ere was an expanse
about its aisles, largeness and breadth in the high-domed roof, that
produced a certain dignity, yet without grace and refinement. No magic
and mystery surrounded them, and the dim religious light was the result,
not of rich stained glass admitting prismatic streams, but of an
obscurity cast by the shadows of Mons Serratus. For great effects one
had to go back in imagination to the days when the monks were many and
assembled at night for service. It is easy to picture the impressive
scene. Beyond the ever-closed screen, within the great choir, a thousand
kneeling, penitential figures chanting the midnight mass, their voices
swelling upward in mighty volume; the church just sufficiently lighted
to lend the utmost mystery to the occasion; a ghostly hour and a ghostly
assemblage of men whose lives have become mere shadows. On great days
countless candles lighted up the aisles and faintly outlined the more
distant recesses. The fine-toned organ pealed forth its harmony, shaking
the building with its diapasons and awakening wonderful echoes in the
far-off dome.

[Illustration: CLOISTERS OF MONTSERRAT.]

All this may still be seen and heard now and then, but with the number
of monks sadly curtailed. It is said that they now never exceed twenty.
When their day of persecution came they escaped to their mountain
fastness, climbing higher and ever higher like hunted deer, hiding in
the cracks and crevices of the rocks; fear giving them strength to reach
parts never yet trodden by the foot of man, whilst many a less active
monk slipped and fell into the bottomless abyss, his last resting place,
like that of Moses, remaining for ever unknown. The troops of Suchet
followed the refugees, found them out, and put an end to many a life
that, if useless, was also harmless. Not a few of the survivors became
hermits, and on many a crag may be found the ruins of a hermitage, once,
perhaps, inhabited by a modern St. Jerome, though the St. Jeromes of the
world have been few and far between.

Some sort of religious institution existed here in the early centuries,
long ages before Ignatius Loyola founded the order of the Jesuits. In
the eighth century the famous black image was hidden away in a cave
under a hill to save it from the Moors. Here it miraculously disclosed
itself a hundred years later to some simple shepherds. These hastened to
the good Bishop, who took mules, crook and mitre, and came down with all
the lights