has been conceded to them, much too
Lutheran in principle to be published as an
example to the religious world.

The Maronite form of government is quite
traditional, and reposes entirely on manners
and customs. The people have always retained
a great independence; and at the same time
that their religious belief kept them united
amongst themselves, the nature of their country,
which gave to every village and almost to every
family the means of resistance by their own
proper strength, prevented the establishment of
a sole and central power. They live scattered
over the mountains in villages, hamlets, and
even isolated houses. The nation may be
regarded as divided into two classes: the people,
and the sheiks or notables. The sheiks exercise
a sort of feudal power, and administer justice;
but that justice, summarily administered, is not
without appeal. The highest jurisdiction belongs,
or rather did belong until lately, to the Emir and
his divan. Nevertheless, there is a conflicting
jurisdiction between this authority and the
ecclesiastical authority. The patriarch of the
Maronites alone retains the right of decision in
every case where the civil law may be at variance
with the religious law, such as marriages,
dispensations, and separations. The civil authority
is obliged to be very careful how it treats the
patriarch and the bishops; for the influence of
the clergy is immense.

The whole nation of the Maronites is agricultural;
every one lives on his own personal
labour; and the sheiks are only distinguished from
the people by a shabby pelisse, a horse, and a
few advantages in respect to food and lodging.
Property is as sacred there as it is in Europe.
M. Lamartine says: The slopes of these
mountains which face the sea, are fertile, watered by
numerous streams and inexhaustible cascades.
They produce silk, oil, and wheat. The heights
are almost inaccessible, and the naked rock
everywhere pierces through the mountain-side.
But the indefatigable activity of the people,
whose only safe asylum for their religion was
behind these peaks and precipices, has rendered
even the rocks fertile. Stage by stage, up to
the topmost crests, as far as the eternal snows,
they have constructed with blocks of stone the
walls of terraces, up to which they have carried
the small quantity of vegetable earth which the
waters had deposited in the ravines, and have
converted the whole of Lebanon into a garden
covered with fig-trees, mulberry-trees, olive-
trees, and com. The traveller cannot recover
from his astonishment when, after having
climbed for whole days along the peaked
buttresses of the mountain, which are nothing but
enormous blocks of rock, he suddenly finds, in
the hollow of an elevated gorge or on the plain
of a pyramid of mountains, a handsome village
built of white stone, inhabited by a rich and
numerous population, with a Moorish castle in
the midst, a monastery in the distance, a torrent
which rolls its foam at the foot of the village,
and all around a horizon of vegetation and
verdure in which pines, chesnut and mulberry trees
support the vines or overhang the fields of maize
and wheat. These villages are sometimes almost
perpendicularly suspended one over the other;
you may throw a stone from one village to the
other; you can hear and understand spoken
words; and the slope of the mountain nevertheless
compels so many zig-zags and sinuosities to
trace the path of communication between them,
that it takes an hour, or even two, to go from
one hamlet to the other.

Although the Maronites look up to the Pope
as their spiritual chief, it is nevertheless by
discreet concessions that the Holy See has
maintained her supremacy over the Catholics of Mount
Lebanon. She has dispensed with the celibacy
of the Maronite priests—that is, of those who
belong to the secular clergy; the bishops and
monks have to follow the rule observed by the
Roman Catholics of Europe. The priests, moreover,
can only marry a single woman, and not a
widow; nor can a priest marry a second time, in
the event of his being left a widower. A Maronite
clergyman's wife may therefore expect to be
doubly dear, doubly cherished. It appears that
this privilege of the Maronite clergy, far from
being injurious to the regularity of sacerdotal
manners, has proved extremely favourable to
morality. Every traveller who has visited the country
agrees in affirming that this little Church,
isolated in the mountains, presents a most
faithful image of the primitive Church.

As to their liturgy, the popes have also
conceded much. The mass is celebrated in the
Syriac language, which the people, in general,
do not understand; but at the Gospel the priest
turns towards the people and reads the text
aloud in Arabic. The communion is administered
in both kinds. The host is a small round
unleavened cake. The portion of the officiating
minister is marked by a stamp; the rest is
divided into small pieces which the priest puts
into the chalice with the wine, and which he
administers to each individual with a spoon that
serves for the whole community. The priests
live by the altar and by the labour of their
hands. They practise either agriculture or
trade. The members of the superior clergy,
the patriarch, and the bishops, are in easier
circumstances. They collect from their flock a
personal poll-tax, to which the curés and the
monks have to contribute as well as the laity.

While they recognise the Pope's supremacy,
the Maronite clergy have reserved the right of
electing a patriarch, or batrak. This patriarch
is elected by the bishops and approved by the
Pope's legate to Mount Lebanon. The legate
resides at the monastery of Antoura. There
are a very considerable number of bishops in
the Mount. A bishop is often met on the
roads, riding on a mule, and followed by a single
sacristan. The majority live in convents, and
they are only distinguished from simple priests
by a long crimson robe with a red girdle. They
exert undisputed influence throughout Lebanon,
and could raise the people with a word.
Besides a numerous clergy, Mount Lebanon
possesses many monasteries for men and also for