A New Medley of Memories Part 14

There was some talk of King Edward paying us a visit from Glenquoich, where he was Lord Burton's guest; but nothing came of it.

[8] I had presided at a festival of the a.s.sociation fifteen years previously (in 1897).

[9] A fine old soldier and sportsman, who had fought in Afghanistan and Burmah, and was afterwards appointed, first Clerk of the Cheque, and later standard-bearer, in the King's Bodyguard. He volunteered, when well over seventy, for service in the Great War, and was given, I think, some post in connection with the defences of the Forth Bridge.

[10] "I preach sitting," said Bateman: "it is more conformable to antiquity and to reason to sit than to stand."--Newman, _Loss and Gain_ (ed. 1876), page 70. My friend George Angus had followed suit at St.

Andrews.

[11] I say "tried"; for our good Belgian _chef_, who _said_ he understood the process, used some mysterious pickle of his own invention--with disastrous results!

[12] In the event of no candidate receiving a sufficient number of votes, the "scrutiny" was repeated again and again--often a very lengthy and tedious proceeding.

[13] "The winter is now past, the rain is over and gone." It was never really safe to quote these words at Fort Augustus before (say) the end of May.

[14] My brother-in-law, Sir Charles Dalrymple, had been one of those who most bitterly resented my change of religion in 1875, and still more my entrance into the Benedictine Order. But time had softened old asperities; and we had been on affectionate terms for many years past.

[15] _A Medley of Memories_ (1st Series), pp. 81, 82.

[16] Most of the Abruzzi was included in the extensive diocese of Monte Ca.s.sino (one of the largest in Italy), which was under the administration of the abbot, although he was not a bishop. His jurisdiction extended over no less than seven ancient dioceses--a fact symbolized by the interesting and unique custom of his wearing, when he celebrated pontifical high ma.s.s, seven different mitres in succession.

[17] Cardinal Gasparri, at that time Secretary of State to the reigning Pontiff, Benedict XV.

[18] The pioneer of the Benedictine revival in Brazil, and my Superior at the abbey of Olinda seventeen years before. See _A Medley of Memories_ (1st Series), chaps, xvi. and xvii. Dom Gerard was consecrated (t.i.tular) Bishop of Phocaea on April 18, 1906.

[19] Like Dr. Firmin's in _Philip_. "Dreary, sad, as into a great blank desert, looked the eyes."--Thackeray, _Philip_, chap. iii.

{246}

CHAPTER XIV

1913-1914

The object of the great gathering, in the summer of 1913, of Benedictine abbots in Rome, whither they had been especially summoned by the _Abbas Abbatum_, Pope Pius X., was not primarily devotional or liturgical, like the a.s.semblage just held at Monte Ca.s.sino. It was first and foremost a business meeting, called for the purpose of electing a coadjutor (with right of succession) to the first Abbot Primate of the Order, Dom Hildebrand de Hemptinne, the distinguished Belgian prelate, who, after a life entirely devoted to the interests of the Church and of his brother-monks, had been compelled by impaired and enfeebled health to retire from all active work. One of his most notable achievements had been the planning and erection, at the instance and with the generous help of Leo XIII., of the n.o.ble monastic college on the Aventine, which that Pontiff declared would be the greatest material monument of his fifteen years' tenure of the see of Peter. It was pathetic that, although in residence at St. Anselm's College (his own beloved foundation) when we a.s.sembled there for the business in hand, Abbot de Hemptinne was quite unable to take any part in it, or even personally to welcome us to Rome. He appeared only once in public during our stay {247} there--a mere wreck of the active personality which had been so long a.s.sociated with the interests and the progress of our Order in every part of Christendom. We at Fort Augustus owed much to his wisdom and sympathetic kindness; and I was touched to see, during the few minutes' conversation which I had with him, how his face lightened up, and something of the old alertness reawakened in his voice and bearing, as we spoke of new hopes and new developments in connection with our Scottish abbey.[1]

There were at this time just a hundred _abbates regiminis_ (i.e. ruling abbots, excluding those holding merely t.i.tular rank) of Black Monks in the Christian world; and of these I ranked last--for we took precedence according to the date of appointment, not according to the antiquity of our respective abbeys. Seventy-five were actually present in Rome and most of the absentees had sent proxies to represent them. Four (two from U.S.A., one Brazilian, and one Australian) were of episcopal rank, and six others, though not bishops, exercised episcopal jurisdiction.

There were ten Arch-abbots, or abbots-president, of various national Congregations; the rank and file being "ruling abbots" from every country in Christendom. Latin was, of course, the official language at our meetings, and to some extent the medium also of private intercourse, though the variations of p.r.o.nunciation made this a matter of some difficulty. The great hall of the abbey where our sessions were held was bad acoustically; and the magnates at the table of honour (some of them {248} prelates of great age) mumbled so inaudibly that we, in our humble places at the end of the hall, raised a cry of "Altius! loquimini altius! nihil audivimus!" and others of the fathers took up the cry of "Nihil! nihil!" At the first scrutiny the abbot of Einsiedeln, in Switzerland, got eighty-four out of the ninety-eight votes, which seemed decisive, and would have been so had he not, "c.u.m magna grat.i.tudine," but extremely emphatically, declared that nothing would induce him to accept. The Pope, who was appealed to, expressed his regret, but declined to put any pressure on the reluctant abbot: two more scrutinies followed, and finally Abbot von Stotzingen, of Maria-laach, was elected by seventy-five votes. _Causa finita est_.

Our work finished, I had a few days to renew old happy memories of Rome, greatly changed (I suppose materially for the better) since my first visit in 1875. I went the round of the great basilicas, and explored the vast cemetery of S. Lorenzo in quest of the grave of my uncle David,[2] laid to rest there fourty-four years before. I found it in good repair, with flowering shrubs growing round it, and read with interest the beautiful Latin epitaph, written by the scholarly pen of Archbishop Manning, who had received him into the Church, and afterwards officiated at his simple funeral.

I celebrated the Whitsuntide solemnities in our own church of St.

Anselm, much impressed by the virile and sonorous chant of the monastic choir. {249} I left Rome a few days later, travelling by night to Milan, where I said ma.s.s early in the duomo--more impressive than I had ever yet seen it in the dull morning light, with the vast s.p.a.ces in deep shadow, and the great jewelled windows gleaming faintly through the murk. From Milan a long and fatiguing journey brought me to Maredsous, the famous Belgian abbey which I had seen only once since I had spent four months there as a young monk thirty years before. The vast pile of building, of dark slate-coloured stone in the severest Gothic, seemed to have altered little since 1883 (there is something singularly, almost appallingly, unchangeable about these great monasteries); but of course the trees about it had grown, and there were additions near by--one the interesting school of arts and crafts directed by the monks, where I saw excellent goldsmiths' and enamel work done by the pupils, as well as fine embroideries. Another new and striking feature was the nuns' abbey, a quarter of a mile away, with a large and beautiful church open to the public. I found here an English portress, with the English name of Sister Winifred; and the abbess, a sister of our good abbot-primate in Rome, spoke English well; but she persuaded me (after cake and wine) into giving a _conference_ in French to her community, about our doings at Monte Ca.s.sino and Rome.

It was interesting to pa.s.s straight, as I did, from a great modern abbey in being to the impressive remains of our cathedral priory at Canterbury, and to sleep in an Elizabethan bedroom constructed within the ancient guest-hall of the monks. My kind host, Canon Moore, devoted a day to showing {250} me the wonders of his cathedral; and a party of cathedral dignitaries (and their wives) were asked to meet me at dinner. I had some talk with a pleasant, though minor, canon,[3]

who had been for a time in charge of our choir at Magdalen. From Canterbury I went on to Douai Abbey, to preside at their school prize-giving, and then to keep St. Philip's _festa_ with the London Oratorians, who had invited a Fort Augustus monk (Dom Maurus Caruana[4]) to preach this year the panegyric of their patron saint. I look back on these Oratory festivals as among the pleasantest of London summer days--the marble altars in the great church aglow with roses and lilies and orchids; music of the best from the unrivalled choir:[5]

sometimes a really eloquent sermon, and luncheon afterwards, in company with all that was best in the Catholic society of the day, in the cool s.p.a.cious refectory, hung round with portraits of Faber and Dalgairns and Knox and other eminent Oratorians. I sat on this occasion next a kindly _litterateur_ and critic--so kindly a one that even when he does attack you (as Russell Lowell put it)

"you doubt if the toes That are trodden upon are your own or your foe's."

{251} We spoke of printers' perennial errors; and he quoted two new to me--one from the prospectus of a new company: "Six thousand _snares_ of five pounds each"; and the other from a speech of Lord Carnarvon: "Every clergyman is expected nowadays to have the intellect and wisdom of a Jeremy Taylor"--the last two words being transformed by a reporter into "journeyman tailor!" The word "clergyman" (in these days somewhat discredited) suggested to my friend Tennyson's dictum: "The majority of Englishmen think of G.o.d as an immeasurable clergyman in a white tie"; and to me a line from the same poet's "May Queen," which had always seemed to me the _ne plus ultra_ of bathos:[6]

"And that good man, the clergyman, has spoken words of peace."

I stayed a night at Kelburn on my way north to congratulate my brother-in-law, as it was not only his eightieth birthday, but his fortieth wedding-anniversary also fell this year. I was glad to find myself at home again after five weeks' absence; but it was only for a few weeks, as I had to go to Yorkshire in June, for the quinquennial General Chapter of our Order at Ampleforth, where our first business was to re-elect and install Abbot Gasquet as our abbot-president.[7] I attended, a few days later, {252} a dinner of our Catholic Etonian a.s.sociation. Shane Leslie and (Mgr.) Hugh Benson both made capital speeches, and I had the honour of proposing _Floreat Etona_. George Lane Fox (a _quondam_ captain of the boats) was our president; and it was interesting to learn that among Catholic Etonians were three old captains of oppidans, Lords Abingdon and North, and Sir Francis Burnand. I stayed for this function with the kind Oratorians, who always had one or two Etonians in their community.[8] Their s.p.a.cious house was delightfully quiet, and the verdant shady garden might have been two miles, instead of a bare two hundred yards, from the bustle and traffic of Brompton Road. I a.s.sisted next day in their church at the marriage of another Etonian Catholic, Sir Joseph Tichborne, and looked with interest on the smart young lifeguardsman, son of the baby defendant in the famous lawsuit more than forty years before. It is hard now to realize the _furore_ caused by the great "Tichborne Case,"

which sapped old friendships and engendered lasting animosities among people who had no earthly connection with it[9]--for the old English Catholic families, which _were_ {253} closely interested in the matter, took it very quietly and never discussed it in public. I have never known since any popular excitement in the least like it.

I was back at Fort Augustus before the end of June; and the summer and autumn (both wonderfully fine this year) pa.s.sed quickly and happily.

Long sunshiny days brought us, as always, many visitors, among the first being the large contingent of Glasgow Catholics who came as usual, during their "Fair Week," to spend some days at our abbey, partly in pious exercises and partly in enjoyable excursions. Our most notable guest this year was perhaps the young King of Uganda (I believe his proper t.i.tle was not King but "Kabaka"), who came to Fort Augustus for a week-end with his dusky suite, and spent some hours with us--a tall, graceful and agreeable, but very shy, youth in a lovely robe of peac.o.c.k blue (he had arrived at the inn the night before wearing a dingy covert-coat over a sort of white ca.s.sock). One of his fellow-chiefs, I think the only Catholic of the party, had a huge rosary slung round his neck during the visit to our monastery. Another distinguished visitor was Cardinal Bourne, whose clerical secretary had been driving him (_incog._) all over the Highlands, and over all sorts of roads, in a little two-seater motor. This had to go into hospital on their arrival; but through the kindness of an American neighbour I was able to escort our guests in a roomy "Fiat" to Glengarry (our most notable beauty-spot), and to the famous little inn, embowered in woods on the edge of the amber rushing Garry, where there were many notable names in the visitors' book, though {254} not, I think, up till then the signature of a Prince of the Roman Church. His Eminence's visit synchronized with our Highland Games and annual concert, both of which he honoured with his presence; and next day he and his faithful monsignor trundled off westwards in their little car, much pleased (as we all were also) with their brief sojourn in our abbey guest-house.

Apart from the normal duties inc.u.mbent on the head of a monastic community, I had, from the time of first taking the reins, placed three objects in the forefront of my hopes and aspirations, and had endeavoured never to lose sight of them. These were, first, an increase in our numbers by the admission of suitable aspirants to our life; secondly, the renovation and utilization of the long derelict buildings of the abbey-school, and the reopening of the school itself as soon as feasible; and thirdly, the hastening of the long antic.i.p.ated day when work should be resumed on our abandoned church, and a part of it, at least, completed and opened for Divine Service. Thanks to the goodwill and support of my own brethren, and to the interested sympathy of many friends outside, I had the happiness of seeing all these hopes in a fair way to be realized within a twelvemonth of my receiving the abbatial benediction. Four of our first year's batch of novices were ultimately admitted to profession and to holy orders: they were joined by two priests from the Scottish mission, both of whom took their vows after due probation; while there were also affiliated to our community two young English monks from a German monastery near Birmingham, as well as a novice from the monastery of Caldey, in South {255} Wales, almost all the members of which had, with their superior, made their submission to the Catholic Church in the previous year.[10] We were all agreed in the wish and hope that the eminently Benedictine work of the education of youth within our own abbey walls, discontinued for several years, should be resumed as soon as circ.u.mstances permitted.

Carpenters and painters, plasterers and plumbers, were soon busily engaged at the much-needed work of repair and restoration. The buildings were practically ready for occupation in the summer of 1914; but our hopes of reopening the school a few months later were frustrated by the world-stirring events of July and August of that year. It was a great satisfaction to all of us to be able, a little later, to place our renovated college at the disposal of the Red Cross, and to see it utilized as an Auxiliary Hospital, first for the wounded soldiers of our gallant Belgian allies, and then for the wounded of our own armies.[11]

The date of resuming the long suspended work on the fabric of our greatly-needed church, which I had at least as much at heart as the two other objects already mentioned, depended, of course, on the slow but steady increase of our building-fund; and there were always willing helpers, both within and without our community, toward the ingathering of a sum without which it would have been {256} imprudent to recommence operations. Some of our fathers showed most commendable zeal and energy in the not very pleasant or grateful task of begging: they planted and watered, and G.o.d certainly sent the increase. Among other efforts, a great garden fete was organized at Terregles, near Dumfries, the beautiful old seat of the Maxwell-Stuarts. I opened the proceedings: the day was lovely and the grounds thronged, and a very substantial sum was realized for our fund. It was a great joy to us all when, thanks to the success of this and other schemes, we were at length able to see our way (let me use the obnoxious phrase with grat.i.tude for once!) to approve of the new plans--a modification of, or rather a complete departure from, Pugin's elaborate Gothic designs, and to see our ma.s.sive Norman choir gradually rising in its severe and solid beauty. The actual commencement of the work was delayed by a curious incident--the appearance on the far horizon of a supposed benefactress, said to be prepared to provide funds to an untold amount for the erection of our church, on a plan approved by herself. I had actually to go to Harrogate to discuss this Utopian scheme--not with the mysterious lady in person, but with a friend who was supposed to represent her. I never even heard her name, but have every reason to suppose that it was "Mrs. Harris!" Anyhow the next thing I heard was that she had sailed (I think) for China, and we never saw, as the saying goes, the "colour of her money." I do not think that we had ever really expected to, so the disappointment was the less; and there was no worse consequence than a little delay which we could very well put up with after waiting for {257} so many years to get the builders to work again.

The only event outside our own circle which I recall in the later months of 1913 was the solemn blessing of the new abbot of Douai (an old friend and fellow-novice of mine), at which I a.s.sisted in October.

The ceremony and subsequent luncheon lasted for nearly five solid hours, and I began to think that I was getting too old for such protracted functions! though I found the monks of the Berkshire abbey, as always, most kind, considerate and hospitable. Staying at Keir on my way home, I found a big shooting-party a.s.sembled--Tullibardines, Elphinstones, Lovats, Shaw Stewarts and others. All day long they were banging at pheasants (how remote those days of battues seem in 1922!) and in the evening there were ghost-stories and music, Lady Tullibardine's piano-playing and singing (of very high quality indeed) giving especial pleasure to her hearers.

On our national festival of St. Andrew I had the pleasure of admitting two novices to profession--the first ceremony of the kind since 1908.

We kept also this month the "silver jubilee" of two of our fathers, of whom one had been born without an ear (in the musical sense), and had never sung ma.s.s in his life, but on this unique occasion chanted the Gospel as deacon. December brought wild and stormy weather, which did not, however, interfere with our customary activities; and many of our fathers were at this time out giving missions, or temporary a.s.sistance to invalided or absent priests. One of my Boyle nephews--a flying-man like his younger brother--was married this month {258} to the daughter of an Australian judge:[12] I could not be present, but telegraphed to him, "The best of luck to you on earth and in the air!" An unwelcome December visitant was an epidemic of gastric influenza, which prostrated some of our community for a week or two; but all were recovered, and most of our wanderers returned, for the Christmas festival--a real old-fashioned one as regarded the weather, with hard frost and snow lying seven inches deep. This was a rather unusual state of things at Fort Augustus, where the comparatively high temperature of Loch Ness (never known to freeze even in the hardest winters) seemed to affect the whole district.[13] Lochaber too, where winter is as a rule wild and wet rather than cold, was this year frostbound and snowed up; and our afternoon diversion, on a Sunday which I spent there, was to trudge a mile or two through the snow and see the red deer fed by hand--a pretty and unusual spectacle.

Among the domestic incidents of the New Year was the opening of our village drill-hall, to be available to "all denominations" for recreational purposes. Hitherto the "Churches" had run their {259} own halls on more or less exclusive lines; but in the new one the Protestant lion was to lie down, so to speak, with the Catholic lamb (or _vice versa_!) and all was to be harmony and peace. I inaugurated the new era by a lantern-lecture on "Unknown Brazil," which a kindly newspaper report described as "brimful of information and sparkling with anecdote and humour!" It was anyhow a successful start and the hall proved a really valuable addition to our village a.s.sets. I was unable to attend the next lecture--a most interesting ill.u.s.trated history of the old Fort--being called south to attend the funeral of the Bishop of Galloway, an old and faithful friend of our house, with whom I had been intimate for close on forty years. The funeral procession, with crucifix and choir, vested clergy and mitred prelates, pa.s.sing through the streets of Dumfries thronged with silent mourners, was one of the most remarkable spectacles I ever witnessed in Scotland.

Bishop Turner had long been on terms of close friendship with the Bute family; but Bute and his brothers, being all abroad, were represented by their brother-in-law Colin MacRae. I went south from Dumfries, having some business with Cardinal Bourne, who talked, _inter alia_, of the chapel (St. Andrew's) in his cathedral which was being adorned at Bute's expense, and of the question whether the numerous texts should be in Latin or English. I was all for Latin in the metropolitan cathedral of the Empire, the resort of worshippers of every tongue and every nation. His Eminence, however, favoured English, and I (like Mr.

Alfred Jingle) "did not presume to dictate."[14] I was elected this {260} week a member of the Oxford and Cambridge Club, of which the big, quiet, and well-furnished library was to me the chief attraction. The Protestant drum had been, I was a.s.sured, if not beaten, at least discreetly tapped, by a small clique of members in connection with my candidature--a curious fact in what somebody describes as "the so-called twentieth century"; but a gracefully-worded telegram from my proposer and seconder[15] informed me that the plot (if there ever was one, which I rather doubted) had failed. I went to Arundel for the Lourdes festival, always kept solemnly there; found the kind Duke and d.u.c.h.ess encircled, as usual, by a cloud of youthful Maxwells, and heard Bernard Vaughan (just returned from the U.S.A.) preach eloquently on "The claims of the Church" with a distinctly American accent, and, later on, regale us in the smoking-room with a choice collection of American chestnuts!

I got back to our abbey just in time to give the last blessing to our good old brother Nathalan, who died at the age of ninety-nine, the patriarch of the Benedictine Order in these islands and possibly in Christendom. A native of Glengairn, he spoke the Aberdeenshire idiom of his mother-Gaelic with remarkable purity and fluency; and he could talk for hours about beasts and birds, old smuggling adventures, second sight, and cognate subjects. His grandfather had fought for Prince Charlie at Culloden; and he knew the name and history of {261} every Glengairn man who had taken part in that historic battle. A man of robust faith and deep practical piety, he was content and happy in the monastery, which he had only entered when well over seventy. He was totally blind (though otherwise in good health) for some time before his death; and morning after morning his bowed and venerable figure, supported by a younger brother, might be seen wending its way to the chapel where he daily heard ma.s.s and received Holy Communion. I was glad to be at home for the closing hours of the life of the good simple old man, whose death made a felt blank in the family circle of our community.

The early months of the eventful year 1914 pa.s.sed quickly and quietly enough at our Highland abbey. We resolved soon after Easter to accept the contract for the building of the choir of our church--a venture of faith, for the necessary sum was not yet all in hand; but we felt that we were justified in making a start. A few days later came the interesting and gratifying news that the elevation of Abbot Gasquet to the Cardinalate--often rumoured in recent years--was actually decided on. This entailed an "extraordinary" meeting of Chapter in connection with the Abbot-president's resignation of that office; and going south to attend it, I took the occasion of accepting an invitation to officiate at the Corpus Christi procession at Arundel. It was a curiously impressive function in that old-world English town: the long _cortege_ of clergy and choristers and people, with the tall Venetian lanterns, scarlet and gold, waving above their heads as they pa.s.sed slowly, to the sounds of sacred psalmody, under the grey walls of the castle and back into the great church of {262} St. Philip. I went on from Arundel to Oxford, to stay with Father Maturin, the acting Catholic chaplain there (his undergraduate flock now numbered nearly a hundred), and was delighted to see the good work he was doing. One was always sure of a good story from him; and _a propos_ of his wish to introduce hymn-singing at his Sunday services, he told me of the Sunday-school superintendent who, dissatisfied with the children's dead-alive singing of the well-known temperance hymn, "Little Drops of Water," himself repeated the first line, adding, "Now, please, put a little spirit into it!" My old tale of the don who objected to men coming to church in slippers reminded him, he said, of a college dean he had heard of in his Cowley days, who, to an undergraduate asking leave to go down to attend his great-aunt's funeral, replied after some hesitation, "Well, you may go; but I must say I do wish it had been for a nearer relation!"[16]

The June of 1914 was exceptionally hot, and I found the long journey to the Highlands so intolerably tedious and dusty that I could not resist jumping out of the train at the head of Loch Lomond, and staying the night there. I wrote on a picture postcard to an editorial friend in London--"not for publication," but just to tantalize him in his stuffy sanctum in Fleet Street:

{263}

Delightful little Highland inn. Just dined--_puree aux pois_, a Loch Lomond trout (pink and flaky), an excellent mutton chop, and gooseberry pie. Here is a view of Loch Lomond from my window, but the Ben has its lace nightcap on. The colours are simply exquisite.[17]

Later in the summer I attended a great gathering at Downside (fifteen bishops and ten abbots were guests of the abbey) for the solemn reception of Cardinal Gasquet at his mother-house. There were imposing church functions, of course, concerts, speeches galore, and on the closing day of the festivities a luncheon-party of six hundred, after which we (Cardinal, bishops, and abbots) motored off in clouds of dust for Bristol and Cardiff, for the opening of the Eucharistic Congress there. I stayed for the week at the castle, where were also Cardinals Bourne and Gasquet, the Gainsboroughs, and others; the Butes gave a banquet one evening, followed by a great reception, in honour of the a.s.sembled dignitaries, who were also entertained by the Lord Mayor in the splendid town hall. Just a fortnight after the closing of the Congress, Germany declared war on Russia and France; and three days later, on the midnight which ushered in the feast-day of Saint Oswald, the English soldier-saint and martyr, Britain took up arms against Germany. _Jacta est alea_!

The reverberations of the Great War were not unfelt even in our quiet home among the Highland hills; and our life, like the life of every cla.s.s of the community in those years of storm and stress, was affected profoundly, and in many ways, by the {264} struggle which for four long years was rending the civilized world. A detailed record of those years of war, even so far as we were touched by it, would be out of place in this chronicle of peaceful days. Many of our former pupils, and some who had worn our habit and shared our life in the cloister, fought, and more than one died, for king and country: a band of devoted priests--few indeed, yet a large proportion of our total number--worked throughout the war, at home and abroad, as chaplains in the army and the navy, two of them being severely wounded, and two decorated by the King for their good service; and, finally, we who perforce remained at home had the consolation and satisfaction of receiving into our provisional hospital a long succession of wounded soldiers, Belgian and British, and of co-operating with the good people of our village and neighbourhood in the work of tending and succouring them. So, according to our measure, we "did our bit" like the rest, and could feel, when the day of peace at length dawned, that we had tried to render service to our country at a time when she had a right to the service of all her sons.

I write down these closing memories in our monastery under the Southern Cross, in the great South American city where my brethren in Saint Benedict, active and devoted men, but far too few for the ever-growing work that lies ready to their hands, are leading the same life of prayer and liturgy, untiring, pastoral labour, and the education of the young in religion and letters, which has been the mission of our Order all through the Christian centuries. It is high noon on this Brazilian summer's {265} day, and the fierce sun beats down from a cloudless sky on the luxuriant tropical garden which glows beneath the window of my quiet cell. At the foot of the last page I inscribe the same words as the monastic annalist inscribed of old beneath the laboriously-written ma.n.u.script which had been the work of his life:

Explicit chronicon lx. annorum Deus misericordie miserere miseri scriptoris.