orders, possessed, before 1793, sixteen abbeys and monasteries of the
Premonstratensians. The mother abbey of this great order, founded by
Saint-Norbert in the twelfth century, commemorates in its name the great
agricultural work done by him and his disciples. Premontre, 'the meadows
of the monastery,' was the chief seat of the Order which a hundred years
ago comprised more than eighteen hundred monasteries, the
chapters-general of which were held here. The vast and stately buildings
of Presmontre are still standing. They were constructed on a scale of
royal grandeur, worthy of the Order, under the Abbe de Muyn, towards the
end of the reign of Louis XIV., and they much resemble the buildings
erected at the same time at the Grande Chartreuse, near Grenoble. Like
these, they were seized upon in 1793 by the revolutionists. But in both
cases the buildings were saved, those of the Grande Chartreuse because
there was no temporal use to which they could be put, standing, as they
do, high up above the gorges of the Guier, in their glorious solitude
amid the pine-forests of Dauphine; and these of Premontre for exactly
the opposite reason, because they were available for purposes more
profitable than the sale of their materials was likely to be. They were
converted first into a saltpetre factory by the little knot of financial
operators who bought them for a song as 'national property.' Afterwards
an attempt was made to establish glassworks in them. Then they became an
orphan asylum, and now they are a great asylum for lunatics!

St.-Jean-des-Vignes at Soissons, already mentioned, was the only
monastery of the Joannists in France, and it was one of fifteen
Cistercian abbeys in this region. The remaining ruins of the church of
one of these Cistercian abbeys at Longpont, near Soissons, vindicate its
ancient fame as one of the jewels of French religious architecture. It
was built under St.-Louis, and consecrated in his presence. It shared,
in 1793, the fate of the almost equally beautiful church of St.-Leger at
Soissons, the apse, transepts, and cloisters of which, even in their
present condition, suffice to show what Soissons lost when it was looted
and desecrated. A worthy bishop of Soissons, M. de Garsignies, bought
what remained of St.-Leger in 1850, and established there a seminary.

Add to these edifices those of twelve commanderies of the Temple, ten
commanderies of St. John of Jerusalem, two Chartreuses, ten collegiate
chu