sive pile were not all so indifferent to the charms of nature as the laws of their holy calling pretended to demand.

The seclusion imposed by the rules of the order was at all times difficult to bear, and, in the midst of scenery so beautiful as that by which the Convent of Severnstoke was surrounded, it was doubly irksome. To walk abroad alone was expressly forbidden; and yet in that delicious hour when the sweet summer air awakes as with a happy sigh after the oppressive heat of the day, how often might a dark and muffled figure have been seen gliding from the convent door and disappearing beneath the spreading trees! Daring and rash were those who thus braved the convent rule; but within those walls there were hearts in which some feeling of purity and youth seemed still to linger, although crushed and seared by a dark monastic life. Some of the unhappy monks preferred the risk of the morrow's penance, and in that short interval when, vespers and compline being over, a momentary freedom shone, would come by stealth to gaze on rock and river, and the fair earth beyond.

They were, however, few in number; and within the Abbey of Severnstoke many hundreds knew no other relaxation than the solemn pacing up and down beneath the cloisters allowed to them by law; for even the convent gardens were closed against all except the stated number whose daily toil therein was part of their duty.

Monachism, unless voluntary, is, and has ever been, a trial too hard for human fortitude and human feelings; and for this reason the terrible severity of its laws has always been most rigidly enforced. But it must not be supposed that it extended to all alike. The authority was in the hands of a few, and the corruption was extreme. Tyranny in its worst form prevailed unchecked, and the inferiors of the establishment were the natural victims; for intimidation was necessary to conceal the errors which a more lenient treatment might have caused to be revealed. It was for this reason that the austerities of the church were so strictly carried out, and that silence, and solitude and prayer, were daily and hourly enjoined. Men whose bodies. were worn down by fasting and mortifica

tion had not time or spirit to complain. With minds deadened to every tie, they were doomed to the wearisome never-ending repetition of words-words whose very meaning was unknown; for few of the monks understood Latin-fewer still could read. Within that vast tomb of the heart and mind-the convent walls-there were in England, in the twelfth century, much above a hundred thousand human beings

It has been said that the Abber of Severnstoke was the most considerable among the many similar institutives with which the neighborhood abounded: but severi sztuker reizes bouses were dependent per . and its merks took precedence of £ in the county: fr. recwithstanding their rows of equity, poverty, and every species of humility. is much etiquette was observed amongst tem is mongst their My-brothers; and Se Über of Severnstoke zzed with Crest severshim sway wherever à suted 2:|: |: : 1 : :|: : ག ས ད ricastre convenience reste is fiber. This beweren, was 20t very other the case; for the superers of

he gave himself no farther trouble on the subject, and delegated his whole authority to the next in rank to himself,-Father Thomas, a young priest of uncommon abilities, whom he had caused to be named Prior of Severnstoke, and one in whom he placed the most unbounded confidence. No two persons, however, could differ more widely in disposition. The abbot was easy, sensual, and idle, yet thoroughly tyrannical;—the prior, austere, punctilious, and fanatical, yet beloved by his inferiors, whose confidence he always contrived to gain. Both had their objects in life-selfindulgence the one, self-aggrandizement, the other-worthy ends worked out by as worthy means, but veiled by the usual papistical cant expression, an earnest desire for "the welfare of the Holy Church."