on Mount Sinai forty-three beautiful parchment leaves belonging to a manuscript of the Septuagint not before known to biblical scholars.  In a subsequent visit to the same convent in February, 1859, it was his high privilege to find of the same manuscript all the Greek New Testament entire, part of the Old, the so-called epistle of Barnabas, and part of the writing called the Shepherd of Hermas, the whole contained in one hundred and thirty-two thousand columnar lines, written on three hundred and forty-six leaves.  This precious manuscript Tischendorf managed to obtain for the emperor Alexander of Russia as the great patron of the Greek church, and it is now at St. Petersburg.  It is written on parchment of a fine quality in large plain uncial letters, with four columns to a page.  It contains, as is commonly the case with ancient manuscripts, revisions and so-called corrections by a later hand; but, as it proceeded from the pen of the original writer, it had neither ornamented capitals, accents, nor divisions of words or sentences.  The style of writing is plain, and every thing about it bears the marks of high antiquity.  The order of the books is as follows:  (1) the gospels; (2) the epistles of Paul, that to the Hebrews included, which stands after 2 Thessalonians; (3) the Acts of the Apostles; (4) the Catholic epistles; (5) the Apocalypse.  It has the Ammonian sections and Eusebian canons, but whether from the first or a subsequent hand is doubtful.  A splendid edition of this Codex was published at St. Petersburg in 1862, which seeks to preserve with the greatest possible accuracy the form of writing, columns, corrections, etc.  The Leipsic edition is adapted to popular use. See No. (1), PLATE I.

(3.) We will consider next in order the Codex Alexandrinus, Alexandrine manuscript, placed first in the list of uncial manuscripts, and accordingly marked A. It is now in the British Museum, London.  In the year 1628 it was sent as a present to Charles I., king of England, by Cyrillus Lucaris, patriarch of Constantinople, by whom it was brought from Alexandria in Egypt, where Cyrillus had formerly held the same office.  Hence the name Alexandrine.  Cyrillus himself, in a notice attached to it, says that tradition represented a noble Egyptian woman of the fourth century named Thecla as the writer of it (an Arabic subscription makes her to have been Thecla the martyr).  These external notices are not so reliable as the internal marks, all of which show it to be of a great age.  Some assign it to the fourth century, but it is more commonly assigned to the fifth, and Egypt is generally regarded as the place where it was written.  It is on parchment in uncial letters, without divisions of words, accents, or breathings, and with only occasional marks of interpunction—­a dot to indicate a division in the sense.  The lines are arranged in two columns, and the sections begin with large letters, placed a little to the left of the column—­outside