tences. But Burke's style was forked and playful as the lightning, crested like the serpent. He delivered plain things on a plain ground; but when he rose, there was no end of his flights and circumgyrations—and in this very Letter, "he, like an eagle in a dove-cot, fluttered his Volscians" (the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale) "in Corioli."-I did not care for his doctrines. I was then, and am still, proof against their contagion; but I admired the author, and was considered as not a very staunch partisan of the opposite side, though I thought myself that an abstract proposition was one thing, a masterly transition, a brilliant metaphor, another. I conceived too that he might be wrong in his main argument, and yet deliver fifty truths in arriving at a false conclusion. I remember Coleridge assuring me, as a poetical and political set-off to my sceptical admiration, that Wordsworth had written an Essay on Marriage, which, for manly thought and nervous expression, he deemed incomparably superior. As I had not, at that time, seen any specimens of Mr. Wordsworth's prose style, I could not express my doubts on this subject. If there are greater prosewriters than Burke, they either lie out of my course of study, or are beyond my sphere of comprehension. I am too old to be a convert to a new mythology of genius. The niches are occupied, the tables are full. If such is still my admiration of this man's misapplied powers, what must it have been at a time when I myself was in vain trying, year after year, to write a single Essay, nay, a single page or sentence; when I regarded the wonders of his pen, with the longing eyes of one who was dumb and a changeJing; and when, to be able to convey the slightest conception of my meaning to others in words, was the height of an almost hopeless ambition! But I never measured others' excellences by my own defects: though a sense of my own incapacity, and of the steep, impassable ascent from me to them, made me

regard them with greater awe and fondness.-I have thus run through most of my early studies and favourite authors, some of whom I have since criticised more at large. Whether those observations will survive me (to say the truth) I neither know nor care: but to the works themselves, "worthy of all acceptation," and to the feelings they have always excited in me ever since I could distinguish a meaning in language, nothing shall ever prevent me from looking back with gratitude and triumph. To have lived in the cultivation of an intimacy with such works, and to have familiarly relished such names, is not to have lived quite in vain.

There are other authors whom I have never read, and yet whom I have frequently had a great desire to read, from some circumstance relating to them. Among these is Lord Clarendon's History of the Grand Rebellion, after which I have a hankering, from hearing it spoken of by good judges—from my interest in the events, and knowledge of the characters from other sources, and from having seen fine portraits of most of them. I like to read a well-penned character, and Clarendon is said to have been a master in this way. I should like to read Froissart's Chronicles, Hollingshed and Stow, and Fuller's Worthies. I intend, whenever I can, to read Beaumont and Fletcher all through. There are fifty-two of their plays, and I have only read a dozen or fourteen of them. A Wife for a Month, and Thierry and Theodoret, are, I am told, delicious, and I can believe it. I should like to read the speeches in Thucydides, and Guicciardini's History of Florence, and Don Quixote in the original. I have often thought of reading the Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda, and the Galatea of the same author. But I somehow reserve them like "another Yarrow." I should also like to read the last new novel (if I could be sure it was so) of the author of Waverley:-no one would be more glad than I to find it the best! T.

AFTER depositing a letter for you, my dear with the old postmistress at Mortaign,-which is a neat village about eight miles from hence, where I rested last night, and procured a guide-I set out for this place, and reached it a little before two. The rout passed through cultivated lands, varied with woods, which stretched off to the distance in pleasing swells. Soon after leaving the small village of Rinrolles, which consists merely of a few scattered huts, (or more properly hovels,) my guide pointed out the monastery. Its roof was just visible, amidst the thick body of foliage which surrounded it; indeed it is seated in an immense basin of wood. A small stream running through a valley, eastward of the convent, has had several barriers placed across it, at certain distances, to form, I imagine, fish-ponds. These heads of water vary the landscape most pleasingly, which otherwise would want feature, and present nothing but a mass of sky and wood. It must be allowed, however, that the latter is now a beautiful object by itself-glowing in all the richest tints of autumn. The woods here are principally of beech, intermixed with oak and linden. On the immediate approach, La Trappe appears little better than a collection of farm buildings. My guide sounded the bell at the great wooden gate, and placed me before the wicket, which was opened by a figure with a closely shaven head, wrapped in coarse brown cloth, reaching but little lower than his knees, and girded about the middle with a rope. In lieu of shoes and stockings he wore a pair of heavy wooden sabots; and directly, on opening the door, he threw himself on his knees: bending his head completely to the ground, he coupled his hands in the form of supplication, at the back of his neck, and seemed to whisper, what I at first thought might be a short benediction; but I have since been led to think it might be an intercession in respect of the breach he found it necessary to make in his vow of silence. Though I came here, expecting to find the most

La Trappe, 12th October, 1820. rigorous silence observed, as well as other severe penances, I had not anticipated a reception from one of the brethren in a manner so humiliating to himself, and affecting to

me.

The brother, on raising himself, humbly asked my pleasure;-then, motioning to me to follow him, conducted me into a small, but neat room, and retired. I had scarcely looked round the room, ere the door opened, and two of the community entered. They were young looking men, apparently little more than thirty years of age: their garment proved to me, that they were of a different rank from the monk who admitted me, as they were clothed in a light drab coloured tunic, which reached from head to foot. They threw back their cowls, and prostrated themselves on the cold bricks at my feet. After continuing in this posture a minute, they raised themselves, and exclaimed "Deo gratias." They then conducted me, in silence, to the chapel. The fraternity were just concluding the service as I reached it. In crossing the garden, there was something peculiarly solemn in the deep voices of the monks, contrasted with the perfect stillness that reigned around. The chapel is a plain wainscotted room, not above thirty feet in length, without any organ. I found the monks, about a dozen in number, on concluding the service, all turned towards the altar, and their eyes, fixed on the ground: they remained thus stationary, observing profound silence. After a short time, the Superior gave a gentle tap with a hammer, and the fraternity retired.Without a word, I was conducted back to the reception-room, and there left to my meditations: so that I now had an opportunity of inspecting it completely. It was of wainscot, with a brick-floor, and was decorated with four small prints:-the death of Joseph,-the Crucifixion of our Lord,-his Ascension,-and his Glorification in heaven, seated at the right hand of the Almighty. I found also a dissertation on the Trinity, in Latin; a crucifix, and re

ceptacle for holy water; and a manuscript, which speaks so much more forcibly to the general rules of the house, than I, by any description could do, that I took down the heads of it, and now send them you :

"Those who have entered this Monastry, have made the most humble supplications to Divine Providence. They avoid communication with each other, especially during pain. If they want any thing in the monastry, they address him who receives the visitors. "If you assist at the office of the church, or chaunt, conform to our manner, without noise at the end of the verse, or during the meditation, and begin not before the chaunters. "The fathers speak not: reads while eating; they pray with a low voice. Wound them not, by examining too closely the reader.

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"The guests who come within this house will find nothing unhospitable. If the religious whom they meet hold no conversation with them, it is because they are bound to keep silence; and the Holy Spirit hath said, that the man who loves conversation will not prosper on earth. "Throughout this house the most inviolable silence is to be observed, in the church, in the garden, in the refectory, in the dormitory, in the cloister. If you speak, it must be in a low voice; and speak not to the religious who may meet you. "If you perceive any one you have known in the world, it will be well if he does not recollect you. If it is your father, your brother, or your nephew, they have quitted the world. They converse only with God in this solitude; they are occupied only with the affairs of the soul, which are most important;

Every precaution, indeed, is adopted to avoid noise; and any father who should inadvertently throw down a book in the chapel, drop a knife or spoon in the refectory, or in any other way interrupt silence, would subject himself to the penance enjoined by the rules of the house, which meet even the minutest actions. They do not suffer themselves to lean on a chair; or, in illness, to take the benefit of physic.

After a short time, the father, whose office it was to receive strangers, and whom, for distinction's sake, I will name, Pere Loquitur, (for, on entering the Abbey, they abandon their family and take some sacred name)-entered the room. He first conducted me to the refectory, where preparations were made for dinner. It was a room about twenty-five feet in length, and fifteen in breadth, lighted by one window at the southern end. A small crucifix hung at the opposite extremity, and adjoining the door was a receptacle for holy water. Its walls were bare. Two narrow wooden tables, on trestles, ran along the room, on the sides of which, next the walls, were benches. Viands had been placed for fourteen persons, and the fare for each consisted of a thick potage of potatoes and greens, in a wooden bowl, holding above a quart; a large lump of black bread, two small apples, and a dingy brown jug of water. By the side of each portion, a wooden spoon, a small red earthen-ware tumbler, and a little brown holland

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napkin were placed. Thence I was conducted to the dormitory, which was over the chapel, and about the same size as the refectory: the beds exactly resembled the births in a packet, as they are ranged in a wooden frame-work, one above another, three in height, along the sides of the room. In front of each was a small pendant piece of brown holland: the internal furniture appeared to consist only of a mattress, blanket, and bolster; the members of this community never take off their clothes; they sleep in them. Adjoining this was a room appropriated to reading; it could hardly be called a library, for it contained only two or three shelves with books, a few stools, and a table. On the latter were scattered some volumes. At the north end, hung a tattered, but well executed, painting of a saint, writing by inspiration: it had no frame. On the stairs hung some coarse brown surtouts belonging to the fathers, ticketed with their respective names. The monastery is but a shattered relic of what it was before the Revolution. I made some enquiries of Pere Loquitur, and found there were nineteen fathers, including the Prior and Abbé, independant of the candidates, of whom there were about thirty. It was one of the candidates that opened the gate to me indeed, upon them the menial offices appear principally to devolve. The candidates are distinguished by the appellation of "Brethren," the Monks, are "Fathers." I have before noticed the wide distinction which directly strikes the beholder in their dress.

Pere Loquitur requested me to stay to dinner; upon which I begged to dine in the refectory, and partake of their fare. The request seemed to give him pleasure, rather than otherwise; and he asked me to stop the night I accordingly dismissed my guide, and walked in the garden with Pere Loquitur till the dinner bell rung. At the entry of the refectory, one father poured water on my hands; another held a bason for me; a third, a towel: all had their cowls drawn over the head and face, and, with the exception of the reader, they kept them so during the whole of the dinner time,

so that not a feature could be discerned. We entered the refectory in two files; and stood looking toward the cross while grace was chanting: after which, Pere Loquitur touched me on the arm, and pointed to a separate seat, where a neat table cloth was spread; two delftplates, a queen's ware bason, filled with potage, and a metal spoon and fork were set before me. It was with much difficulty I could get much of the potage down; as a vast quantity of sorrel juice was incorporated in the liquid, and the crust was the only part at all palatable of the sour black bread. I observed my friend, Pere Loquitur, and another young father, waited on the rest, which they effected with much activity, and but little noise, particularly when it is considered that they, like all the rest, were equipped in heavy wooden shoes. When the fathers had nearly emptied their basons of potage, a tin pan of potatoes and one of hot milk, were placed before each person; in addition to which, before me, was placed a bottle of cider, a glass tumbler, and a small plate of apples. One of the younger fathers read all dinner time, from a dry treatise on the early converts to Christianity; and ever and anon the Superior required a cessation of all occupation, by a gentle tap on the table with his hammer; after a few minutes, another knock announced that eating, drinking, and reading might again proceed; nor was a moment lost by any of the parties in resuming their occupations: they commenced again, as if by mechanism. During these intervals, I heard another voice reading in a distant room, and I frequently heard a hammer knock in that direction, so that I conclude the candidates dined in a room apart. observed also that I was shown over half the convent only. Dinner being ended, at the sound of the hammer we moved into the same files as before.-Grace was repeated,-after a few minutes of perfect silence, the hammer knocked, and we proceeded slowly into chapel to Vespers. At entering, every monk threw his cowl back, and I thus had an opportunity of seeing that one father was very aged: he appeared almost bent double. Their countenances gene

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