Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ....VII A HALF-FORGOTTEN AGENCY THE traveller in his walks about the "old city" at Constantinople is sure some day to go from the Galata Bridge of kaleidoscopic views of the nations, up the long hill, past the Bible House and the Bazar of the Wood Turners, to the tower of the War Department and the Mosque of the Pigeons. Proceeding along the broad road which passes the high gate of the War Department enclosure, and leaving the Mosque of the Pigeons behind us, we find the road quickly carrying us to a spectacle which for pathos can hardly be equalled in the city. It is the spectacle of the ancient guild of the bookwriters still exercising their venerable trade in the stalls of a colonnade of Byzantine design. Coloured papers brighten the shelves and handpainted mottoes the walls of the little stalls. With reed pen and colour box and gold leaf and burnisher, kindly old gentlemen in turban and gown, whose prospective successors are their devoted apprentices, are slowly and elegantly, filling page after page with exquisite script, or slowly and patiently giving the finished leaves solid and decorative bindings, the invention of designs for 344 which ceased when Byzantine Constantinople fell. This might be called one of the centres of intellectual life in the city. It is characterized by a placid picturesqueness due not solely to the antiquity of its methods, nor to the backward look which forbids the guild to publish any thought less than a thousand years old. It is placid because these venerable craftsmen work in a pathetically sturdy faith of ultimate success in their brave struggle to compete with the printing press and with all that this century means to the rest of the world. The guild clings to this work because the traditional method of...
