ABSTRACT
There are larger villages. There are more prosperous villages. There are villages more fashionable. Great ladies lift their eyebrows when we pronounce its name, even ladies not so great, and decide that we will hardly do for their visiting lists. But few villages are so picturesque as ours. And in one respect at least we are surpassed by no village. The walls at least subserve the purpose, however, of sheltering a quarter of our village. On the edge of the village these are paved like streets and pleasantly arched with bay-trees. In the bottoms of the ravines, also, they have in their season quite a sylvan air. Powerful as the fortress was in its day, and interesting as it remains as a monument to the energy and resource of its builder, it never played a great part in the martial history of the Turks.
