were welcomed by two priests, who had been educated at the Papal Armenian convent in Mount Lebanon, and afterwards went to the Propaganda at Rome. Connected with the episcopal residence is a neat church, large enough to contain six hundred people, which has been built within the last four years, partly by subscriptions raised in this country, but chiefly by contributions from France and Rome, The necessary firman for erecting the church was obtained, it is said, gratuitously; and the same imperial sanction has lately been accorded to the Romanists to erect several new churches in Baghdad, Urfah, and other towns of the empire. This concession on the part of the Turks is in direct contravention of a Mohammedan law, which prohibits the building of any new Christian temples, and only allows the repairing of such as existed at the time of the Mohammedan conquest. This fact also serves to show the great influence exercised by France in behalf of the Latin missions in the east; for while such privileges were being granted to her protégés by the Porte, it refused permission to us, chiefly upon the ground of the law alluded to, to erect a church at Jerusalem. There is reason to believe that such favouritism having become known, the British government finally insisted upon the concession which they had so long solicited in vain.
And this sort of indulgence, which France has demanded and obtained from the Porte, has not been the least cause of the success of the Roman missions in Turkey. I have myself met with numerous instances of village churches belonging to the Jacobites and Nestorians, which were going to ruin, and the people obliged to worship in a private house, because the provincial authorities prevented their restoration unless the necessary firman was first obtained. To procure this a large sum is always demanded, which they were unable to pay; whilst the dissenters to Rome, by applying through their Bishop or Patriarch to the nearest French consul, or to the French ambassador at Constantinople, obtained the requisite sanction without any trouble or delay. It is chiefly in respect of such concessions that Monsieur Boré thus writes: "Les Catholiques n'auraient pas obtenu leur émancipation, si la Porte, affaiblie
