ly there was
much tittle-tattle; and a disagreeable, jealous, or scheming inmate
must have been able to stir up a good deal of strife in a society
living at such close quarters. One thinks loosely that it must have
resembled the life of a college at the University, but that is an
entire misapprehension; for the idea of a college is liberty with just
enough discipline to hold it together, while the idea of a monastery
was discipline with just enough liberty to make life tolerable.

Well, it is all over now! the idea of the monastic life, which was to
make a bulwark for quiet-minded people against the rougher world, is no
longer needed. The work of the monks is done. Yet I gave an
affectionate thought across the ages to the old inmates of the place,
whose bones have mouldered into the dust of the yard where we sat. It
seemed half-pleasant, half-pathetic to think of them as they went about
their work, sturdy, cheerful figures, looking out over the wide fen
with all its clear pools and reed-beds, growing old in the familiar
scene, passing from the dormitory to the infirmary, and from the
infirmary to the graveyard, in a sure and certain hope. They too
enjoyed the first breaking of spring, the return of balmy winds, the
pushing up of the delicate flowers in orchard and close, with something
of the same pleasure that I experience to-day. The same wonder that I
feel, the same gentle thrill speaking of an unattainable peace, an
unruffled serenity that lies so near me in the spring sunshine,
flashed, no doubt, into those elder spirits. Perhaps, indeed, their
heart went out to the unborn that should come after them, as my heart
goes out to the dead to-day.

And even the slow change that has dismantled that busy place, and
established it as the quiet farmstead that I see, holds a hope within
it. There must indeed have been a sad time when the buildings were
slipping into decay, and the church stood ruined and roofless. But how
soon the scars are healed! How calmly nature smiles at the eager
schemes of men, breaks them short, and then sets herself to harmonise
and adorn the ruin, till she makes it fairer than before, writing her
patient lesson of beauty on broken choir and tottering wall, flinging
her tide of fresh life over the rents, and tenderly drawing back the
broken fragments into her bosom. If we could but learn from her not to
fret or grieve, to gather up what remains, to wait patiently and wisely
for our chang