Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/324

310 But this suggestion is quite too romantic, and too human for the monks of Mar Saba, in whom every vestige of our common nature was long since dried up and withered away. Never have I seen such bloodless specimens of humanity. No wonder that they are so, shut up within these walls where the sunlight strikes them but a few hours a day. They are like plants in a cellar — wasted and withered. As Madame Roland exclaimed on her way to the guillotine, "Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name," so here we have to exhaust every exclamation of horror and surprise at the unutterable follies committed in the name of Religion.

It is very evident that women are not admitted here; if they were, they would soon bring a glow of sunshine into the place, instead of leaving it dark, dingy, and musty as it is! If I were Patriarch of Jerusalem, I would reverse the order of things, and turn out the monks, and leave it solely to the other sex. If it were taken possession of by a company of nuns, or sisters of charity, they would soon renovate it, and give it a look of cleanliness and comfort, that would make it a place fit for human habitation.

But sunlight gilds even prison walls, at least the outside of them, and when the sun rose over the mountains of Moab, and shone into these deep gorges, it lighted up the old Convent with a kind of glory, that set us all alert and aglow as we mounted our ponies and picked our way along the edge of the cliff by a narrow path walled in by a parapet to keep us from going over the precipice — a depth of six hundred feet — till our horses' hoofs rattled down into the rocky bed of the Kedron. Our mounted guard rode ahead, with eye and ear alert, as if he might spy an enemy lurking behind the rocks. We were told that there was less danger now than there might have been a few weeks before, as the Bedaween had but lately