Transcaucasia as far as the river Aras, and thus joined a great part of Armenia, and their holy place Etshmiadzin, to a Christian Empire. But, on the whole, Orthodox Russia has treated the heretical Armenians almost as badly as the Turks did (pp. 420-421).
Meanwhile Armenians had wandered all over Eastern Europe and into Persia and India. They no longer had a fatherland. But wherever they are, they keep their nationality in the most wonderful way. Other nations under such circumstances have disappeared from the face of the earth. The Armenian, wherever he may be, whatever Government he may be forced to obey, is always an Armenian. They keep together by their language and their religion. Undoubtedly, the national Church (which in the truest sense is their "nation") has been the main factor in their preservation. At least, the case of Armenia justifies the Turkish idea that religious communion makes a millah. They are not now at all a warlike people ; they have the reputation of being cowards. They were never an artistic people, nor have they ever produced anything original in literature. They are bankers, money-changers, money-lenders, merchants. There is an Armenian colony, in an Armenian quarter, in every town in the Levant. In spite of massacres and persecutions, they have an extraordinary way of becoming prosperous. In all this their likeness to the Jews is remarkable. Like the Jews, they are a separate nation without a country, held together by their religion. The difference is that the Armenians have still the shadow, the relic of a country left. In a sense there still is an Armenia. Besides the scattered colonies of merchants and bankers in old Armenia, there is there a native population of peasants, though mixed with Kurds, Turks, Greeks, Syrians.[1] They are not a popular race. The Orthodox Triodion till lately contained a strange rubric: "It should be known that in this week (before Lent) the thrice-abominable Armenians ((
Greek characters)) keep their accursed fast, which they call Artziburion; but we eat cheese and eggs every day, refuting their dogma of this heresy."[2] Now there may be some question as to whether it be a good plan to call other people thrice-abominable in liturgical books, but I fear few Christians in the
