ry.

This monastery is one of those over which the agoumenos has absolute
control, and he was then repairing one side of the court and rebuilding
a set of rooms which had been destroyed during the Greek war.

The library I found to be a dark closet near the entrance of the church;
it had been locked up for many years, but the agoumenos made no
difficulty in breaking the old-fashioned padlock by which the door was
fastened. I found upon the ground and upon some broken-down shelves
about four or five hundred volumes, chiefly printed books; but amongst
them, every now and then, I stumbled upon a manuscript: of these there
were about thirty on vellum and fifty or sixty on paper. I picked up a
single loose leaf of very ancient uncial Greek characters, part of the
Gospel of St. Matthew, written in small square letters and of small
quarto size. I searched in vain for the volume to which this leaf
belonged.

As I had found it impossible to purchase any manuscripts at St. Laura, I
feared that the same would be the case in other monasteries; however, I
made bold to ask for this single leaf as a thing of small value.

"Certainly!" said the agoumenos, "what do you want it for?"

My servant suggested that, perhaps, it might be useful to cover some jam
pots or vases of preserves which I had at home.

"Oh!" said the agoumenos, "take some more;" and, without more ado, he
seized upon an unfortunate thick quarto manuscript of the Acts and
Epistles, and drawing out a knife cut out an inch thickness of leaves at
the end before I could stop him. It proved to be the Apocalypse, which
concluded the volume, but which is rarely found in early Greek
manuscripts of the Acts: it was of the eleventh century. I ought,
perhaps, to have slain the _tomecide_ for his dreadful act of
profanation, but his generosity reconciled me to his guilt, so I
pocketed the Apocalypse, and asked him if he would sell me any of the
other books, as he did not appear to set any particular value upon them.

"Malista, certainly," he replied; "how many will you have? They are of
no use to me, and as I am in want of money to complete my buildings I
shall be very glad to turn them to some account."

After a good deal of conversation, finding the agoumenos so
accommodating, and so desirous to part with the contents of his dark and
dusty closet, I arranged that I would leave him for the present, and
after I had made the tour of the other monasteries, would return to
Car