The Nineteenth Century (Volume 16) (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1884. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... DAILY LIFE IN A MODERN MONASTERY. Iris the 13th of February, 1884, the hour between half-past twelve and one P.m. Two lines of black-robed Benedictine monks are seated at tables on either side of a room about sixty feet long and twenty-four wide, high, with panelled ceiling, and plain-coloured walls relieved by two or three large portraits of ancient abbots or priors. A wooden wainscot, perhaps eight feet high, reminding one in its design of the Hall of Magdalen College, Oxford, runs all round this room, and on two sides, the east and north, nearly reaches the deep sloping sills of more than a dozen double-lighted windows filled with heraldic glass, in whose brilliant maze of colours the adept may read the blazoned arms of many a noble family, the founders and benefactors of the establishment. There, over the head of the prior, who sits alone at a small table on a raised dais against the east wall, are the ancient devices and noble insignia of a Norfolk, a Bute, and a Ripon. There are the Highland red deer supporting the baronial shield of Lovat, and next to it the ' Lumen in Ccelo' of Leo XIII., side by side with the lions rampant of Mastai-Ferretti. Further down, on the north side, you may decipher the unmistakable Scottish arms of Buccleugh, Herries, and. Gordon, but they are mixed up with the English Denbigh?, Staffords, and Howards, and a host of others which perhaps it would require more than a diligent study of Burke to comprehend. It is the refectory, and the monks are at dinner. That figure with Vol. XVI.--No. 92. N N a white-and-blue check apron over his monastic habit, moving noiselessly about with jugs and dishes in his hands, is the cellarer--not that it ft the cellarer's special duty to wait at table, but this week it happens to be his turn: it was the...