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and then bound together hand and foot, the executioner kneeling upon the breast of each poor victim while he gouged out their eyes in turn, and at every operation wiping his knife, dripping with blood, upon the white beard of the aged sufferer. traveller's words are more than touching: "Ah, cruel spectacle! as each fearful act was completed, the victim, liberated from his bonds, groping around with his hands, sought to gain his feet! Some fell against each other, head against head; others sank powerless to the earth again, uttering low groans, the memory of which will make me shudder as long as I live."

The present Khan of Khiva is a religious zealot, or wishes to be considered one. To look upon even a thickly veiled lady is a crime which meets with swift punishment. offender is hung, and the poor unfortunate woman is buried breast-high in the earth beneath the gallows, and there stoned to death.

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long as enmity is not openly declared, less robbery and murder, fewer breaches of justice and morality take place amongst them than amongst the other nations of Asia, whose social relations rest on the basis of Islam civilization." This mighty power is shadowed forth in the word, "Deb," custom, usage, an Arabic word derived from "Edeb," morality. "Deb" reigns over "Deb" reigns over them like a despot, and shares his throne with no one but Allah.

Such are some features of this dreary land. They are enough to draw forth the prayer that such "dark places of the earth, full of the habitations of cruelty," may soon be brought to the light of that salvation which would bring deliverance to all her sons, and change an awful waste into a blooming garden of the Lord. It is to be hoped that at no distant day a "door of entrance' will be opened by the providence of that same God, who "would have all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth." At present these places are the grim fastnesses of superstition and bigotry, but He who has burst the gates of China, can take the Cross into the dark Khanats of Turkestan. DELTA.

PESTUM, thirty or forty miles south of Naples, has been the utmost limit of travel in that direction; and the extensive, fruitful, and beautiful country beyond, and south and east of that point, with its six millions of inhabitants, is a perfectly virgin soil to

the traveller. It is unfrequented by foreigners.

I met, lately, in the streets of Naples, the only Protestant, I presume, now living in those provinces, who had come with his wife and child in order to have the latter bap

tized! What would you think if you were obliged to go from New York to Charleston or Savannah, to find a Protestant clergyman to baptize your child?

Has the Christian world any idea of the religious state of the people in this section of Italy? What more need have the heathen in Asia or Africa of religious training than the heathen of this portion of Italy? Why are a people called heathen? Because of their ignorance, and because they worship images? not these conditions rife here ? us see; and first of ignorance.

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Under the old Bourbon government, it was not only folly to be wise but education was contraband, unless with a view to prepare one's self for the religious or medical professions; and the very best that could be obtained, even then, would scarcely qualify a person to enter our Free Academy!

To give you an idea of their knowledge of geography: I have been repeatedly asked, by some of their besteducated men, if I came all the way from America to Italy by railroad! and the belief is universal that, when the canal across the Isthmus of Suez is completed, America will be brought very close to Italy.

I met an Italian there, at the time a professor in the college, who had been in America and England. One of the branches which he taught in the college was geography. He told me that he had been waited on by the newly-elected member of Parliament, expressly to know how he could find Turin, the capital of his own country, where the Parliament was to meet. He had no idea how he would reach it!

At an hotel where I was dining, the

principal one in the province, there was a bill of fare in manuscript. I ordered a certain dish from it; but the servant, who was a new importation from Bari, (a province where they speak a dialect which is unknown out of it, and they understand no other), could not understand me, of course; so, pointing the line out to him on the bill, and placing his finger upon it, I sent him out to the proprietor, who was superintending the affairs of the kitchen. But here was a new difficulty. Neither the proprietor, nor his wife, who was there also, nor any one else in the house, could either read or write. One son only had been initiated into these mysteries, and he had gone out!

The great mass of the people are just as ignorant as the goats they drive; and you might probably go into nine out of ten of the houses in all these provinces, without finding a book, or a person capable of reading one. The present government is making some efforts to establish common schools; but the people at large don't believe in them, and the children of to-day are growing up as ignorant as those of Camanche Indians.

What of image worship? They don't worship anything else. To madonnas and saints, in wood, bronze, and even in silver, they bend the knee, and pray. The "madonna" is every one's mother. If you have a headache, they all pray to the madonna for you; if anything goes well or ill, it is all the work of the madonna. At the corners of the streets, on the highways in the country, somewhere on the side-walls of nearly every church or convent, there are pictures of the madonna, or of some saint (painted in a style similar to the country

tavern-signs in New England, forty years ago), to which the faithful bend the knee or take off the hat, as they pass, and even sometimes kiss. In the season of flowers, it is very common to see the figure ornamented with these simple little tributes of veneration from some female hand; and, occasionally, a lamp is provided and kept suspended and burning at night before it, the expense being met by a subscription among the neighbours. I was in one church, which bore the name of some madonna which has now escaped me; but she had, as the people believed, extraordinary power to heal diseases. The altar and the walls of the church were literally covered with legs, arms, hands, cheeks, and other parts of the human body, represented in wax and showing the appearance of the disease as it was when the benevolent madonna undertook the cure. These the different patients had had made, and presented to the church in testimony of their faith in the efficacy of the wonder-working power of their madonna. There were carbuncles, cancers, ulcers, diseased legs, and all sorts of skin diseases; and if their madonna ever cured the half of them, she certainly deserved canonization.

No mother or wife in those provinces allows her son or husband to leave home, on a journey of a few days or week, without putting one or more of the little images of saints or madonnas into his trunk; believing, of course, in their efficacy to protect him from any harm. In most of the houses there is some representation of the presepio, or manger, in which the Saviour was born. Sometimes this is very large, and elaborately worked up and ornamented. In the apartments

which I occupied, and which I hired furnished, there was a beautiful one, in shell work. Jerusalem was represented in the distance, and the road leading to the manger was crowded with the wise men who had come all the way from the East; and in the manger was a little toy baby.

On Christmas eve, it is the custom for the neighbours to meet at one another's houses, and, after prayer (in their way), they bring out this little baby, and carry it around for all, all, both great and small," to kiss: and this is, of course, the young Christ. After which there is a tremendous firing of mortaletti, and other "fuochi," to celebrate the birth!

In addition to the madonnas they have an infinite number of saints and saints' days, which they must celebrate with a festa. Each village or city has its "own particular" or patron saint. I spent some months in the capital city of one of these southern provinces; a place of considerable wealth, and, being the resi dence of the governor, and of many other government officials, civil and military, who were generally from the north of Italy, it was in many respects far in advance of the other cities in the vicinity. Their patron saint was their god; they prayed to it for every benefit, and treated the block of wood with as much reverence as if it had been Deity himself. While I was there the country was suffering from a long-continued drought, and rain was much needed. A grand procession was therefore got up, at which all the notabilities of the place "assisted," as they say here. It was of immense length, the governor, the officers of the government-general, military, and municipal--priests, monks, citi

zens at large, with all their saints in wood and bronze, two or three bands of music, and the firing of mortaletti; all contributed to make an excitement and no little noise: and what was it for, do you ask? To pray to their patron saint to send them rain!

There is a marble column, of some fifty feet in height, on the piazza of one of the cities, and on the top of it is a figure of the city's saint, in bronze. One morning, after some days of a very severe rain, which succeeded a long drought, the mortar in some of the joints of the pedestal on which the statue stands gave way, and a quantity of water leaked through and ran down the sides of the column, whereat

the poor, ignorant people were terribly excited; the piazza was crowded all day; everybody regarded it as a great miracle, and there was a continual struggle to touch the water with their fingers, looking upon it as having been blessed. I saw many of the first gentlemen of the place moisten their pocket-handkerchiefs in this water, and cross themselves, for the same

reason.

Remember that we are in the last half of the nineteenth century, and that these things happen almost within the sound of the bells of the churches of a civilized Christianity,-three and a half days only from London by rail!

THE Greek or Eastern Church is wanting in energy as compared with the Roman or Western. Growing up under the shadow of a throne, she has never been very aggressive. It may be thought, perhaps, that as Russia received the Christian religion from the Greek Church, she was not always characterized by this lassitude and indifference to the spread of truth. But But the traditions of Russia show that in her particular case it was not by the preaching of Missionaries sent by this Church, that she gave up her idols, but through Russian princes who were smitten with the power and magnificence of Constantinople, and went there seeking for a religion superior to their idolatry. Thus Olga, in a.D. 955 went to Constantinople to be taught and baptized, but her people remained heathen, and laughed at her

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folly. Vladimir, her grandson, however, about A.D. 986, dissatisfied with heathenism, sought for a religion that should suit himself and his people, and as he was renowned for his conquests, and the Russians carried on a large trade, he had many opportunities of enquiring after a new religion.

The Bulgarians offered him Mahometanism; the Germans, Popery; the Jews, Judaism; and a Greek philosopher shewed him the advantage of the religion of Constantinople. Mahometanism he refused because wine was prohibited, for," said he, "Russians love wine; we cannot do without it." Popery he refused because the Pope was like an earthly deity, and Judaism because it had no country. Still he was undecided; and therefore, sending ten of his nobles to see the services of these Churches, he deter

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mined from their report to choose for himself. On their return they communicated their impressions to the Grand Prince, and the telling part of their report, as related in Mouravief's History of the Russian Church, is as follows: "When we stood in the temple (at Constantinople) we did not know where we were, for there is nothing else like it on earth; there in truth God has His dwelling with men, and we can never forget the beauty we saw there. No one who has once tasted sweets will afterward take that which is bitter, nor can we now any longer abide in heathenism." On hearing this, Vladimir, full of pride, made a vow that if he succeeded in taking the town of Kherson (near Sebastopol) he would go to Constantinople and be baptized. Having taken Kherson he fulfilled his strange vow, and returned to Kief, then the capital of his kingdom, with priests and sacred pictures. He signalized his return by whipping, and then throwing into the Dnieper the wooden god Perune, the former object of his worship; and this being done, he ordered all the people to come next day to the river and be baptized. Accordingly they came, and it was a "joyful sight," says Nestor, to see the multitudes of all ages plunging into the water while the priests repeated the order of baptism.

Thus Russia became nominally Christian, but all that the people knew about the change is preserved - in their saying, "that if it were not good to be baptized, the prince and the nobles would not submit to it." It will not surprise anyone to know · that Russia, getting Christianised after this fashion, has never shown much of the missionary spirit; and that idolators living within her own boun

dary are left to their superstitions, or only become Christians by baptism in the same comprehensive manner as Vladimir and his subjects. One tribe, the Tcheremisse, living on the banks of the Volga, worship Jouma as their chief god, and their prayers to this deity will give some idea of the condi tion in which they have been left by their Christian rulers, Help us also, mighty Jouma, to sell our merchandise for three times more than it is worth." "Grant that we may be fortunate enough to have our share in the goods of this life." "Grant that the skins of our cattle may be good." "Grant that we may sell

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our cattle with one hand and receive the price of them with the other." "In our journeys preserve us, great Jouma, from sickness, wicked men, fools, judges, quarrellers and detrac tors." These prayers quoted from Turnerelli's "History of Kazau" will serve to show not only the state of this tribe, but also of other tribes living in the same region. The desires of all are circumscribed by a small trade and limited possessions, and their highest thought is well expressed in the above prayer for ability to sell their merchandise for three times its value; though for the matter of that there are many other commercial people better instructed who have not very much higher thoughts. The prayer to be preserved from " fools" and "judges "-though the juxtapo sition is not flattering to the lattermay serve to keep in remembrance the harsh conduct of some of the Russian magistrates which these poor people may have endured when away from home.

Beside these idolators there is a large Mohammedan population in