until they had been purified
with the waters of baptism in a building without the door of the house
of God; an appropriate custom, which was not broken in upon for ages;
and even then the infant was only brought just inside the door, where
the font was placed on the left hand of the entrance; a judicious
practice, which is completely set at nought in England, where the
squalling imp often distracts the attention of the congregation; and is
finally sprinkled, instead of being immersed, the whole ceremony having
been so much altered and pared down from its original symbolic form,
that were a Christian of the early ages to return upon the earth, he
would be unable to recognise its meaning.

The conventual library consisted of only half-a-dozen well-waxed and
well-thumbed liturgies; but one of the priests told me that they boasted
formerly of above a hundred volumes written on leather (gild razali),
gazelle skins, probably vellum, which were destroyed by the Mamelukes
during their last pillage of the convent.

The habitations of the monks, according to the original design of this
very curious building, were contained in a long slip on the south side
of the church, where their cells were lit by the small loopholes seen
from the outside. Of these cells none now remain: they must have been
famously hot, exposed as they were all day long to the rays of the
southern sun; but probably the massive thickness of the walls and arched
ceilings reduced the temperature. There was no court or open space
within the convent; the only place where its inhabitants could have
walked for exercise in the open air was upon the flat terrace of the
roof, the deck of this ship of St Peter; for the White Monastery in some
respects resembled a dismasted man-of-war, anchored in a sea of burning
sand.

In modern times we are not surprised on finding a building erected at an
immense expense, in which the architecture of the interior is totally
different from that of the exterior. A Brummagem Gothic house is
frequently furnished and ornamented within in what is called "_a chaste
Greek style_," and _vice versa_. A Grecian house--that is to say, a
square white block, with square holes in it for windows, and a portico
in front--is sometimes inhabited by an antiquarian, who fits it up with
Gothic furniture, and a Gothic paper designed by a crafty paper-hanger
in the newest style. But in ancient days it was very rare to see such a
mixture. I am surprised th