been conveyed by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, after he had bribed a deacon to steal it from Antioch, – other relics hardly less sacred were deposited, of which Paciaude gives representations. The grand possession, the actual ministrant of the baptism of the Saviour, in a case richly jewelled, was seized by Buonaparte, who, transferring to his own finger the gem which sparkled on the dead hand, desired the case to be taken on board the Orient, and carelessly observed to Hompesch, "You may keep the carrion," which he did, and handed the relic over to the Emperor Paul at St Petersburg, where it still shares the reverence of devout visitants, with another famous relic from Malta – the icon of our Lady of Philermos – to which, in the true spirit of modern ultramontanism, the Papal Order of St John seem to pay their principal regard, to the neglect of their once venerated patron saint.
It is no wonder that the Order of St John have to us mainly a national interest as the possessors of Malta. Had they settled at Genoa, where the merchant princes were most anxious to attract them – where, indeed, was established one of the most flourishing commanderies, and where, in a chapel of the cathedral from which the female sex (as sisters of Herodias's daughter) are rigidly excluded, you may see the Byzantine casket which once held the ashes of the Precursor; or had they remained at Syracuse, where they repaired for a while after the taking of Rhodes, and sculptured Grand Master d'Amboise's arms on the wall of the palazzo now used as a museum, – few would have cared about them, except an antiquarian or two; but even the most prosaic passenger by the Peninsular and Oriental line, cannot resist an inquiry as to the builders of the stately city, at the foot of whose stupendous ramparts his vessel is anchored; while politicians and ethnologists, in the pursuit of their respective hobbies, constantly come across the legends of the soldier-monks, to whose halls, docks, and fortresses we have succeeded. A few words on the former topic, the city of Valetta, may not be out of place. As seen from the deck of an eastward-bound steamer, it is the modern town which faces the anchorage – for the P. and O. ships go into the Marsamuscetto harbour; and in the days of the great siege, the ridge of high ground on which the present city, built by the contributions of all Christendom in obedience to the bull of Pope Pius IV., stands, was a rocky peninsula with a solitary fort at the extreme end, the harbour's mouth, the fort being named St Elmo after the patron of mariners, – and not only the scene of incalculable bravery and self-sacrifice during the siege, but interesting as the spot to which Abercromby, while it was still in the hands of the French, with a prescience of its future, desired his body to be transported when he fell in the hour of victory. The town which the Turks aimed at destroying stood upon the two central promontories of the opposite side of the "grand harbour," flanked by the French creek on the landward, and the bay below the Naval Hospital at Bighi, on the seaward side; while between the peninsulas lies the dockyard creek, at that time containing the slips on which the galleys were laid up, protected by a strong chain drawn across the mouth of the bay between the castles of St Angelo and St Michael. The Turks, after the fall of St Elmo, brought their fleet into the Marsa-
