PRICELESS MANUSCRIPTS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 3735, 22 January 1913, Page 7

PRICELESS MANUSCRIPTS.

Treasured jn Constan-

tinople

“The late Mr Moberly Bell, so long the moving spirt of the ‘Times/ was one of the very few persons privileged to take 'a tantalising peep’ at the piles of ancient manuscripts stored in the vaults of the great Church of St. Sophia at Constantinople,” says the "Ptibjish.ers’' Circular,” quoting tile “Dial,” which -thinks that “ ‘a possible unearthing of literary treasure possessing value beyond the dreams of bibliophilism may be regarded as a not very remote contingency. “ ‘lf the present disturbance in the Balkan peninsula should prove to mean that Turkey’s hour of doom has struck, there would be reasonable hope that the thousands of precious manuscripts known to be stored in the vaults of St. Sophia might at last see the light. Tradition avers that at the time_ of the Turkish conquest of (Constantinople more than a million manuscripts were hastily consigned for safe keeping to the crypts beneath the sacred edifice; and though Ottoman arrogance, which forbids Christians to visit wliat was once the chief shrine of their faith, has stubbornly refused to let these literary relics be examined, a very few favored persons have been allowed to get a tantalising peep at the piles of dusty rolls mouldering in subterranean., darkness; “ ‘One of these grudgingly-privileg-ed ones was the late Moberly Bell, of the London “Times,” who left a description of what was revealed to his hurried glance. In its pre-Moham-medan prime the Byzantine capital numbered a million and more inhabitants, and boasted many fine churches, famous and flourishing schools,. while its leading citizens had each his private library of considervalue. Consequently the possibilities awaiting realisation when the accumulated treasures of. St. Sophia’s crypts shall be unlocked are such as no scholar can contemplate in imagination with unquickened pulse. Who knows but, among other priceless legacies of classical antiquity, there may be discovered the lost hooks of Livy, and the missing tragedies of YEschylus and Sophocles and the poems of Anacreon and Alcaeus and Sappho?’ ”