of far inferior ability. He had the graphic simplicity and
realism of De Foe in describing places he had never seen; and as the
historian of a country or a period in which he felt interested he would
have been unusually brilliant, for he was an adept in picturesque
condensation, and knew how to improve upon his originals and use them
without copying a word. He was a master of vigorous English.

KINAHAN CORNWALLIS.

IN A SUPPRESSED TUSCAN MONASTERY.

We have left the golden hills and laughing valleys of Tuscany behind us
as we approach that desert part of it where the gray chalk cliffs
stretch out into the Maremma in long narrow tongues of rock, not far
from Siena. A frightful convulsion of nature in prehistoric times rent
the solid rock, seaming it with chasms so wide and deep that the region
is almost depopulated, not only because man can with difficulty find
room for the sole of his foot, but because the gases which lie over the
Maremma in vapors thick enough to destroy life in a single night rise up
to the top of these cliffs and reduce the dwellers there to fever-worn
shadows. Even the scattered olive-trees that have taken root in the thin
layer of soil are of the same hue, and the few clumps of cypresses add
to the pallor of the scene with their dark funereal shafts. The only bit
of color is where a cluster of low red-washed houses have found room for
their scanty foundations on a knot of rock where several chasms
converge. Where the sides of the chasms slope gently enough to admit of
being terraced, vineyards are planted, which yield famous wines, the red
Aleatico and the white Vino Santo, rivalling in quality the Monte
Pulciano, which grows only a short distance away. Farther down in the
depths thickets of scrub oak and wild vines form oases that are
invisible unless one is standing on the brink.

The epithet "God-forsaken," so often applied to regions like this,
would, however, be inappropriate here, for in God's name the locality is
famous. On a promontory whose sides fall down in sheer precipices all
about, except where a narrow neck of rock connects it with the net-work
of cliffs, is a vast monastery, the Mother Abbey of the Olivetani. In
1313 a noble of Siena, Bernardo Tolomei, in the midst of a life of
literary distinctions and pleasures, received, it is said, the grace of
God. He was struck blind, and in his prayers vowed if he recovered his
sight to embrace a life of penitence. It was the divin