In looking at Sebastopol from the heights, one of the principal objects which attracted the attention of the spectator was a very beautiful classic building erected on a commanding site. By the use of a glass its details were found to be Grecian-Doric, and that the Temple of Theseus, at Athens, had been the model upon which it had been designed. It was very pleasantly surrounded with small trees and shrubs; and two elegant poplars, which are very favourite trees with the Russians, grew up in graceful harmony with its pillars. Many were the inquiries as to what this building was, and numerous were the purposes ascribed to it. For a long time it was the " military club-house;" then it was "the public library;" "the theatre;" and "the hospital:" but, after entering the town, one glance at the interior of the building convinced you of the inaccuracy of all these suppositions: the arrangements, so peculiar to the Greek Church, left no doubt as to the character of the edifice. Since the taking of the place it has been burnt, and, instead of the handsome church, we have now a very picturesque ruin. In this view you are looking north — on the one side of the church you get a peep of the Public Library, on the other is the Admiralty and the unfinished church with the dome and the rear of Fort Nicholas, beyond which you get a glimpse of the north side of the harbour.
It may not be amiss here to say a few words descriptive of the architecture generally of Sebastopol. With one or two exceptions, all the public buildings were after the Greek style. The large Marine Barracks, or " White Buildings," were very pure Greek: there were one or two exceptions to the style, the principal of which was the unfinished church above mentioned. A Western architect would find some difliculty in defining to what style it belonged; the first impression might be that it was Gothic, but its dome was Moorish, and its arches were of a similar character, whilst it had Byzantine capitals, Greek architraves and pediments, making altogether a strange architectural medley, but at the same time not an unpleasant-looking 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.
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 ei*a. The Khersonians, who were Dorians, were great rivals of the Bosphoriaas at Panticapoea 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 TauroScythians. Under this monarch and his successors the two nations remained united, until in A.D. 30 Kherson recovered its independence under the Romans. Then the unextinguished feud broke out afresh, and in the third century the Khersonians took advantage of the absence of Sauromates V. King of the Bosphorus 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 2 8
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kingdom, at first to Theodosia or Kaffa, and finally close to the walls of Panticapaea.
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.