fect as could have been imagined. It was a curious exemplification of
the force of democracy. Yet not only in Hagia Triada, but in other
Cretan convents, I have seen how the mass of men find their governors as
surely and wisely, and often more fitly, than if they had had men born
to the place, or appointed by some superior hierarchy.

In Italy I had always been accustomed to find the convents posted on the
hill-tops, and almost inaccessible; but in Crete the loveliest valleys
are almost certain to have been chosen as their locations. The convent
of the Hagia Triada is indeed on a plain, but at the foot of the range
of hills which skirts the Akroteri to the north, and is thus almost shut
in from two sides, while to the south the plain extends to Suda Bay,
which is hidden in the chasm between the Akroteri and Mount Malaxa, and
beyond which the mountains of Sphakia rise in picturesque and alluring
redundance of ravine and massive rock. All the nearer plain is green
with the olive-orchards, and the road which approaches the front
entrance is flanked with two lines of cypresses, and carob-trees grow up
the rocky heights overlooking the convent, where no other tree will
grow. The hum of bees filled the air, and mingled with the notes of
nightingales (poetically fabled to sing _only_ by night), the chirping
of multitudinous sparrows, wrens, and linnets, and the twittering of
swallows. At the outer gate sat two or three aged monks, picturesque and
sculpturesque at once, like enchanted porters at the doors of some
spellbound palace, their long, gray beards and sunken, listless eyes
according with their own and the convent's external dilapidation.

The beauty and quiet of the place were almost enchantment enough to
account for the gray-headed porters, their immobility and longevity, and
I longed to draw the charm over me. But I was one of a party which had
come under the inspiration of the most inane motive of travel,--the
desire to see all there was to be seen; and so, after a half-hour's
repose, and the usual refreshments,--preserved fruits and a glass of
water, followed by coffee,--we enlisted the Hegoumenos in our party, and
set out for the grotto, taking in the way Hagios Joannes, a still more
incomplete and still more secluded convent than Hagia Triada, among the
hills between the latter and the sea. The road which we followed would
be called by no means a bad road for Crete, but anywhere else would be
execrable,--a mere br