget that Vid. Sir Charles Fellows’ Asia Minor.

From the highest to the humblest of the feline tribe, from the cat to the lion, the most wanton and tyrannical cruelty alternates with qualities more engaging or more elevated. Other barbarous tribes also have their innocent aspects;from the Scythians in the classical poets and historians down to the Lewchoo islanders in the pages of Basil Hall.

Natural excellences of the Turks

But whatever be the natural excellences of the Turks, progressive they are not. This Sir Charles Fellows seems to allow: “ My intimacy with the character of the Turks”, he says, “ which has led me to think so highly of their moral excellence, has not given me the same favourable impression of the development of their’moSl powers Their refinement is of manners and affections; there is little cultivation or activity of mind among them”. This admission implies a great deal, and brings us to a fresh consideration.

Bajazet spared twentyfive of his noblest prisoners

Bajazet spared twenty-five of his noblest prisoners, whom their wealth and station made it politic to except; then, summoning the rest before his throne, he offered them the famous choice of the Koran or the sword. As they came up one by one, they one by one professed their faith in Christ, and were beheaded in the Sultan’s presence. His royal and noble captives be carried about with him in his march through Europe and Asia, as he himself was soon to grace the retinue of Timour.

Two of the most illustrious of them died in prison in Asia. As to the .rest, he exacted a heavy ransom from them; and, before he sent them away, he gave them a grand entertainment, which displayed both the barbarism and the magnificence of the Asiatic. He displayed before them his hunting and hawking equipage, amounting to seven thousand huntsmen and as many falconers; and, when one of his chamberlains was accused before him of drinking a poor woman’s goat’s milk, he literally fulfilled the “ castigat auditque” of the poet, by having the unhappy man ripped open, in order to find the evidence of the charge.

Such was the disastrous issue of the battle of Nico- polis; nor is it wonderful that it should damp the zeal of the Christians and weaken the influence of the Pope, for a long time to come; any how, it had this effect till the critical moment of the Turkish misfortunes was over, and the race of Othman was recovering itself after the captivity and death of its Sultan. “Whereas the Turks might have been expelled from Greece on the loss of their Sultan”, says Rainaldus, “ Christians, torn to pieces by their quarrels and by schism, lost a fit and sufficient op-portunity. Whence it followed, that the wound inflicted upon the beast was not unto death, but he revived more ferocious for the devouring of the faithful”.

Bravery of Hunniades

However, Christendom made a second attempt still, hut when it was too late. The grandson of Baja- zet was then on the throne, one of the ablest of the Sultans; and, though the allied Christian army had considerable success against him at first, in vain was the bravery of Hunniades, and the preaching of St. John Capistran: the Turk managed to negociate with them, to put them in the wrong, to charge them with perjury, then to beat them in the fatal battle of Varna, in which the King of Hungary and Poland and the Pope’s Legate were killed, with 10,000 men. In vain after this was any attempt to make head against the enemy; in vain did Pope after Pope raise his warning voice and point to the judgment which hung over Christendom; Constantinople fell.

The greatest glories

It often happens in the history of states and races, in which there is found first a rise and then a decline, that the greatest glories take place just then when the reverse is beginning or begun. Thus, for instance, in the history of the Ottoman Turks, to which I have not yet come, Soliman the Magnificent is at once the last and greatest of a series of great Sultans. So was it as regards this house of Seljuk. Malek Shah, the son of Alp Arslan, the third sovereign, in whom its glories ended, is represented to us in history in colours so bright and perfect, that it is difficult to believe we are not reading the account of some mythical personage. He came to the throne at the early age of seventeen ; he was well-shaped, handsome, polished both in manners and in mind; wise and courageous, pious and sincere. He engaged himself even more in the consolidation of his empire, than in its extension. He reformed abuses; he reduced the taxes; he repaired the high roads, bridges, and canals; he built an imperial mosque at Bagdad; he founded and nobly endowed a college. He patronised learning and poetry, and he reformed the calendar. He provided marts for commerce; he upheld the pure administration of justice, and protected the helpless and the innocent. He established wells and cisterns in great numbers along the road of pilgrimage to Mecca; he fed the pilgrims, and distri-buted immense sums among the poei.

He was in every respect a great prince; be extended his conquests across Sogdiana cAe very borders of China. He subdued by his lieutenants Syria and the Holy Land, and took Jerusalem. He is said to have travelled round his vast do minions twelve times. So great was he, that he actually gave away kingdoms, and had for feudatories great princes. He gave to his cousin his territories in Asia Minor, and planted him over against Constantinople, as an earnest of future conquests; and he may be said to have finally allotted to the Turcomans the fair regions of Western Asia, over which they roam to this day.

All human greatness has its term; the more brilliant was this great Sultan’s rise, the more sudden was his extinction; and the earlier he came to his power, the earlier did he lose it. He had reigned twenty years, and was but thirty-seven years old, when he was lifted up with pride and came to his end broad beans. He disgraced and abandoned to an assassin his faithful vizir, at the age of ninety-three, who for thirty years had been the servant and benefactor of the house of Seljuk.

After obtaining from the Caliph the peculiar and almost incommunicable title of “ the commander of the faithful”, unsatisfied still, he wished to fix his own throne in Bagdad, and to deprive his impotent superior of his few remaining t honours. He demanded the hand of the daughter of the Greek Emperor, a Christian, in marriage. A few days, and he was no more; he had gone out hunting, and returned indisposed; a vein was opened, and the blood would not flow. A burning fever took him off, only eighteen days after the murder of his vizir, and less than ten before the day when the Caliph was to have been removed from Bagdad.

Poor Sultan

Such is human greatness at the best, even were it ever so innocent; but as to this poor Sultan, there is another aspect even of his glorious deeds. If I have seemed here or elsewhere in these Lectures to speak of him or his with interest or admiration, only take me as giving the external view of the Turkish history, and that as introductory to the settlement of its true significance. Historians and poets may celebrate the exploits of Malek; but what were they in the sight of Him who has said that whoso shall strike against His corner-stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, shall be ground to powder? Looking at this Sultan’s deeds as mere exhibitions of human power, they were brilliant and marvellous; but there was another judgment of them formed in the West, and other feelings than admiration roused by them in the faith and the chivalry of Christendom.

Usbeks as an expensive food

And so of horseflesh; I believe it is still put out for sale in the Chinese markets; Lieutenant Wood, in his travels to the source of the Oxus, speaks of it among the Usbeks as an expensive food. Pinkerton tells us that it is made into dried hams; but this seems to be a refinement, for we hear a great deal from various authors of its being eaten more than half raw. After all, horseflesh was the most delicate of the Tartar viands in the times we are now considering. We are told that, in spite of their gold and silver and jewels, they were content to eat dogs, foxes, and wolves; and, as I have observed before, the flesh of animals which died of disease.

But again we have lost sight of the ambassador of Spain. After this banquet, he was taken about by Timour to other palaces, each more magnificent than the one preceding it. He speaks of the magnificent halls, painted with various colours, of the hangings of silk, of gold and silver embroidery, of tables of solid gold, and of the rubies and other precious stones. The most magnificent of these entertainments was on a plain; 20,000 pavilions being pitched around Timour’s, which displayed the most gorgeous variety of colours. Two entertainments were given by the ladies of the court, in which the state queens of Timour, nine in number, sat in a row, and here pages handed round wine, not koumiss, in golden cups, which they were not slow in emptying.

The good Friar, who went from St. Louis to the princes of the house of Zingis, several centuries earlier, gives us a similar account. When he was presented to the Khan, he went with a Bible and Psalter in his hand; on entering the royal apartment, he found a curtain of felt spread across the room; it was lifted up, and discovered the great man at table with his wives about him, and prepared for drinking koumiss. The court knew something of Christianity from the Nestorians, who were about it, and the Friar was asked to say a blessing on the meal; so he entered singing the Salve Regina. On another occasion he was present at the baptism of a wife of the Khan by a Nestorian priest.

Demanding no perseverance

In maritime countries indeed he must have recourse to other expedients; he fishes in the stream, or among the rocks of the beach. In the woods he betakes himself to roots and wild honey; or he has a resource in the chase, an occupation, ever ready at hand, exciting, and demanding no perseverance. But when the savage finds himself inclosed in the continent and the wilderness, he draws the domestic animals about him, and constitutes himself the head of a sort of brute polity. He becomes a king and father of the beasts, and by the economical arrangements which this pretension involves, advances a first step, though a low one, in civilization, which the hunter or the fisher does not attain.

And here, beyond other animals, the horse is the instrument of that civilization. It enables him to govern and to guide his sheep and cattle; it carries him to the chase, when he is tempted to it; it transports him and his from place to place; while his very locomotion and shifting locationand independence of soil define tlie idea and secure the existence both of a household and of personal property. Nor is this all which this animal does for him; it is food both in its life and in its death; when dead, it nourishes him with its flesh, and while alive, it supplies its milk for an intoxicating liquor which, under the name of koumiss, has from time immemorial served the Tartar instead of wine or spirits.

The horse then is his friend under all circumstances, and inseparable from him; he maybe even said to live on horseback, he eats and sleeps without dismounting, till the fable has been current that he has a centaur’s nature, half man and half beast. Thus it was that the ancient Saxons had a horse for their ensign in war; thus it is that the Ottoman ordinances are, I believe, to this day dated from “ the imperial stirrup”, and the display of horsetails at the gate of the palace is the Ottoman signal of war. Thus too, as the Catholic ritual measures intervals by the Miserere, and St. Ignatius in his Exercises by the Pater Noster, so the Turcomans and the Usbeks speak familiarly of the time of a gallop.

The habit of a Durwesh

TALE XX

I saw, sitting in a company, a certain person who wore the habit of a Durwesh, but without possessing the disposition of one; and being inclined to be querulous, he had opened the book of complaint, and began censuring the rich. The discourse was turning on this point, that Durweshes have not the means, and the rich not the inclination to be charitable. Those possessed of liberal minds have no command of money, and the wealthy worldlings have no munificence.

To me, who owe my support to the bounty of the great, this language was not at all grateful. I said, “0 my friend, the rich are the revenue of the poor, a store-house for the recluse, the pilgrim’s hope, and the asylum of travellers. They are the bearers of burthens for the relief of others.* Themselves eat along with their dependants and inferiors, and the remainder of their bounty is applied to the relief of widows, aged people, relations, and neighbours.

The rich are charged with pious dedications, the performance of vows, tlie rites of hospitality, alms, offerings, the manumission of slaves, gifts, and sacrifices. By what means can you attain to their power, who can perform only your genuflexions, and even those with a hundred difficulties? The rich perform both moral and religious duties in the most perfect manner, because they possess wealth, out of which they bestow alms: their garments are clean, and their reputation spotless, with minds void of care. For the power of obedience is found in good meals, the truth of worship in a clean garment.

For what strength can there be with an empty stomach? What bounty from an empty hand? How can the fettered feet walk? And from the hungry belly, what munificence can be expected? He sleeps uneasily at night, who knows not how to provide for the morrow. The ants store up in summer, that in winter they may enjoy rest. Leisure and poverty are not found together, and satisfaction dwelletli not with distress. One is standing up to evening prayers, whilst the other is sitting down wishing for his supper. How can these two be compared together?