devoutly. They take the nosegay of savoury
herbs from his breast, and they press it to
their lips. Then they kiss the dead man's
forehead. When the son approaches, he sobs
convulsively, and has afterwards to be removed
by gentle force from the body.

So the relatives continue kissing the body,
fearless of contagion, and the chant of the
priests and choristers swells through the
church, and there lies the dead man, with the
sickly glare of the lamps struggling with the
daylight, and falling with a ghastly gleam
upon his upturned face. Twice I thought he
moved, but it was only fancy.

The Archbishop has left the church and
the relatives of the dead man are bearing him
to his last home without further ceremony.
It is a narrow vault just outside the church,
and the Greeks courteously make way for me
—a stranger. A man jumps briskly into the
grave; it is scarcely three feet deep; he
arranges a pillow for the head of the corpse,
then he springs out again, laughing at his
own agility. The crowd laugh too. Joy and
Grief elbow each other everywhere in life:
why not also at the gates of the tomb?

Then two stout men seize the corpse in
their stalwart arms, and they lift it from the
bier. They are lowering it now, quite dressed,
but coffinless, into the vault. They brush me
as they do so, and the daylight falls full on
the face of the dead. It is very peaceful and
composed, but looking tired, weary of the
world; relieved that the journey is over!

Stay! for here comes a priest walking
slowly from the church, with his mass-book
and censer. He says a few more prayers
over the body, and one of the deceased's
kindred drops a stone into the grave. While the
priest prays, he pours some consecrated oil
upon the body, and some more upon a spadeful
of earth which is brought to him. This
also is thrown into the grave. It is not filled
up; a stone is merely fastened with clay
roughly over the aperture, and at night there
will be a lamp placed there, which will be
replenished every night for a year. At the end
of that time the body will be disinterred; if
the bones have not been thoroughly rotted
away from the flesh and separated, the
Archbishop will be called again to pray over
the body; for there is a superstition among
Greeks, that a man whose body does not
decay within a year, is accursed. When the
bones have divided, they will be collected and
tied up in a linen bag, which will hang on a
nail against the church wall. By and by,
this will decay, and the bones which have
swung about in the wind and rain will be
shaken out one by one to make daylight
ghastly where they lay. Years hence they
may be swept into the charnel-house, or they
may not, as chance directs.

I have said that he was the brother of a
saint. It is well, therefore, that I should
also say something of the saint himself. The
saint was St. Theodore, one of the most
recent martyrs of the Greek Church. St. Theodore
was born about fifty years ago, of very
humble parents, who lived at the village of Neo
Chori, near Constantinople. He was brought
up to the trade of a house-painter, an art of
some pretension in Turkey, where it is often
carried to very great perfection. The lad was
clever, and soon attained such excellence in his
craft that he was employed at the Palace of the
Sultan. The splendour of the palace, and of the
gorgeous dresses of some of the Sultan's
servants, fired his imagination. He desired to
remain among them; so he changed his faith
for that of Islam, and was immediately
appointed to a petty post about the palace.

Three years after his apostacy and
circumcision a great plague broke out at
Constantinople, sweeping away the Sultan's subjects
by hundreds, with short warning. The future
saint grew alarmed, a species of religious mania
seized upon him. He tried to escape from the
palace, but was brought back. At last, he got
away, in the disguise of a water-carrier, and
fled to the island of Scio.

Here he made the acquaintance of a priest,
to whom he confided his intention of becoming
a martyr. The priest is said warmly to have
commended this view of the case; for martyrs
had been lately growing scarce. Instead of
conveying the young man, therefore, to a lunatic
asylum, he took him to the neighbouring
island of Mitylene; seeing, doubtless, sufficient
reasons why the martyrdom should not
take place at Scio; where he might have
been exposed to awkward remonstrances
from his friends, for countenancing such a
horror.

So the priest accompanied him to Mitylene,
where the first act of the tragedy commenced
by the martyr presenting himself before the
Cadi or Turkish Judge. Before the Cadi he
began to curse the Mussulman faith, and threw
his turban at that magistrate's head. Taking
from his bosom a green handkerchief, with
which he had been provided, he trampled it
under foot; and green is a sacred colour with
the Turks. The Cadi was desirous of getting
rid of him quietly, considering him as mad, as
doubtless he was. But he continued cursing
the Turks so bitterly that at last an angry
mob of fanatics bore him away to the Pasha.
This functionary, a quiet, amiable man, tried
also to get out of the disagreeable affair; but
the young man raved so violently that the
Turks around began to beat him; and he
was put into a sort of stocks till he should be
quiet. At last the Turks lost patience
with him, and his martyrdom began in
earnest. He was subjected (say the Greek
chronicles from which this history is taken)
to the cruel torture of having hot earthen
plates bound to his temples, and his neck was
then twisted by fanatic men till his eyes
started from their sockets; they also drew
several of his teeth. He now said that he
had returned to the Greek faith in consequence
of the advice of an Englishman; which so