Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/10

4 the old dispensation was surprising enough; though, indeed, it was suspected that he had his own mode of conceiving Catholicism, which, if the holy office had not put a prompt 'closure' upon him, might have been duly unfolded to the world. However, it seemed incredible that so broad-minded an interpreter of events should predict a revival of the great monastic orders; and (such is the irony of the relation between clergy and laity in the Roman Church), at that very time it was being whispered in ecclesiastical circles that Rome was thinking of suppressing most of the religious orders.

Outside the Church of Rome the thought, if it was noticed at all, was treated with quiet disregard, and attributed to a spasmodic attack of zeal on the part of its author. Monasticism was dying—not in the odour of sanctity. Men visited the venerable ruins of abbeys and monasteries, and re-peopled in spirit the deserted cells and dreary cloisters and the roofless chapel with a kindly archæological interest; smiled at their capacious refectories and wine-cellars; dwelt gratefully on the labours of the Benedictines through the Age of Iron; conjured up the picturesque life and fervent activity of the Grey Friars before their corruption, and shuddered at the zeal of the White Friars in Inquisition days. But people would as soon have