attacking the mummy which is in one of the halls; how a sharp, bustling,
go-ahead Yankee rushed in one morning, rubbing his hands, and demanding,
"Show me all you can in five minutes."

As a seat of learning, San Lazzaro is famed throughout the Armenian world,
and gathers under its roof the best scholars and poets of that nation. In
the printing-office of the convent books are printed in some thirty
different languages; and a number of the fathers employ themselves
constantly in works of translation. The most distinguished of the Armenian
literati now living at San Lazzaro is the Reverend Father Gomidas
Pakraduni, who has published an Armenian version of "Paradise Lost," and
whose great labor the translation of Homer, has been recently issued from
the convent press. He was born at Constantinople of an ancient and
illustrious family, and took religious orders at San Lazzaro, where he was
educated, and where for twenty-five years after his consecration he held
the professorship of his native tongue. He devoted himself especially to
the culture of the ancient Armenian, and developed it for the expression
of modern ideas, he made exhaustive study of the vast collection of old
manuscripts at San Lazzaro, and then went to Paris in pursuance of his
purpose, and acquainted himself with all the treasures of Armenian
learning in the Bibliotheque Royale. He became the first scholar of the
age in his national language, and acquired at the same time a profound
knowledge of Latin and Greek.

Returning to Constantinople, Father Pakraduni, whose fame had preceded
him, took up his residence in the family of a noble Armenian, high in the
service of the Turkish government; and while assuming the care of
educating his friend's children, began those labors of translation which
have since so largely employed him. He made an Armenian version of Pindar,
and wrote a work on Rhetoric, both of which were destroyed by fire while