One might repeat, in reference to him, what Bartello says: "There is not a greater friend to goodness, To downright dealing, to faith, and true heart, In fact, the cloistral admonitions were ever directed against all indirect, crooked, and deceitful ways; and accordingly your hooded man speaks like Aminta, Take heed of lies! Truth, though it trouble some minds, And, like the sun, though never so eclipsed, Must break in glory." The old hermit of Bassano, on discovering the sanctity and merit of St. Ignatius of Loyola and his companions, whose zeal for others he did not at first understand, said that he had at length learned from heaven that the bark of a tree is very different from its sap; but the truth is, that often even the exterior of these men speaks for them sufficiently. And we may observe accordingly that the ancient painters and writers represent the monastic countenance as something very different from what it is thought to be in times when it is drawn only from the report of enemies. Vasari, relating that Francesco Monsignori portrayed from the life many of the monks who were dwelling in an abbey where he was occupied in painting, adds, " All these are heads of extraordinary beauty." On looking at such figures, one is reminded of what Michel Agnolo said of a statue by Donato, that he had never seen a face looking more like that of a good man. Zurbaran, Murillo, and Le Sueur drew their monastic heads from life; modern engravers, caricaturists, and novelists, from their imaginations. Persons who have embraced this state of life, without wanting in many instances even the beauty of form which is ascribed to Brother Angelo the Franciscan, generally wear to all observers the expression incompatible with ugliness, of being just, laborious, modest, gentle, kind, and charitable. Peter, abbot of St. Remy, writing to the monks of Grandmont, qualifies them as being eminently the just; for he begins saying, "Scio quia in concilio justorum et congregatione magna opera Domini;" and of the same congregation an ancient inscription thus testifies : "Hic antiqua senum probitas, hic semina morum Quem numerosa patrum cunctis ex partibus orbis, Charitable in every sense of the word monks and friars assuredly prove themselves. Bucchius, speaking of many prelates and cardinals who were, he says, "intending the destruction of our order," adds, "quorum nomina taceo, quia recenter mortui sunt * 66 Of toleration too, consequently, we find them eloquent, and sometimes, even in times deplorably deficient in that respect, successful advocates. The Franciscans in 1287 were distinguished by their charity to the Jews, who, it must be confessed, have in all ages shown themselves grateful to the religious orders that respected and protected them. An ancient author says, "Now it appeared how greatly the Minors were esteemed by the king and the peers of England, when, to the great wonder of the whole nation, they procured a revocation of the sentence solemnly passed upon the Jews. It is true," he adds, 'their main argument to obtain a release from the execution of the law was a promise to endeavour to convert that people; as, in fact, the salvation of their precious souls was their motive in this request." But it does not follow that this was exclusive of other reasons which we should now esteem more solid. They certainly believed that all constraint in matters of religion was both pernicious and absurd. Mathieu Paris, however, who mentions that on a former occasion the lot of the Jews in London, when led to prison, was deplored with dry eyes by their rivals, and that seventy-one were delivered out of prison and from death by the intercession of the Franciscans, is content with adding, "The friars, I believe, notwithstanding what the world says, were guided by the spirit of piety, because as long as man is a wayfarer and in the world he has his free will, and can be saved, and one ought to have hopes; while for the demons only we can neither hope nor pray." "None of the socalled Spanish Protestants," says an English author, “have enumerated the propositions and sentiments that tolerance is a Christian duty, that honesty in matters of belief is of greater moment than the quality of the belief, and that speculative error can never be corrected by civil punishment, none of them,” he says, "express these principles so clearly as the Benedictin Virues, in his treatise against the opinions of Luther and Melancthon §." If, in fact, instead of reading about them in prejudiced authors, a man will only sit at the side of monks, or take a walk with them through the woods, he will come to the stranger's conclusion, that no two spirits can be more opposed than theirs, and the violent, intolerant, vituperative mind of the Warburtonian school, in which genius and learning are associated with insolence, intolerance, and habitual contumely and outrage. They never attempt to advance the cause of religion by bois * Lib. Conform. 131. + Collectanea Anglo-Minoritica, 99. terous glee, facetious scoffs, and personal antagonisms. They have no expressions of violence and contempt for their Christian and ecclesiastical contemporaries, no remarks characterized by intemperance, coarseness, and acrimony respecting those who are enemies to revelation. Whatever may be advanced by rash and misinformed writers, obstinate in repeating charges of which the falsehood has been demonstrated by history itself, violent measures, even in the worst times, and the spirit of persecution, were foreign to the monastic orders. There is no flame in them but what lights them to charity. Despotism and oppression were not their work, though it is supposed, from the fact of their being eminently Catholic, that they were hostile to the freedom which Protestantism professes to establish. But, as a penetrating observer professing the latter says, "what mistaken zeal to attempt to connect one religion with freedom, and another with slavery!" It is admitted by our best historians that James II., in seeking to make himself absolute and independent of his parliament, had no intention to establish the Catholic religion, much less monasteries, being served, as Mr. Fox observes, by ministers, no one of whom had the slightest leaning towards either; and that it was against tyranny, and not against the ancient faith, that the nation rose. Notwithstanding the dissent of Sir James Mackintosh, this conclusion is very credible; at all events, it supposes wisdom in those to whom it is ascribed. For who laid the foundations of English liberty? What was the mixed religion of Switzerland? What has the Protestant religion, with its hatred of the religious orders, done for liberty in Denmark, in Sweden, throughout the north of Germany, and in Prussia? A celebrated statesman says that there is more serfdom in England now than at any time since the Conquest; that there are great bodies of the working classes of this country nearer the condition of brutes than they have been at any time since the Conquest. If, when seeking to revolutionize a state under the mask of preaching religious doctrines, or simply to introduce into a country that knows nothing of religious disputes the principle of each person renouncing authority, and inventing a religion for others, men be restrained by the civil power through political motives, Protestantism cries out persecution, and ascribes it to the monks, because they happen to be found in that country, and to the whole Catholic Church, because that government is Catholic; but surely, even in these cases, whatever may be the motives of that government, an equitable judge will not blame either the monks, who have never been consulted, or Catholicism, which may have been as little. There is nothing, at all events, on such occasions to justify a panegyric on those who cry the loudest; but the same observer may repeat the words of this author, and say, VOL. VII. T "I am not forced to be silly because I esteem the Protestant religion, nor will I ever join in eulogiums on my faith which every man of common reading and common sense can so easily refute." But on all the ordinary occasions of life, whether great or little, we find that monks and friars are the advocates of mercy and forgiveness; and as contrasted with the violence of other men in times of lawless power, their conduct in this respect is often remarkable. An instance recorded of St. Peter of Alcantara may be cited in proof. When on his road from the convent of Avenas to Avila, being arrived at the hostel of the Pic, he was obliged to lie down on the ground through sickness and fatigue, and his companion forgot to tie up their ass, which strayed into the garden, and ate some herbs. The hostess perceiving it, fell into a paroxysm of fury, styling the friars vagabonds and robbers, and shaking the saint's mantle with such violence, that his head, which rested on it, fell on the stones, and the blood flowed from it. Humble silence, kneeling for pardon before her, and the sufferings of the venerable_old man, only seemed to add to her rage. At this moment Don Francis de Guzmar, a gentleman of Avila, happening to pass by, was filled with horror on seeing the saint, whom he recognized, in such a condition; and when he heard the cause of his wound explained, he became so indignant, that he resolved, in the fury of his passion, to burn the inn to the ground, and gave orders to his servants for that purpose; and "he would infallibly," says an ancient writer, have done so, but for the entreaties of the saint, who persuaded him, on the contrary, to give money to the woman to indemnify her for the vegetables his ass had eaten." The instance is trivial, but it no less shows the essential spirit of the monastic family. 66 To a recognition, also, of their justice and loyalty the monks during many ages owed much of their influence. Deception was not one of their arts. Lavalette, master of the knights of Malta, in their distress being obliged to coin base money of a fictitious value, placed on it the words "Non æs, sed fides." With all their predilection for the people, the religious orders are staunch friends of governments. Their aims are high and honest. The wrong that is done to majesty they mourn for; they love their rulers; it is their ambition to have them know themselves, and to that purpose they often run the hazard of a check; but, seeing them distressed, they forget past faults. When Richard I. was imprisoned, the Cistercian order by a voluntary decree gave all its wool, which constituted its whole revenue, for the king's ransom t. Being an apostolic life, every thing in the monastic state tends to nourish that loyalty inculcated by St. Mat. Paris, 1196. *Liv. iv. c. 7. Paul, in combination with a sense of justice. Legislators who have put down these orders, and who make laws to keep them down, talk much of their own loyalty. But mark what a keen and near observer says of them. "These men hanging about a court not only are deaf to the suggestions of mere justice, but they despise justice; they detest the word right; the only word which rouses them is peril; where they can oppress with impunity they oppress for ever, and call it loyalty and wisdom. God save the king! in these times too often means, God save my pension and my place! God give my sisters an allowance out of the privy purse! make me clerk of the crown! let me live upon the fruits of other men's industry!" It is not with such views that the monks sing "Domine salvum fac regem." Jocelin de Brakelond mentions many instances of the monastic justice, firmness, and generosity. "After this," he says, "the Abbot Sampson and Robert de Scales came to an agreement concerning the moiety of the advowson of the church of Wetherden, and the same Robert acknowledged it to be the right of St. Edmund and the abbot. Thereupon the abbot, without any previous understanding taking place, and without any promise previously made, gave that moiety which belonged to him to Master Roger de Scales, brother of the same knight, upon this condition, that he should pay by the hand of our sacrist an annual pension of three marks to that master of the schools who should teach in the town of St. Edmund. This the abbot did, being induced thereto by motives of remarkable generosity; and as he had formerly purchased stone houses for the use of the schools, that the poor clerks should be free from house-rent, so now from thenceforth they became freed from all demand of monies which the master of the school of custom demanded for his teaching. However, by God's will, and during the abbot's life, the entire moiety of the aforesaid church, which was worth, as it is said, one hundred shillings, was appropriated to such purposes. 66 In 1198, Adam de Cokefield dying, left for his heir a daughter of three months old; and the abbot gave the wardship, as belonging to his fee, to whom he would. Now King Richard, being solicited by some of his courtiers, anxiously sought for the ward and the child for the use of some one of his servants; at one time by letters, at another time by messengers. But the abbot answered, that he had given the ward away, and had confirmed his gift by his charter; and sending his own messenger to the king, he did all he could, 'prece et precio,' to mitigate his wrath. And the king made answer that he would avenge himself upon that proud abbot who had thwarted him, was it not for reverence of St. Edmund, whom he feared. Therefore the messenger returning, the abbot very wisely passed over the |