tuted for the
preservation or advancement of learning. Originally they were not even
ecclesiastical, but consisted of pious laymen, who wished to devote their
souls to God, by drawing them out of the mire of their daily lives.
Profane learning was more frequently regarded as a thing forbidden, than
numbered amongst the objects which might engage their attention.
"Solitude, _labour_, silence, and prayer--these were the elements of
monastic life; and the question was not, how the monk might most
effectually gather and diffuse learning, but--when, indeed, any question
came to be raised--whether he might lawfully cultivate learning at
all?"--(Maitland, p. 160.)

The charge of indolence, also--(the two epithets of "lazy and ignorant,"
generally go together, in the popular phraseology, when monks are spoken
of)--is made without any discrimination, and bestowed as well upon bodies
of men remarkable for their industrious and persevering cultivation of the
soil, as upon the pampered and corrupted monastery. Amongst the rules of
the Benedictines, labour figures conspicuously. In many cases it was the
hard work of emigrants who first subdue the soil, that was performed by
these sacred and secluded men. But, when an admiring world thought fit, in
its sagacity, to reward a voluntary poverty by endowing and enriching
it,--when the monastery became a wealthy landlord, with treasures of gold
and silver in its coffers--then, as might be expected, labour
declined,--the monk grew lazy, and the description which Mrs Percy Sinnett
quotes from an old author, was, no doubt, very generally applicable to
him. "Every other minute he comes out of his cell--then goes in
again--then comes out again to look if the sun is not near setting." The
world behaved towards the monk as an old gentleman we remember to have
read of in some play, who, charmed with the temperance which his young
friend had exhibited, rewarded it by putting his cellar of choice wines at
his disposal. He was afterwards indignant at finding that the virtue of
his protege had not increased under his kind encouragement.

The remarks of Mrs P. Sinnett, which we have just quoted, on monastic
life, usher in a very entertaining account of the origin and growth of the
"Abbey of Altenberg." Here is a fragment of it:--

"The half-decayed mountain-castle, where the community was now
established, was found to be in some respects unsuitable to its new
destination; and the Abbo