tourist season was drawing to a close, and only five ladies sat down to supper at the long, hospitable table, while the male visitors at the monastery numbered seven. Supper is prepared for all at the monastery; and it was excellent for those who do not mind the absence of meat, which the Carthusians never eat, nd never serve to their guests. It consisted of soup, omelette, fish, beans, sweets, and a glass of Chartreuse at dessert. "The English ladies do not like our soup,' "said the kindly sister, diffidently handing a thick bread soup, and seemed pleased that for once it found favor.

The fathers do not allow their rest to be disturbed by the visitors, and as there was no opportunity of seeing the monastery in the evening, the gentlemen could find no better employment after supper than to visit their wives in the infirmary-for which permission is given, in one of the public rooms. One Frenchman, who had not the excuse of a wife, invented a cousin ship for the occasion, and naturally claimed it, on arrival, with the youngest and prettiest. Thus a sociable, if not a monastic, evening was spent round the blazing fire till the hour of closing, nine o'clock, parted the company. The men are admitted to the night service in a gallery. Mass is said by the father-coadjutor, for the nuus and lady visitors, soon after six o'clock A.M., in the small chapel of Notre Dame de la Salette, which adjoins the monastery. It is well known that no women, except royal personages, are shown over the monastery, and they have to content themselves with descriptions and photographs. Before the French Revolution no woman was allowed to enter even the precincts of the desert, and royal benefactresses implored in vain to be buried with the saints.

The Grande Chartreuse consists of a large mass of irregular buildings, which, as they are surrounded by a wall, can only be seen well from a height. The most interesting room in it is the chapter room, which contains the portraits of all the heads of the Order, beginning with St. Bruno, whose statue by Foyatier is over the chair where sits the père général. Many remarkable men from various countries have filled this place, and have steered the Order through times of difficulty. Below the portraits are painted scenes from the life of St. Bruno, copied from

the paintings of Lesueur, which are now in the Louvre. In the hall, called l'Allée des Cartes, there are curious representations of old Carthusian monasteries in various parts of Europe. Before the French Revolution the collection was almost a complete one, but there only remain about thirty of these paintings now. The library contains some twenty thousand volumes, and has been entirely collected in modern times. The fathers may freely borrow from it. From the earliest times, even when very poor, the Carthusians have had a good library, and have valued books as their most precious possessions. The books are called in the early statutes the perennial food of souls," and they were placed under the care of the father-sacristan, who had also the care of the sacred vessels.*

During the fire of 1371 the general of the Order, mindful of the losses sustained on a former occasion, called out, Ad libros, ad libros; leave everything else, my fathers, but save the books." Though they were saved this time, the library was almost completely destroyed by subsequent fires, and the valuable one collected by Dom Le Masson, after the fire of 1676, was scattered during the French Revolution. At this time also the archives of the monastery were for the most part lost. A few valuable manuscripts, with beautiful illuminations done by the Carthusians, found their way into the library at Grenoble, where they may now be seen in glass cases. In the old days the Carthusians employed themselves in transcribing manuscripts; and from transcribers they be. came printers as soon as printing was invented. They have had their own authors, but these wrote chiefly on monastic matters, and are little known to the world at large.

The cells of the fathers are built round the cloister. There are thirty-six of them, one of which is not tenanted, and is alone shown. They are divided, like the earliest cells, into various compartments. On each door is the initial letter of the inmate's name, and a text or other inscription in Latin bearing on the monastic life, such as "Qui non reliquit omnia sua non potest esse discipulus tuus. Near the door is a little wicket, through which the father re

*La Grande Chartreuse, par un Chartreux, from which much of my information is taken.

ceives his food or anything else he may want. On the ground floor he has a little promenoir, or gallery, for walking in bad weather; a small garden, which he cultivates himself; a room with tools for carpentering; and, next to it, the bûcher, or store-room for wood. A staircase leads to a bedroom, an adjoining small study with bookshelves, and a room which was once used as a kitchen when the father cooked part of his own food, a custom which was abolished as early as the thirteenth century on account of the time it wasted. In the room when he sleeps is a small dining-table, with wooden plate, spoon and fork; and the oratory, where he performs the offices with the same ceremonial as in the choir-taking off and putting on the cowl, standing, kneeling, and lying flat on the ground. A bell calls the fathers simultaneously to their private devotions, as well as to those in the church.

In the staircase stands a cross, in remembrance of the following old legend, told by a Carthusian writer of the fourteenth century. A novice of the Order complained much of the rules, and especially of having to wear the black cope of the novitiate. One day he dreamed that he saw Christ, laden with a heavy cross, trying with much difficulty to go up the staircase of his cell; whereupon the novice, moved with pity, helped to lift the cross, saying, "Lord, take it not amiss if I try to assist Thee; I cannot endure to see Thee in such trouble." But the Lord turned indignantly toward him, and made him desist, saying, "Dost thou presume to lift this heavy burden while thou art not willing to wear for My sake so light a thing as a cope?" and disappeared, leaving the novice overwhelmed with shame and repentance. Since then every cell has had a cross near its staircase. In the Middle Ages the cells were foundations endowed by benevolent people, and in return prayers were said for their souls. Three times a day the fathers leave their cells to go to the offices-the night service, high mass, and vespers.

Once a week they take a walk together, called spaciement, of about three hours and a half, within the limits of the desert, and during that time they may talk.

They are called together for their walk by the same bell that tolls for the funerals, and they assemble in the Chapelle des Morts, where they hear a few verses from

start.

the Imitation read to them before they This chapel was built over the remains of the first disciples of St. Bruno, which were brought thither after the avalanche. Over the door there is a marble bust of Death, draping itself in a most pretentious way. This chapel is near the cemetery, where stone crosses with inscriptions mark the graves of the heads of the Order. The other tombs have merely wooden crosses over them, and are nameless. The Carthusians are not buried in coffins, but each monk is laid in the carth on a wooden plank.

On Sundays the fathers dine together in the refectory. They never speak there. Passages from the Scriptures, sermons or homilies, are chanted to them in Latin from a small tribune built in the wall, but they are allowed to have a colloquy between nones and vespers.

The discipline of the Carthusians is very rigorous, and the Order, therefore, never spread much among women. There are very few female Carthusian convents, and in these it was found necessary to relax somewhat the rules of silence and solitude, as they were too great a strain on the female constitution.

St. Bruno, though he lived the Car thusian life, did not formulate the rules himself. It was not till twenty-six years after his death that they were put into writing by Guigues, the fifth prior, under the name of consuetudines, or customs. They were, in fact, simply a record of customs that were followed, and that are still followed to this day. These rules all tend consistently to one end. "Contemplation" (says a Carthusian writer), or, in other words, to see, to love, and to praise God, "is the final end of the human soul in a future life. . . To begin here on earth in an imperfect manner, or in the least imperfect manner possible, the life of contemplation which will be led in heaven is the object which the Carthusians propose to themselves." The solitude is intended to detach them from distracting objects, and to enable them to concentrate themselves: the silence is to make them hear the Voice of God, which is not in the storm: the mortifications and privations are to free their souls from everything that might clog them and interfere with the end in view.

The Carthusians are the only Order who are never allowed meat under any circum

stances. The punishment for those who infringed the rule was at one time very severe they were cut off from the order -but it was afterward mitigated. They have a great monastic fast, which lasts from the 14th of September to Easter; and during that time, with few exceptions, they only have one meal a day.

They are frequently interrupted in thei sleep. The night service begins at 12 and lasts till 2, and they are waked again at 6 A.M., or sometimes at 5 A. M. The night services are very striking. But for the faint glimmer of a single oil lamp in the choir, and the lanterns which the fathers each bring with them, and which are sometimes put out during the service, the church is wrapped in darkness. Each stall is completely isolated by a partition. The Carthusians attach a special ineaning to these services.

All the Carthusians agree (says one of them. quoted before) that this is their best moment. To sing the praises of God at the foot of the altar, in the silence and shadows of the night, when the world forgets God, and many offend Him, fills the soul with a joy and comfort which cannot be bought too dear, and the hours fly rapidly. The stranger from his gal lery cannot form a clear idea of the office

not

having a book in his hand, the meaning of the words escapes him, and the time must seem long to him. Not so with the Carthusian in his stall he sings, and understands the mysterious meaning of the Psalms-that prophetic history of the Christian world, those divine hymns which, for thousands of years, the synagogue, and the Catholic Church after her, recite every day. He follows the numerous rites which have to be performed every moment; he seeks, finds, and applies to himself the Divine teaching that flows from the sacred text; and, finally, and above all, he addresses to God his homage, his praise, and his songs, The singing of the Carthusians is of the utmost simplicity, and somewhat monotonous. They have no part-singing. They are not allowed any musical instruments, and it is considered waste of time to practise singing. The religious emotions excited through the senses by elaborate church music are wholly alien to their sober and simple piety. This is not the only link between the Carthusian and the Calvinist.

The dress of the fathers is entirely of white wool, white being a symbol of the resurrection of Christ. The use of linen is forbidden. Even their sheets are of cloth. The difficulty of cleanliness under these circumstances would be to many of NEW SERIES.--VOL. LIII., No. 5.;

us the greatest of all mortifications, and it is comforting to hear what an old writer of the seventeenth century says about it :

C'est une chose générale par tout l'Ordre que Dieu n'a point voulu que les moines de cet Ordre soient affligez et inquiétez de ces puantes bestiales, appelées punaises, et en a exempté toutes leurs cellules, desquelles autrement et difficilement ils se pourraient garantir, ponr y avoir grande disposition, à cause qu'ils couchent vestus, n'usent point de linge, changent peu souvent d'habits, ont leurs cellules faites de bois par dedans, leurs lits fermés de bois au lieu de courtines,* et le fouâre (la pailasse) de leur lit qu'ils sont si peu curieux de changer qu'il y en a qui ne le changent pas en vingt ans une fois.

Thus

The Carthusians are a living example of the fact that asceticism is not injurious to health, for they reach a great age. Sonie of the Popes, from benevolent motives, have wished to soften their rules. Urban the Fifth, himself a Benedictine, proposed to mitigate their severity in four points. He proposed, among other things, that they should be allowed to eat meat in case of illness or infirmity. But the Carthusians implored the Pope not to oblige them to depart from their ancient customs, arguing that for their Order it might have serious consequences; and the sole mitigation they were obliged to accept was to wear a hat out of doors.

One of the Popes at Avignon also offered to relax the rule of abstinence froin meat in case of illness. This time the Carthusians sent as a protest a deputation of twenty-seven of their number, the youngest of whom was eighty, while the others varied between ninety, ninety three, and ninety-five. Such an appeal was more convinced. The fathers show their eareloquent than words, and the Pope was nestness and good sense by not admitting any one into their Order until they have cal fitness. Frequently after the trial the very seriously tested his 'moral and physiaspirant is refused, or retires of his own accord. Of all the ascetic Orders, the Carthusian is the most spiritual in the true sense of the word, and to maintain their lofty standard, as they have indisputably sift carefully. To impose asceticism where done for eight centuries, they have had to it would be too great a strain on human nature is to degrade rather than to elevate. "It is better," says Dom le Masson,

* They now have curtains..

แ to

set fire to a cell than to put in it a Carthusian without a vocation."

Sometimes the fathers have gone so far as to err on the safe side. It is told of one of the greatest generals of the Order, Dom Jean Pégon, that he was refused, when he first presented himself, on the ground that he seemed neither sufficiently robust nor instructed. But the fathergeneral, touched by his disappointment, recommended him to try at another Chartreuse, where there was a want of men. He was accepted there, and thirty-eight years later he entered the Grande Chartreuse as its father-general. At his installation he preached on the text, "The stone which the builders rejected is become the headstone of the corner.

The Carthusian vocation takes some by storm. There are various examples of it in the past, and we were told by a French lady on the spot of an instance in the present day a young Prince de B, who had suddenly, without apparent rea son, left his regiment, to the regret of all his comrades, and had made himself a Carthusian.

If the candidate is accepted at all, he goes through a month's probation, at the end of which the fathers vote by ballot whether he is to be admitted as a novice. The novitiate lasts at least a year, and again a ballot is taken. The novice then makes his first profession in the chapterroom. Kneeling, he repeats the sixteenth Psalin, and when he comes to the words, "The Lord is the portion of my inheritance," the father-general takes from him the black cope, and puts the large white Carthusian garment, called cuculle, over him.

Four years later the final solemn profession is made, during high mass, at the foot of the altar, where the profès lays down his written declaration, "signed, not with his name, but with a cross, for he is now dead to the world.'

Besides the fathers there are two categories of lay brothers: the frères convers, who have taken vows, and the frères donnés, who are only bound by a civil contract, though they may in course of time, after a trial of eleven years, become frères convers. The former are dressed in white, like the fathers; they wear beards, and have their heads shaved. The donnés wear brown on week-days and white on Sundays. These all do the practical work

in and out of the house, and are responsible to the père procureur, who has charge of all temporal matters.

In

St. Hugh of Lincoln, of whom the Carthusians are justly proud, was once procureur of the Grande Chartreuse. those days, and until the end of the seventeenth century, the père procureur lived with the frères convers in an establishment called La Correrie, on the road from the Grande Chartreuse to Grenoble by the Sappey-a kind of supplementary Chartreuse, where all the practical work was done, and where the servants of the priors who came to the general chapter received hospitality. It was destroyed by a fire in 1674, and partly rebuilt. During the French Revolution it fell into ruins, and the Carthusians have since turned it into a hospital for the sick poor of the neighborhood.

The Carthusians, owing to their own exertions, once had large possessions. They turned part of the desert into arable, and part of it into pasture land, and they kept large flocks and herds. Pope Innocent the Fourth allowed them as many as sixty cows. Their iron-foundries were famous throughout Dauphiné on account of the excellent work they produced. They manufactured their own cloth, they had their own printing-presses.

During the French Revolution they were, like all the other Orders, driven away, their property was confiscated, and though they were allowed to re-enter their monastery at the Restoration, they own the desert no longer, but pay a small rent to the State. It is said they make a large income from their liqueur; and this they put to the best use, for their charity is proverbial throughout the country, though by no means of the mischievous kindthat is, indiscriminate.

They have founded schools, churches, hospitals. Wherever there is a disaster in Dauphiné they assist liberally. At Currière, above the Pont St. Bruno, they have a school for the deaf and dumb, and, inconsistent as it may seem, they are teaching the dumb to speak.

It would be impossible, in a short space, to go through all the remarkable names connected with the Grande Chartreuse. St. Bernard was one of its earliest visitors, in the days of the first monastery. Petrarch, whose brother Gerard was a Carthusian, visited him there in 1352, and afterward wrote that, instead of finding

only one brother, as he expected, he had met one in every member of the community. Dom Gerard Petrarca distinguished himself by his piety and devotion during the Black Death, to which no less than 900 Carthusians fell victims. Richelieu's eldest brother, who became cardinal and great almoner of France, once filled the office of assistant sacristan; he remained twenty years in the Order, and always regretted his cell. His portrait, which hangs in one of the passages, strikes the visitors by its likeness to the great Cardinal. Rousseau and Chateaubriand both visited the Grande Chartreuse. Unfortunately, the Visitors' Book, in which Rousseau wrote 'J'ai trouvé ici des plantes rares, et des vertus plus rares encore," has been defaced by the modern tourist with profane remarks, and is now no longer presented, and the guests are asked for their cards instead.

66

It has sometimes been made a reproach to the Carthusians that, unlike other Orders, such as the Benedictine, they have exercised no influence over the intellectual world; but if they have not educated mankind, they have at least educated themselves. They have practised the gospel of silence for 800 years, and, according to all ecclesiastical historians, they have always led irreproachable lives. Their Order has never required reform. "Cartusia nunquam reformata quia nunquam deformata. 'In this matter-of-fact century, with its universal craving for material prosperity, its refinement of material comforts and luxury, where the spiritual life too often stagnates, it is refreshing to breathe, if but for a few hours, that rarefied spiritual atmosphere where the ideal alone is real, and where all Christian creeds may meet.-Nineteenth Century.

BUNYAN tells us, in the Pilgrim's Progress, that when Christian and Hopeful were nearing the Golden City, the streets of which were paved with gold, they met a person called Demas. The dialogue is

as follows:—

Demas (gentleman-like) called: Ho! Turn aside from the Golden City, and I will show you a thing.'

"Christian: 'What thing is so deserving as to turn us out of the way?.. Is not the place dangerous ?'

"Demas: Not very dangerous except to those that are careless; but withal he blushed as he said it."

Now Demas belonged, as he tells us, to a "silver fraternity,' "which he wished Christian and Hopeful to join, but they, seeing that the silver mine was surrounded with precipices, would not leave the way to the Golden City. They saw" By ends and his companions" coming along, and looking with greed to the "Hill of Filthy Lucre,' so it was clear that Demas would entice them out of the straight path. It came about that, at the first hail, they passed over to Demas, who led them to the silver mine. "But whether they fell into the pit, or whether they went down

I leave the allegory to the consideration of my bimetallic friends who would like. to reside in the City of Gold, but who also wish to sojourn among "the silver fraternity ;" and now proceed to describe the extraordinary proposals which Demas has made to the intelligent inhabitants of the United States.

The proposals, now under consideration, may be divided into those which are fairly debatable and those which are entirely irrational. To the first class I will give fair consideration during the course of this article. The second class requires. only to be stated to bring their own refutation.

The debatable proposals are the Bland Act of 1878, and its extension by the Silver Act of last year. The Bland Bill was originally a free coinage measure, but it