Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/182

 140 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1853 chap, the hours of service ; that the guardianship of the x ' Great Gate should always be entrusted to a Greek priest ; and, finally, that the silver star should be deemed to be a gift coming from the mere gener- osity of the Sultan, and conferring no sort of new rights.* In regard to the shrine of the Blessed Virgin at Gethsemane, Prince Mentschikoff re- quired that the Greeks should have precedence at her tomb. He also insisted that the gardens of the Church of Bethlehem should remain in the joint guardianship of the Greeks and the Latins; and in demanding that some buildings which over- looked the terraces of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre should be pulled down, he required that the site of these buildings should never become the property of any • nation,' but be walled off and kept apart as neutral ground. This last demand is curious. The Russian Government felt that even at Jerusalem it would be well to set apart one small shred of ground, and keep it free from the strife of the Churches. But the last of Prince Mentschikoffs demands in regard to the Holy Places was the one most hard to solve. It has been said that in comparing the ways of men in the East with the ways of men in the West, there are found many, subjects on which their views are not merely different but opposite. One of these is the business of repair- ing churches. Whilst the English Churchmen were contending that they ought not to be laden with the whole burthen of keeping their sacred
 * ' Eastern Papers,* part i. p. 129.