Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/417

Rh cross enclosed within a ball, which miraculously returns to its place as often as it is removed. The office of Muezzin, or crier to prayers, to this mosque is hereditary, and has been handed down in one family since the time of the Mohammedan conquest. No one but the Muezzin himself knows what he chants at the midnight cry; it is certainly not the usual sentence from the Koran, and many affirm that the first word he utters is "Kaddoos," holy. May it not be the ancient hymn Tersanctus, which in Arabic begins with the same word?

The Aleppines, and more especially the Christians of the town, are in my estimation the most highly polished people in the East. There is a cleanliness and comfort in their houses, an elegance and gracefulness in their dress, and a courtesy and affability in their manners, far superior to what is to be met with among orientals generally. They have adopted just so much of European manners and customs as has tended to refine without destroying their native peculiarities. There is more social intercourse among them than exists generally among the people of these countries; the women mix freely with the men in the home circle, and are not debarred, as they are elsewhere in Turkey, from taking a part in the ordinary civilities of society. I have hardly seen better regulated households than some of the respectable families of this town, and that of our kind host Naoora Azar and of Mr. Michael Sola, the dragoman of the British consulate, may be adduced as specimens of every thing that is comely in domestic life and elegant in the proprieties of good breeding. There is not that anxious strife after gain, even among the commercial portion of the community, which characterizes the mass of European merchants; a great part of their time is spent at home, and when their ordinary business is over, which it generally is at four in the afternoon, fathers may be seen taking their families to the gardens to enjoy with them a little innocent recreation after the toil and care of the day. "Why should we make our duty an intolerable task and our life a burden?" some of them have said to me when I have contrasted their freedom from anxiety with the all-absorbing devotion to worldly interests of so many who follow the same pursuits in other countries; "we have enough for our wants, and our sons must labour as we have done, and will provide." This