were invited to be present.

The room appointed for the exhibition was the great hall of the palace,
which in other days had evidently been a ball-room. The ceiling was
frescoed in the manner of the last century, with Cupids and Venuses, Vices
and Virtues, fruits and fiddles, dwarfs and blackamoors; and the painted
faces looked down on a scene of as curious interest as ever the
extravagant loves and graces of Tiepolo might hope to see, when the boys
of the college, after assisting at _Te Deum_ in the chapel, entered
the room, and took their places.

At the head of the hall sat the archbishop in his dark robes, with his
heavy gold chain about his neck--a figure and a countenance in all things
spiritual, gracious, and reverend. There is small difference, I believe,
between the creeds of the Armenians and the Roman Catholics, but a very
great disparity in the looks of the two priesthoods, which is all in favor
of the former. The Armenian wears his beard, and the Latin shaves--which
may have a great deal to do with the holiness of appearance. Perhaps,
also, the gentle and mild nature of the oriental yields more sweetly and
entirely to the self-denials of the ecclesiastical vocation, and thus wins
a fairer grace from them. At any rate, I have not seen any thing but
content and calm in the visages of the Armenian fathers, among whom the
priest-face, as a type, does not exist, though it would mark the Romish
ecclesiastic in whatever dress he wore. There is, moreover, a look of such
entire confidence and unworldly sincerity in their eyes, that I could not
help thinking, as I turned from the portly young fathers to the dark-
faced, grave, old-fashioned school-boys, that an exchange of beard only
was needed to effect an exchange of character between those youthful
elders and their pupils. The gray-haired archbishop is a tall and slender
man; but nearly all the fathers take kindly to curves and circles, and