Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/174

146 divided by a deadly feud, which will last perhaps even longer than the Turkish empire.

This little island now contains two parties, each solemnly pledged to destroy each other's life and property,—the party of Leonidas, who seems to have a courage worthy of Thermopylge, and the party of the pirates, who are quite prepared to burn him alive.

, April 28, 1853.

landing at Rhodes, we behold fr the first time the fortress which so long formed the impreg- nable outwork of Latin Christianity in the East, and which, though shattered by cannon and earthquakes, still presents to us one of the noblest and most instructive specimens of military architecture in the fifteenth century: when walking round its walls, we recognize on every bastion and tower, the names and escutcheons of Grand Masters famous in the annals of its two sieges; when, after winding our way through gateways, still defended by drawbridge and portcullis, we find ourselves in that long and lonely street, where the 'auberges of the Knights stand side by side, still wearing on their richly-sculptured fronts the proud insignia of the Order, the heart would indeed be dead to human sympathies which could remain unmoved in the presence of these tune-honoured monuments of Christian valour. So absorbing indeed is the charm of this first