building. To the same style the " Maison Vert " seemed to belong, although it was a very different building from the other in appearance: it might have been taken for a Dissenting chapel done up in very bad Gothic, in a very genteel neighbourhood, if it had not been for its very green roof, which at once dissipated that notion. The roofs of the finer buildings were of iron, painted green, red, and grey. The common houses were tiled. The whole aspect of the town, including, with its well-built and handsome edifices all the adjuncts of position, and magnificent views of both land and water, must have been fine in the highest degree.
PLATE LXXVI.
SEBASTOPOL FEOM THE ANCIENT KHERSON, And Ancient Church of St. Vladimir.
Kherson is the ancient capital of the Heracleatic Chersonese, that small peninsula whose neck extends from Inkermann to the head of Balaklava Harbour, within whose narrow limits the armies of five nations are still gathered to decide by an appeal to arms the fate of empires and the future of Europe; and whose geography is now as familiar to every English reader as the landmarks of his own parish.
It was originally a colony of Heraclea, a town on the opposite coast of the Black Sea in Bithynia, which has recently had attention again directed to it from the discovery of the coal-mines which supply our fleets in those waters, and was founded in the seventh century before the.Christian era. The Khersonians, who were Dorians, were great rivals of the Bosphorians at Panticapsea or Kertch, who were a colony of Miletus, and consequently lonians; and the history of Kherson, for six hundred years after its foundation, is in fact little else than the history of the wars springing from this rivalry. The Khersonians were twice subjected by the Bosphorians, first under Praisades the First, and then under the great Mithridates, whose protection they were compelled to solicit, on an occasion when they were hard pressed by Skilouros, King of the Tauro- Scythians. Under this monarch and his successors the two nations remained united, until in a.d. 30 Kherson recovered its independence
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under the Eomans. Then the unextinguished feud hroke out afresh, and in the third century the Khersonians took advantage of the absence of Sauromates V., King of the Bosjihorus, to revenge their ancient defeats by the conquest of his capital of Panticapaea. The fourth century was equally marked by the victories of the Khersonians, who successively extended the boundaries of their kingdom, at first to Theodosia or Kaffa, and finally close to the walls of Panticaprea.
Unequal to his enemies in open warfare, Assander, the last King of the Bosphorians, began to plot their destruction by more circuitous, but, as he imagined, more effective means.
As the first step towards his object he asked and obtained for the eldest of his sons the hand of Glycia, the daughter of Lamachus, stephanophoros or chief magistrate of Kherson, the most powerful man in the town, and famous for his riches in gold, silver, slaves, serving-women, horses, and lands.
After two years Lamachus died, and the following year Glycia celebrated, according to the custom of the country, the anniversary of his decease by giving to all the people of Kherson a grand feast, in which she displayed the most lavish magnificence, promising to renew the festival every year. The son of Assander affected to praise her filial affection, but in reality, incensed at her prodigality, and not unmindful of the original object of his marriage, he determined to turn this occasion to account in furthering his projects against the town. He accordingly wrote to his father to send him from time to time a dozen young active and resolute Bosphorians, whom he introduced into Kherson under pretext of a visit, at the expiration of which they publicly took their departure by the great gate of the city, to which however they returned at nightfall, and were admitted by a secret portal into the house of Lamachus. Concealed in the vast palace, they waited for the next anniversary, in order to seize the town, and massacre the people overcome by wine and good cheer.