on the stores of a fellow-labourer in this cause, than to inflict our readers with more of our own.

1.

"Here man more purely lives, less oft doth fall,
More promptly rises, walks with easier heed,
More softly rests, dies happier, and gains
A brighter crown."-

said saintly Bernard, as the sage poet* renders the old Cistercian boast; and without doubt it is not the least cheering sign of a better state of things, that in all classes of society a healthier estimate of the monastic life is superseding the conventional nonsense and blasphemy, which were all but axiomatic some years since. Let but a reader turn over the volumes of even a tolerably recent collection of travels; Coxe, Swinburne, Wraxall, Sir John Carr, Kotzebue, Brydone, and the rest; whenever, as is not seldom, incident fails, or narration flags, be it that breakfasts and dinners are but common-place, and bandits searce, a jest at the monks is a pièce de resistance as unfailing as acceptable; a facetious wanderer could always have a safe fling at a convent where he is sure never to be contradicted, and a chapter of dulness was pardoned or even welcomed at the cheap investment of some well-seasoned reminiscence of "a lusty friar," -no pleasant resource so gay, or so genteel in a liberal traveller. As often, and it was not seldom, as our courtly countrymen condescended to devour the hospitality of a foreign monastery, the superior's gentle urbanity was rewarded with a printed sneer, and the simplicity of the brethren, simple only in their civility to our rascal herd of bookmakers, was repaid by impertinent questionings on what the questioners could not understand, or a depreciation of a life which they were not able to estimate. How beautiful is the poet's description of the religious life:

"A hasty portion of prescribed sleep;

Obedient slumbers, that can wake and weep,
And sing, and sigh, and work, and sleep again;
Still rolling a round sphere of still returning pain.
Hands full of hearty labours; pains that pay,
And prize themselves; do much, that more they may,
And work for work, not wages

A long and daily dying life, which breathes
A respiration of reviving deaths.
But neither are there those ignoble stings,
That nip the bosom of the world's best strings,
And lash earth-labouring souls;
No cruel guard of diligent cares, that keep
Crown'd woes awake, as things too wise for sleep;
But reverend discipline and religious fear,
And soft obedience, find sweet biding here;
Silence and sacred rest; peace and pure joys,
Kind loves, keep house, lie close, and make no noise,.
And room enough for monarchs, while none swells
Beyond the kingdom of contentful cells.
The self-remembering soul sweetly recovers
Her kindred with the stars; not basely hovers
Below; but meditates her immortal way

Home to the original source of light, and intellectual day."

But setting aside for the present all higher advantages of the monastic rule, how strange a testimony to its practical usefulness is borne by the awful caricatures of a religious house which the Socialist communities exhibit in the present day; if combined labour be the secret of success, the monks have succeeded where Harmonies have failed: the monks were as good political economists as Mr. Owen, and Adam Smith himself was anticipated in his doctrine of the division of labour, by a well-ordered community of lay brethren.

"Nunc lege, nunc ora, nunc cum fervore labora,
Sic erit hora brevis, sic labor ille levis."

This was the monkish day-prayer tempering labour, labour making a solace of religion, and it was this union of the active and contemplative life, this practical solving of the philosopher's unsolved problem, which would form no slight recommendation of the revival of monasteries. Their religions use is unquestionable: but their services in civilising and cultivating a country, are scarcely less noticeable. There is a common error in supposing that, from a selfish and sensual feeling, the religious selected the richest and fairest spots for an abbey, or a monastic house; omne quod tetigit ornavit, is literally true of the Church and its chief dwellings. The monastery was a centre of useful learning and of the arts of life of this world, as well as of the next, to a whole neighbourhood: the brotherhood, in which each member of the society had his own allotted duties according to his own especial gift: the common table, the common funds, the common dress, the economy and unity of purpose, the interchange of mutual duties, the life according to rule and system, what are these things but the avowed object of the Phalanges of M. Fourier, and the normal farms of Mr. Owen? It is the world vainly attempting to imitate, and thus strangely testifying to the value of, that wonderful monastic system, which, though the Church has been deprived of, she found in it the most valuable auxiliary of religion itself? Making an abatement for its total negation of Christianity, Owen's Hampshire farm, as described in the Morning Chronicle, is but a Brummagem imitation of Fountains, or Battlesden, or Citeaux; and in these days, when the rage for association and centralization is at the flood, a Chartist church, an Owenite monastery, a Mormon creed, and a Socialist priesthood, are but signs of Antichrist; warnings that duties which the Church neglects, and offices which she has foregone, will be assumed by her enemies; and that where God is not honoured, the devil will have his service, and his own Church, and his worshippers instead. If man worships not the world's Saviour, he must worship Satan; religion of some sort or other is inseparable from human nature. But we are forgetting Mr. Neale.

"We may look at religious houses, in four distinct points of view; and in each they present advantages unattainable by any other system. In the first place, we may consider them as establishments for the propagation of the truth in parts of the country where from physical or moral circunistances the parochial system is not sufficient. How many tracts of land, for instance, are there, where five or six cottages are scattered here and there on some vast and savage common, nominally belonging to a parish of which the church is three or four miles off! Sometimes, a cottage will be

• One instance to the contrary occurs in the site of Croyland, in the midst of the Lincolnshire fens, which, melancholy enough at all times, must in winter have been one dismal sea.

found a mile or two from any other habitation; and the poor inhabitants, in these cases, except that they have probably been baptized, and will probably be buried in their parish church, have no other connexion with it. Much of Cornwall is in this condition; but perhaps the most remarkable instance was to be seen in the Forest of Dean. Here there were churches; but marriages could not be solemnized in them, on account of their being, in reality, only chapels of ease. The consequence was, that sooner than take the trouble of going ten or twelve miles to a church where they could be married, most of the wretched inhabitants were content to settle down without any marriage at all. Now, in cases like these, of what inestimable benefit would a stationary body of priests, and deacons, and laymen qualified to act as readers, be found! The distant hovels, to visit one of which would occupy the parish priest the best part of the day, when perhaps he has already more labour than any single man can perform, would be known and carefully visited from the monastery. They would, in health, be warned to an attendance on the Church's ordinances, and in sickness, receive Her last consolations: as it is, they receive, too often, neither one nor the other."-Ayton Priory, Pp. 126, 127.

""Instead of the old system, we see meeting-houses springing up in every direction, and the poor crowding them, because they are near, instead of encountering a weary journey and tempestuous weather, in attending their church. But these difficulties are only physical: the monastick system is still better calculated to meet the moral destitution of large towns. And perhaps it is still more exactly suited to those manufacturing districts where a town springs up in the course of ten years. If, when the first large works in such a place were set on foot, a small cell were placed near it, as an offshoot to some larger house; then, as one house sprung up after another, and one row behind another, the priory church would be open to them. The brotherhood would attend them; and the Chartist, and Socialist, and Atheist would have less chance of spreading their deadly poison among them. The children, instead of the labour to which they are now, from infancy, exposed; labour which injures their minds as much as their bodies; might well be taught their duty to God and man, in the priory school; for the funds of the brethren would allow them to make good to the parents any deficiency which might result from the loss of their manual labour.' ""That remedy,' observed the Colonel, 'is certainly new to me. But such machinery would be expensive.'

""If,' said Sir John, we had the funds of our ancient abbeys, we should have enough to evangelize all our manufacturing districts. The funds, as seized by Henry VIII., amounted to just £143,000; the rental of the kingdom being then somewhat about three millions. Now, had we the twentieth part of its present rental; what wonders might the Church do! Why, the twenty millions which a late writer proposed as a proper grant from the state, actually sinks into insignificancy before what has been done.'

""You would also imagine the buildings, as they were, to be existing at the present day. It would be an incalculable accession of influence to the Church. But why put a manifestly impossible supposition?'

""Whatever good they would do now, that, so far as it was needed, they did when they existed. It is far easier for our imagination to bring them forward into our own time, than to carry ourselves back into theirs, when we would judge of their influence. Let us imagine, for example, the monasteries of S. Alban's, Reading, S. Edmund's Bury, Glastonbury, Westminster, and York, each with an annual income of about £150,000, to start up amongst us; why, the effect would be little short of miraculous! And you are to remember, that not only would the Church be enabled to erect and endow temples which should even overtake the increase of population, and to supply ministers to meet their necessities: this is not all. She would at once come forward as the instructor of the nation; boards of education would be no longer needed; training schools would at once be provided. There is not an art in which She is concerned, that She would not be able to teach: and the high and low would equally take their first lessons from Her lips. Then the poor, instead of the negligent or brutal attendance of some miserably paid parish doctor, would be under the skilful care of the infirmarer and his brethren: the sick-bed would be made softer by their kindness, and the mind of the sufferer be naturally drawn by earthly to heavenly things. None would be left to the tender mercies of the relieving officer: the needy would find food by applying at the abbey gate. The Union system, accursed of God, and intolerable to man, would vanish like a dream; in short, the Church would, wherever we turned, present the same aspect, that of the great benefactor to man's soul and body. Hospitality, a virtue now almost forgotten, (for who ever entertains strangers as in the olden time?) would revive: and here, again, it would be the Church which practised the virtue it preached.'

""You must allow,' said Col. Abberley, 'that the monasteries did not, in the time of their glory, do all this; and that they do not do it now in those countries where they still remain.'

""Granted; but then there were other reasons for this, besides that of the corruption of the system. I do not mean, as I said before, to say that it was not corrupted. But the spiritual benefits of the religious houses were less visible; I do not say less real, for I shall have something to add on that point presently; because the parochial system was then so much more fully worked out. Take some instances: I will not pick them, but take them as they occur to me. Lewes, in Sussex, a town with some 8000 inhabitants, has now six churches; before the Reformation it had fifteen, and two monasteries. Thetford, in Norfolk, had then some six or eight, which have now perished. York, well provided as it seems, had lost about the same number. So it is with Durham; so with Exeter; so with Lincoln; so with Norwich; so, in short, with whatever city you examine. And as to the rural districts. We were considering the state of Cornwall. I speak within limits when I say, that not the third part of the churches which stood there before the Reformation, are standing there now. In its wildest parts, there were chapels, offshoots from the parish church, and probably served at intervals by the parish, or assistant, priest. And this leads to another reason why the monasteries exercised a less visible effect on the spiritual welfare of our poor at the time of their suppression than they would do now. I refer to the infinitely greater number of priests whom the Church then supported. In the first place, there were the chantry priests: and without wishing, or finding it necessary, to defend the corruptions of the system with which they were connected, they must have been, or at least, which is sufficient to my argument, they might have been, very important helps in a large parish. Again, almost every church had at least one, often two, deacons attached to it. We may see traces of them in the sedilia which appear on the south side of our old chanceis: there is seldom only one; oftener there are two; oftener still, three. So that with a body of Clergy amply sufficient to take charge of the population, the services of the monks in that way were little needed, and therefore, comparatively speaking, little exerted. As to your objection on the state of the foreign monasteries at the present day, the same reason will apply to them: add to which, that (except in Italy) the religious houses are no where to be found in their original splendour and wealth. France owes their destruction to the revolution; Germany, to the position she occupies, being the great theatre of all European wars; Spain, to the late revolution; Portugal, to the Marquis de Pombal and the Constitution. However, I will acknowledge that in the country where they remained longest, Spain, they were indeed degenerated.'

""But you said,' replied the Colonel, 'that you had other arguments in favour of the system.'

""The second I would mention is this: that they acted in the same beneficial way as colleges now act amongst us; nay, that the influence they exercised was even more beneficial. It is evident that the active and laborious life of a parish priest does not allow him time, had he the means, of laying up much deep learning. He must be content with an influence over his immediate flock; for the Church at large, except in the ways of example and prayer, he can do little. He wants the extensive library which he may consult: and it is at the risk of injuring his parish, if he devotes much time to composition, other than for the use of his parish. I mean of course composition of works which will be, in other days, standard theology. If you run over the writings of our principal divines, you will see that the greatest of their works were written by those who were not, or at least not at that time, engaged in parish duty. Hooker's Polity, is a glorious exception. Now here, colleges and monasteries supplied just that void which I have noticed. They do not make good parish priests; they do not teach a man how to visit the sick or dying bed; how to comfort a penitent; to awaken a hardened sinner; nay, not even how to control a vestry, or to enforce a rate. And I fear that even the modern professorship of Pastoral Theology will not do much in this way. But when any new and dangerous heresy appears, when any great article of the faith is called in question, when the voice of the earliest and purest age of the Church is to be consulted on any given subject; when our own branch of the Church is to be defended against whatever enemy; then there would be, if we had our monasteries, a race of men ready at once to spring up the champions

of the Catholick Faith, trained, not by a few hours' study, but by the investigation of years, to unravel the most subtle heresies, and to penetrate, as deeply as man may do, into the depths of Theology. Monasteries are far more suited to the production of such a race than colleges, for many reasons. Firstly, profane literature and science, which must be studied in the latter, to a certain degree, for their own sakes, would in the former take their own natural position as the handmaids of theology. Then, the religious atmosphere of the one, the constant prayers, the constant Communions, the immediate dedication to God, contrast vividly with the attendance on college chapel, the mixture of worthier and higher pursuits with aspiration for worldly honours, and dissipation in worldly pleasures, and connexion in secular business. I am not aware that, with the single exception of Barrow's Sermons, any great work on Divinity has proceeded immediately from the walls of a college, from the revolution till within the last few years; let us hope the case will soon be widely different. But should colleges ever again become the strictly religious foundations which they were designed to be, they never could compete with our ancient monasteries as instruments for the propagation of truth, from a physical reason; the smallness of their funds. What religious houses have been enabled to do in this way, you may see in the glorious Benedictine editions of the Fathers' works, which no individual nor set of individuals could have undertaken, and the risk of which no bookseller could have borne; but which taken in hand by a band of religious men, acting under orders from their superiors, and published at the expense of the community, offer a noble example of one way in which monastick houses may contribute to the glory of God. And by whom is such a work likely to be carried on more successfully? Who is the more likely to enter into the spirit of the Fathers? The man, fresh from the lecture, or the examination, or the hall, or the combination-room, with the papers, good and bad, of twenty classical or mathematical examiners to look over when the appointed progress shall have been made in the work in hand; or he, who with the sweet notes of vespers yet ringing in his ears, looks forward to joining, in a few hours, in the solemn Compline, and perhaps, in a few hours after that, to leave his bed for the first Nocturn? Is there a question, even in a case like this? And how much more must the balance turn in favour of monasteries, when the work in hand is one of dogmatick, still more of practical theology? Who but the inhabitant of such a place could have written the IMITATIO CHRISTI? Who but one living on the same system, could have composed the Sermons and Prayers of Bishop Andrewes?'"-Ibid. Pp. 127-135.

a

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""My third argument would be that arising from a consideration of the benefits of intercession. Much of this is, I allow, applicable to the Daily Service as we actually have it: much more was applicable to it when the Hours were said six times, instead of twice, daily. But the beautiful system of nightly prayer, that can only find place in a monastick establishment. The Church then, not content with supplicating the blessing of GOD on Her children at all hours of the day, sends up her petitions for them at a time when they are more peculiarly exposed to danger, and when they are unconscious of the safeguard of Her prayers. And the fourth reason I should dwell on, is the asylum which such places afford to those who have no other home. daughters, for example, of clergymen, who, when left orphans, must seek their livelihood by going out as governesses, or by some lower way of earning their bread; would they not bless GOD if they could have so holy and so comforting a habitation to which they might fly? There, in different ways, they might effectually serve Him; there, they would daily be consoled by the voice of the Church: there they might weekly, and why not oftener? receive the Holy Communion: instead of being tossed and buffeted about in this world; perhaps, without a home that they can call their own; exposed to all manner of hardships; without friends to cheer or comfort-and all this, not for some high and holy end, but to procure bare subsistence and shelter. So the aged, whose manhood had been taken up in the necessary pursuits of this world; but who had now outlived or settled their families, might they not well be thankful for a place where they might retire, before they died, from the noise and confusion of this world, and prepare themselves for their entrance on the next by deeper penitence, more uninterrupted prayer, and closer communion with GOD? Again; periodical retirement to such a house might be most salutary for one deeply engaged in business: an Advent or Lent so passed would be, as it were, a breathing time for the soul, an untwining the close poisonous embrace of weekly affairs; a strict lesson in setting the affections on things above. This is often practised in foreign Churches; why should it not be in our own?'

""But how is this to be done?' asked the Colonel. If we are quite unequal now