perstructure of the modern monastery. The German artists adorning it
contrive to blend the styles of Giotto, Fra Angelico, Egypt, and
Byzance, not without force and a kind of intense frozen pietism. S.
Mauro's vision of his master's translation to heaven--the ladder of
light issuing between two cypresses, and the angels watching on the
tower walls--might even be styled poetical. But the decorative angels on
the roof and other places, being adapted from Egyptian art, have a
strange, incongruous appearance.

Monasteries are almost invariably disappointing to one who goes in
search of what gives virtue and solidity to human life; and even Monte
Cassino was no exception. This ought not to be otherwise, seeing what a
peculiar sympathy with the monastic institution is required to make
these cloisters comprehensible. The atmosphere of operose indolence,
prolonged through centuries and centuries, stifles; nor can antiquity
and influence impose upon a mind which resents monkery itself as an
essential evil. That Monte Cassino supplied the Church with several
potentates is incontestable. That mediaeval learning and morality would
have suffered more without this brotherhood cannot be doubted. Yet it is
difficult to name men of very eminent genius whom the Cassinesi claim as
their alumni; nor, with Boccaccio's testimony to their carelessness, and
with the evidence of their library before our eyes, can we rate their
services to civilised erudition very highly. I longed to possess the
spirit, for one moment, of Montalembert. I longed for what is called
historical imagination, for the indiscriminate voracity of those men to
whom world-famous sites are in themselves soul-stirring.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] These verses are extracted from the second book of Pontano's
_Hendecasyllabi_ (Aldus, 1513, p. 208). They so vividly paint the
amusements of a watering-place in the fifteenth century that I have
translated them:

With me, let but the mind be wise, Gravina, With me haste to the
tranquil haunts of Baiae, Haunts that pleasure hath made her home, and
she who Sways all hearts, the voluptuous Aphrodite. Here wine rules, and
the dance, and games and laughter; Graces reign in a round of mirthful
madness; Love hath built, and desire, a palace here too, Where glad
youths and enamoured girls on all sides Play and bathe in the waves in
sunny weather, Dine and sup, and the merry mirth of banquets Blend with
dearer delights and love's embraces, Blend wi