quarter sent to each of the four towns, its votaries murdered in cold blood, its treasWells, Bath, Ilchester, and Bridgwater. ures ransacked, its walls razed to the The two monks suffered with him, and the ground; and we have seen it in peace and memory of that deed is not extinct amongst plenty, the home of a band of Christian the peasantry to this day, the Tor being men engaged in prayer, praise, and duty, still pointed out as the spot where " poor presided over by one upon whose charity Abbot Whiting was murdered." the poor depended, and to whose hospitaliThus fell the celebrated monastery of ty the traveller looked for shelter and reGlastonbury, which is connected with the freshment. We have seen it the asylum of very earliest records, mythical and real, of learning and art in ages of darkness and Christianity in England. Its lands found violence; and we have seen it in wealth their way principally into the possession of and luxury, yielding gradually to the influthe Duke of Somerset, the buildings fell in-ence of corruption, becoming avaricious to ruin and the magnificent library was and idle, fond of pomp and greedy of powscattered. As late even as ten years ago, er; and finally we have seen it in the hour a fragment of an illuminated missal was of its doom, when the hand of the avenger found in a peasant's house, whose children rested heavily upon it, when the powers of had gradually torn up the rest. Even now, the world conspired against it, when there for miles round the country, in farmhouses was no mercy for the past nor hope for the here and there, are to be found portions of future, when it fell before the storm, and sculpture torn from the abbey, and used for now lives only in history a monument to the purpose of building. the glory and the vanity of man. Thus fell Glastonbury, and thus fell English Monasticism, amid the terror and the apprehension of all Europe, whose eyes were turned towards the strange doings of England. We must take farewell of that noble Mother Church of Avalon, whose career we have endeavoured to trace, and whose fate was so sad, and conclude by summing up in a few words what we may submit to be the truth as regards monasticism generally. We have endeavoured to show its influence upon life, literature, and art, and also the influence of external political circumstances upon it. That it was at one time pure is supported by the clearest historical testimony; but that it went the sad way of all human things is the sole teaching of its later history. As it terminated in a crisis, so it began in one. It sprung up in the wake of that early Christianity which, wiping away its tears after ages of persecution, girded up its loins to march forth and do its Master's work with those fierce barbarian races who were overturning all the nations in Europe, and settling on their ruins. In one vast march of extermination they came down from the wilds of the North, and but for the interference of these Christian missionaries, would have obliterated every trace of culture in Europe. For twelve centuries it existed in our own land, a mighty agency, with varied fortunes. We have seen it in the hands of wild heathen savages, its holy places violated, Modern Inquiries are the results of a physician's leisure, employed chiefly on subjects cognate to his profession. Some of the essays and lectures contain most sensible remarks on the limited power of medicine; on the absolute nature of many diseases, which will run their course either to death or recovery, and can neither be cured nor shortened by physic, allowing no part to drugs save that of mere palliation; and on the folly and mischief of reckless and systematic physic-giving. Perhaps the most interesting passage in the volume, just now, is that which contains the evidence of Dr. Bigelow before a Commission appointed to inquire into the mode of dealing with a cattle-plague in Massachusetts. The author strongly deprecates the notion of exterminating the disease by indiscriminate slaughter, and expresses certain doubts, by the way, as to the contagious character ascribed to epidemics generally by popular opinion or popular alarm. Miscellaneous. By Jacob Bigelow, M.D., late President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and late a Professor in Harvard University. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston. 1867. Modern Inquiries: Classical, Professional, and From Saint Paul's Magazine. ALL FOR GREED. CHAPTER I. A VERY SMALL TOWN. In the whole west of France there is no prettier town than D. Lying rather out of the way, it has as yet had but few pretexts for "improving" itself, and in many respects presents the same appearance as it did some half a century ago. Dis nothing in particular; not a fishing town, for the sea is too far off; nor a manufacturing town, for "business" of that kind is absorbed by Cholet, which is some ten leagues distant, and represents the manufacturing interest. D- is, if any thing, an occasional place of passage or rest for drovers, who still find it quickest and cheapest to drive their Chôletais oxen from the banks of the Lèvres to the more central towns on the banks of the Loire, pending the establishment of small local railway branches. No railroad leads to D. If it did, old Martin Prévost would not have been the great ruler of that small town that he truly was. merely got out of each all he could. Monsieur le Marquis died in exile, earning starvation wages by the French lessons he gave in an English seaport town, and his valet de chambre died possessed of a house in D——, in which he had, at the time of the Consulate, opened what Americans would call a "store." His principle was one of beautiful simplicity. He bought everything and sold everything; striving only with delightful single-mindedness never to realise any profit under twenty per cent. upon either operation. He married a wife who was crooked and blind of one eye, but these slight defects were fully compensated for to him by the dower she brought him, and which he laid out so as to double it, of which fact she never had the smallest token or proof. - His son was unworthy of his sire, and did nothing to improve his position in life. The father judged his offspring severely, but took care to get him advantageously married, and when he died, recommended him to the care of his wife. Prévost II. went through life and out of it, unnoticed; but did not dissipate his estate, so that, at his death, in 1835, he left what his father had left him, and what his wife's dot had added to that, untouched and entire to his two sons. Martin Prévost was of Swiss extraction. His grandfather had been valet de chambre, steward, factotum, alter ego, to a famous Vendéan chief, a proud rich noble of the ancien régime, but one of the few who preferred the hard active life of a partisan In Martin Prévost, the younger of these to anything Court favour could offer him, two sons, the spirit of the grandfather and who was genuinely glad to exchange burned strongly, and was intensified by Versailles for the hazards and hardships of that atmosphere of barter which, in France La Chouannerie. The trading principle above all countries, is the very “over-soul" being uppermost in the mind of the Helve- of mankind in this nineteenth century. tian, the confidant of Monsieur le Marquis Martin Prévost carried the destinies of his soon became rich. It was said that he house to a remarkable height, and at the managed to sell a good many of the neces- same time of which we are writing he was saries of existence to both sides at once, virtually the ruler of D- and its populaand that both were his grateful customers. tion of 3,800 souls. He was never known to betray either, but Martin Prévost was the money-lender of ALL FOR GREED the whole district, and as those who bor-er young men of his station could boast of rowed rarely repaid in cash, and as he nev- possessing. er lent save on unexceptionable security, it is not difficult to calculate how from decade to decade Martin's power and wealth increased. Soon after his father's death he · bought a Charge de Notaire, which he kept for six or seven years, and then sold to considerable advantage; for he had gained for this office such repute that people of high standing came to consult him from distant towns even, and his opinion and advice were worth gold! on a certain Wednesday, not quite two Wednesday was market day in Dyears ago, a little group of two or three woand men was gathered round the open door of Martin Prévost's house talking with Madame Jean. There was the same character of sharpness in each of those female faces, but Madame Jean had an air of authority which the others lacked, and the basket she carried on her strong stout arm was half as er women's baskets. big and half as full again as any of the otheight o'clock, and though the October sun It was not much past was warm, the air was still cool, and a fresh but not unpleasant wind shook the boughs of the lime-trees overhanging the terrace of old Prévost's garden. When Monsieur Martin Prévost sold his Etude he called this proceeding retiring from business. "Je me retire des affaires," said he; but there were one or two sharpeyed individuals, and D numbered marvellously few such, who opined that on the contrary this was the very period when Prévost's business seriously began, "Certainly poultry is out of all price," time he had been six or seven years a nota- man, looking enviously at Madame Jean, By the cried bitterly a skinny, black-browed wory, no family within twenty or thirty miles and at a pair of huge Cochin-Chinese legs had a secret of which he was unpossessed; that protruded from her basket. and when he delivered over the various at the Mairie haven't gone out of beef and and voluminous documents of his office to vegetables for I don't know how long; We up his unsuspecting successor, he carried away and beef, up now at thirteen sous, one franc in his prodigious memory the details of the six a kilo, as they will call it; well! I reckfinancial complications of the entire neigh-on by pounds and sous, I can't take to their bourhood. But old Prévost was a man, and though his power was felt and ministration." wise new ways, though I do belong to the Adacknowledged, he never allowed it to be herself At this the speaker drew supposed that he ever could possibly preup with pride. sume upon it. He lived well, but modestly and economically, having but one servant, a woman for whom he had the deepest respect, and as outdoor servant a man, who was gardener, labourer, groom, and commissionaire to Madame Jean. It used to be said in and about Dthat no one knew anything that was not good, and that no one felt anything that was, touching Martin Prévost, yet every one applied to him, and every one, at some moment or other of their lives, trusted him. He had never married, but he had adopted his nephew, and given the young fellow an excellent education. Old Martin's brother had turned out ill, that is, unlucky, and had died young in America, whither he | had emigrated, terribly in debt. What became of his wife, or who or what she was, no one in D. ever heard. Some people said she had run away from him; but Martin had the boy sent to him, when he was only six years old, had brought him up since then, and, I repeat it, had brought him up well. What created no little astonishment was, that he had not brought him up over strictly, but in the way of liberty and money gave him to the full as much as oth and veal is bad, all strings; and poultry Prévost," interrupted the purveyor of Mon- 66 dictatorial tone Madame Jean. Mère Jubine owed it me!" replied with I bought from her was an unsatisfactory "The last fowl, so I reckoned it her at only half price, and took this one to make up. Our young man is not well just now, and wants light food, so I shall let him eat poultry for a few after all. With two pots au feu there's the days. Bless my soul! it ain't such an extra whole week; reckon : management, no extras are any matter if all depends on the you are a ménagère, and if you are not, why you come to think bread itself an extra; but where are the ménagères? Jean said this defiantly, and the other matrons were cowed. Madame - Monsieur Richard?" asked the mildest "Serious? No!" responded Madame Jean, as though it would have been absurd to suppose that anything serious could be the matter in so prosperous a house as that of Monsieur Prévost. "Serious? No! but you know he never was the strongest of the strong; he's not a Turk nor a weight-thrower at the fair, and he's never quite got over his attack of the lungs this winter; he's delicate, if you will, but care makes up for everything, and he gets lots of it." Why didn't you buy that hare of Mère Lucas?" whined out the chief of the mayor's kitchen. "I've heard say game was good for invalids." "Because I didn't choose," retorted Madame Jean sharply. without having his revenge. But all the same, Madelon : don't you imagine we don't know as well as Monsieur le Maire what goes on in D- -; only I don't buy trapped game. Monsieur Richard's chasse suffices us. We are regular people and eat the hares and partridges off our own stubble. If Mère Lucas makes one franc fifty clear profit out of a hare, she pays fifty centimes, taking the risk. She's welcome to it, but I don't put the one franc fifty into her pocket, not İ!” "Monsieur le Curé's Lise does," observed the mild-mannered woman. "Oh! Monsieur le Curé's Lise!" snarled Madelon in her most contemptuous tone, and as though no proceeding could possibly be too objectionable for Monsieur le Curé's Lise. "Well! Monsieur le Curé's Lise?" retorted Madame Jean. "She's a wise woman; she gets for two francs a hare worth four, not to say five, if we were in carnival time, and no harm done. Monsieur le Curé may do what he likes." "There she goes across the street," remarked Madelon. "And Céleste from down at Vérancour's, with her," added her soft-spoken companion. A laugh, indulged in together, by Madame Jean and Madelon, seemed to establish. peace between them. "It would be a fine sight to see what she has bought at market," sneered Madelon ;. "two potatoes, three olives, and an onion,. maybe! They do say that on fast days Céleste serves up fish a week old!" "Oh!" was the rejoinder. "Faites excuse. I thought it might be because of something else," and the woman looked warlike. But war with Madame Jean was not a thing to be dreamt of, as she quickly showed. Turning sharply round, and resting the whole of her outspread hand upon one end of her big basket, which drove the other end of that well-filled recipient so far up behind her shoulder that the CochinChinese legs seemed almost sprouting from her back like cherub's wings" Madelon," said she, "you mean Prosper Morel. I know quite well what you mean; but we know all about it as well as you do, and we don't want Monsieur le Maire or anybody else to inform us of anything. I had my thoughts about that hare, if you must know; that hare never was shot, that hare was caught, caught may hap on Monsieur Rivière's land, therefore stolen. There; call it by its name, stolen; a deal more likely stolen by Prosper Morel than by any one else; but what then? primo, where's the proof? You believe it; the Maire believes it; the Garde's certain sure of it; but more than all, I believe it; but what then? Prosper has had his permit taken from him; Monsieur wouldn't help him to get it; and what then? Suppose the Garde catches him, and draws up his proces 'verbal, and he gets condemned, and fined, and justice is satisfied, and suppose Monsieur turns him out of his hut up there in the forest, and gets another woodcutter. Well, suppose all that, what then? Who'll be shot in a by-path, or have his throat cut in his back shop, or have his house burnt over his bed?" The women all looked aghast and nodded their heads ominously, as though admitting ly Madelon. that it was but too true. portance!" "You fancy, do you," continued Madame Jean, "that that s.lent, sulky, hulking Breton would let the worst come to the worst LIVING AGE. VOL. VI. 232. "Fish!" echoed Madame Jean; "fish. out of sea or river comes a deal too dear for the château!" She laid a tremendously pompous accent on the first syllable. "I was once inside their doors, and in going away I had just to cross the dining-room as they were coming in to dinner.. If you'll believe me, there was, besides a soup of bread and water, nothing but lentils and a red herring. But, Lord! weren't they set out in fine silver dishes? It was the Wednesday of the quatre temps de Septembre. I've wondered to myself ever since then what it is they live upon; for the wind that blows, however healthy it may be, won't keep body and soul together in three grownup people." upon "Live ?" exclaimed almost savageWhy, upon their own im 66 "To be sure," remarked the conciliatory one of the group," they do believe in themselves!" ALL FOR GREED. "Yes," muttered Madame Jean; "to she contrived never once to address her make up for nobody else's believing in interlocutor as "Monsieur le Vicomte." them." "let's "Never mind," added Madelon ; "Hush!" said Madame Jean, stopping the loud appeal which the other woman was preparing to address to the two bonnes who were at the further side of the street. "Hush! There's Monsieur le Vicomte himself turning the corner down to the left, and coming this way." 66 Ugh!" grunted Madelon. he wanting up hereabouts? I thought his "What's daily mass was hardly over by this time.” He's coming here," said Madame Jean; and a moment later the person alluded to came up from behind, divided the group of women, touching his hat as he passed, and saying, "Pardon, mesdames," confronted Madame Jean on the doorsteps on which she was standing. The women nodded to each other and parted, leaving Madame Jean alone on the threshold of the maison Prévost. "Could I see Monsieur Prévost for a moment?" inquired the new comer, politely. "Quite impossible at this hour," rejoined Madame Jean, after a most stately fashion. "Monsieur has not yet breakfasted. It is not yet nine. Monsieur breakfasts as the clock strikes ten, and Monsieur never sees any one before breakfast. You have not come by appointment?" she asked. - but 99 "No-not exactly "Of course not," interrupted Madame Jean. "Monsieur would have informed me." CHAPTER II. THE MARRIAGE PORTION. retreat of her enemy, for such it appeared MADAME JEAN had barely witnessed the he was, however innocently, when she became aware that her master was calling her from within. She shut the house-door, and, putting down her basket in the passage, went upstairs to a room on the first floor, whence the voice issued. Opening Prévost's presence. a door to the right, she stood in Monsieur covered with account books and papers, He was standing close to a large table and he held an open letter in his hand. three, and though he looked strong and bien Martin Prévost was about sixty-two or conservé, still he looked his age. He was above the middle height, gaunt rather than spare, with a bony frame, an immense hooknose, and two small, sharp eyes, quite close together. There were about him all the signs of power of an inferior order; power of plodding, power of endurance, and capacity quisitiveness, of privation, and the unfailing marks of ac the rapacious eye and hand. as he thrust into Madame Jean's fingers the "Look at that," he said in an angry tone, open letter he held in his own; "the fellow has just been here, and I have told him that if he can't clear himself of these accusations he must go. I wash my hands of istration. He shall be turned out." him. I'll have no quarrels with the Admin Meanwhile Madame Jean read the letter, which ran thus: D AND HONOURED "But my business is very pressing," urged the petitioner, "and would not take up more than a quarter of an hour." "SIR But it was no use. Madame Jean was "in the exercise of her functions," and any (Monsieur Prévost had been the mayor of COLLEAGUE" one who has ever had dealings with them, you of the irregularities of the man named three years before, and the present man was his successor), "I think it right to warn knows in that particular state how unman- Prosper Morel, in your employ. As you are ageable is a Frenchman or a Frenchwoman. aware, he has no permis de chasse this season, Madame Jean was not impolite; she was but I have every reason to believe he steals impervious, opaque, not to be penetrated game in the night-time. The garde, François by an influence from without. strove to propitiate her, had to bear his ill- this individual committing his malpractices, He who Lejeune, is morally convinced of having seen success complacently, for fear of worse, being taken in flagrante delicto; and Monsieur - and accept her permission to come again Rivière has already twice complained of him to though he has hitherto contrived to escape at eleven o'clock. She had the satisfaction me officially. As the man is employed by you, of making things go her own way without and as nothing would give me greater pain, any extraordinary effort; and though it sir and honoured colleague, than to have to could not be objected that she was rude, take any steps annoying to you, I venture to |