But our saint has immunities and privileges which do not appear to be allowed to any other in the Greek calendar. At the early period of the reformation in the Oriental church, statues were everywhere torn down by the Iconoclasts, and excluded from their worship as idolatrous, though pictures were allowed to remain; adhering literally to the Commandment of making “no graven images,” but, by a singular anomaly of Greek refinement, venting their religious horror on wood and stone, and bowing down without scruple to paint and canvass. This distinction continues in all its strictness to the present day: the churches are profusely daubed with gaudy pictures of saints, to which profound adoration is paid, and the most extraordinary miracles are attributed; while no statue, or sculptured or graven representation, of the same persons, are tolerated: but to our saint alone an indulgence is extended. His image in some churches is formed on graven silver plates attached to a wooden block, which they affirm had miraculously escaped from the destruction of the Iconoclasts, and has peculiar faculties conferred upon it, corresponding with the pugnacious propensities of the character whose person it represents; and to its wonder-working powers many miracles are attributed.
In the monastery of St. George, in one of the islands of the Archipelago, is a statue of this kind, which is highly serviceable to the Caloyers. If any one is indebted to the convent, and does not pay his dues−if a penitent omits to perform the penance, or violates the strict abstinence imposed upon him during the many seasons of fasting−above all, if he neglects to perform any vow made to the saint−the image immediately finds him out. It is placed on the shoulders of a blind monk, who trusts implicitly to its guidance, and walks fearlessly on without making a false step. It is in vain that the sinning defaulter tries to hide himself. The image follows him through all his windings with infallible sagacity, and, when at length he is overtaken, springs from the shoulders of his bearer to the neck of the culprit, and flogs him with unmerciful severity till he makes restitution and atonement for all his delinquencies. A French writer, who was a firm believer in the miracles wrought by the images of saints in the Latin church, in recording these absurdities of St. George, adds with great naïveté: Les Grecs sont les plus grands imposteurs du monde.
In the church of the convent is a picture highly prized as a chef d’œuvre of Grecian art; it represents the last day, a subject which the Greek Caloyers are fond of impressing on their people. In some, the punishments of a future state, as painted on the walls, are hardly fit to be looked at. Devils riding ploughshares, and driving them through naked bodies of men, and serpents twining round the limbs of offending women. This picture, however, is less exceptionable; it depicts the Deity on the summit, dressed in sumptuous robes, and crowned like a king, having an expanded book before him, in which the fate of every mortal is recorded: below, on one side is a garden, having various departments like the pews of a church, in each of which is enclosed some celebrated individual. In one, Abraham with Lazarus in his bosom,−in another, the penitent thief with his cross on his shoulder. Immediately below, are the extended jaws of a vast monster, into which demons are casting the souls of the condemned, among whom are all the apostates and persecutors of Christianity−Judas, Julian, and Diocletian; with sundry Turks. Among the condemned, one is surprised to see a Greek with his calpac; he had been a dragoman of the Porte, who had offended the artist, and he took this not unprecedented mode of avenging himself on his adversary.
| T. Allom. | J. Sands. |
GUZEL-HISSAR, AND THE PLAIN OF THE MEANDER.
ASIA MINOR.
The river Meander is perhaps the most celebrated of all antiquity, and has been made a generic term, in most languages, to designate a winding stream; poets and historians equally commemorate it. It rose near the ancient city of Celene, and, increased by various tributaries, it fell into the Ægean between Miletus and Priene. So tortuous was its course, that it was counted to have made 600 windings in its progress to the sea. It afforded Dædalus the model for his labyrinth, and travellers have discovered in many parts the various accurate outlines of some of the most convoluted letters of the Greek alphabet. It was remarkable for the alterations it caused in the countries through which it wound its way−obliterating old, and adding new tracts. This was so frequent, and attended with such damage, that an indictment lay against the river; and the person who suffered was remunerated out of the tolls of the bridges which passed over it.
This constant undermining of its banks, and the fall of them into its current, was the probable cause of its devious course. The soil, obstructed in one place, was deposited in another; while the great quantity held in suspension, was suffered to fall when the waters, meeting the obstructions of the sea, no longer supported it in the current. In its mouth it formed great bars, and threw up new lands. The changes thus made were celebrated by the ancients as so many mythological and preternatural metamorphoses:−