INTERESTING DISCOVERIES AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 83, 16 December 1864, Page 6 (Supplement)

INTERESTING DISCOVERIES AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

A correspondent of the Times writes from Cons'oantiiibplo V—" An accident ,five 'which toobk r jplace here a few weeks si u ce has : led to a rather .mtoresliag autiquav.iau . 'discovery,; by cleaving- away a -mass of lioiises wbieK Had concealed an ; impovtant mortiimeut of ByzaTifcine- history 'hitherto;' but little obsei'vecl-— tlie Coronation: Hall "of. the. Emperors from the time v of Heraelius doAvrnvarcL' It stands at the North-west angle of the city, near the -so-called' Adrianople; Gute, andoori . ! the ?spot where tbe; wall ;of lHeracliusA(witli! "which- ;this building w as plainly contemporary) ?j omts . that' of Theodosius, and the older masonry of Theodosius is ndw clearly discernible in" the -latter struclkire.' 17 'Unfortunately/ the "pillars arid, indeed, 'all the marble aud ornamented- ' ;work of ..the ; lower structure have been completely destroyed by the fire ; bntits ancient beauty is still recognised in the elegance of its proportions, aud in that indescribable grace which hangs ai'ound so many of the | remains of ancient arfe, even in the , last stages of j theiv decay. -\Dethicr lias just brought to a clos-j I a long and careful investigation of the fate of the 1 once famous but long-lost library of Matthias I Corvinus, King of Hungary. For more than 200 I years all trace , of this library had dissancared ; I but a few years since a hope, was coafidently i suggested that a considerable portion of it would be found in the l : brary of the old Seraglio 'at ■ Constantinople, which, was believed to contain , spoUs of more than one library of the west. Dr.. Dethier finds. the' total number of Greek and Latin MSS. in the Sultan's library to 1 be ninetysix. Of Ihese, ooly sixteen can with certainty be "pronounced, from intrinsic evidence, to be Corvinian. Of the rcmaiuiug eighty some (although without any esiornol marks oE tlie Corvinian Library) may possibly have belonged, to it. But the larger proportiyn appear certainly not to be Corviniou, and may fairly be believed to have como from the spoil of Trebixonde, • oi* even of the later Turkish forays in Italy and elswhere. One MS. bears the name and arms of the, celebrated Ludivico Sforza, Duke of Milan. Of the sixteen Corvinian MSS. not one contains anything hitherto unedited. At the same time, it "is plain t that careful copies of these aud other similar works | made at that period by the scholars whom Cor- , vinus is known to have patronised must possess j considerable criticle value, and may possibly deserve for ci'itical purposes a minute examination Among the non- Corvinian codices there are a few' which appear to be, at least in part, unpublished, especially some ancient Scholiasts of Aristole, but m default of the opportunity here of -referring to any considerable library it is impossible to speak, with certainty unpubltshcd, and -will form -a. most welcome complement of the series of Byzantine writers, being an account by an eyewitness of the events of the reign of Mahomet the g»'eat. of the capture of Constantinople, and, in a word, af all the exciting scenes of the last seventeen years of that long and eventful history. The MS t is a beautiu.il one. Dr. Dethier kindly permitted mo to look through his transcript of it. Tlie language is singularly classical and correct for the time, and tho narracivc abounds with curious details."