The Sun.
London, England, 1871-02-21 00:00:00

THE ARCHBISHOP OF SYROS.

Archbishop Alexander Lycurgus has addressed to the
Greek Synod a very interesting account of his last year's
visit to England, which has been published in the original,
with an English version, by Messrs. Cartwright, of 21,
Broad-street. The demonstrations made by English
Churchmen in his honour seem to haye given him, as well

they might, the liveliest satisfaction. The rites of conse
oration solemnised by him in the case of a new Greek
church in Liverpool were, he records with Oriental fervour,
sanctioned by the presence of the representatives on be-
half of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York :" a
learned clerical Philhellene was deputed by the Piimate
to attend him as ecclesiastical cicerone ; the Premier,
"great in learning, full of faith, and pre-eminent in
virtue," welcomed him as a,. guest : bishops, peers,
theologians, from Dr. Pusey to Dr. Stanley, and all sorts
of ecclesiologists overwhelmed him with compliments and
dinners, culminating in the banquet at the Jerusalem
Chamber and the " Attic salt " of the Philhellenic
Dean of Westminster ; the elder universities invested
him with the right to teach law and divinity : he
had addresses presented to him by Church associations,
and processions pataded up and down churches in his
honour ; his assistance as a bishop and his episcopal
blessing were sought at English Church ceremonials ; the
Queen commanded his presence, and, last of all the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury himself, attired in archi-
episcopal robes, gave him the kiss of peace and
fraternity. It might well be that all this enthu-
siasm would have made some men overweeningly
vain. Archbishop Alexander kept his composure through-
out it all, and always recognised that the honours
were paid to his Church through him. But even he
appears to have been startled and somewhat bewildered
by the ardour of joy which, as he says. " as if by elec-
tricity," pervaded the Church of England at the news of
the arrival of "au Orthodox Archbishop." The feeling,
as Dr. Lycurgus, with his Greek acuteness, probably
understood very well, proceeded not- so much
from gratitude at the liberality of, the Patriarch
of Constantinople in directing the Greek clergy to bury
deceased Anglicans when there happens to be
no English chaplain in the neighbourhood, as from the
desire of English Churchmen, on the one hand, to claim
kinship with an older Episcopal Church than their own,
and, on the other, to remind themselves and the Chris-
tian world in general, while the (Ecumenical Council
was serenely proclaiming its universality at Rome,
that there existed a branch of the Catholic Church
coeval with that of Rome, and which had never
recognised Roman supremacy. The Archbishop with
good sense admits he does "not believe that the
union of the two Churches (the English and the Greek)
can be the work of the present day ;" but if his visit has
only reminded Englishmen outside the Church of
England that there are other Churches with precisely as
good historical claims to orthodoxy as the Church of
Rome, the Archbishop's visit and this careful and read-
able translation of his report to the Synod, issued by one
of his principal English friends, will not have been with-
out their use.

' BELFORT.—Vauban, who spent twenty years of
incessant labour in fortifying the northern and eastern
line of the frontiers, from Dunkirk to Besancon, pro-
nounced the gap of Belfort the heel of the French
Achilles, the most vulnerable point in the threefold iron.
panoply of France. Belfort opens up Paris by its most
defenceless route; it directly overawes Lyons, it threatens
and neutralises to a great extent Strasburg, it turns
the entire hue of the fortresses constructed .to
menace and to repel Germany. So at least thought,
wrote, and planned the great military engineer of
Louis XIV. In his eyes Metz was secondary and subor-;
dinate. Enjoying those local conditions which render
Metz impregnable from assault, it has had the advantage
of being a fortress of the first class, maintainable by a
small garrison and with a civic population to correspond ;
hence the difficulty of starving it out. Smallpox and
typhus are known to be raging frightfnlly within its walls.
—Times Correspondent.