Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/47

 'Many of your convents abroad, sir,' said I, 'enjoyed very handsome incomes; and yet, allowing for times, I question if any were better provided for than the monastery of this village. It is said to have possessed nearly two thousand pounds in yearly money-rent, fourteen chalders and nine bolls of wheat, fifty-six chalders five bolls barley, forty-four chalders and ten bolls oats, capons and poultry, butter, salt, carriage and arriage, peats and kain, wool and ale.'

'Even too much of all these temporal goods, sir,' said my companion, 'which, though well intended by the pious donors, served only to make the establishment the envy and the prey of those by whom it was finally devoured.'

'In the meanwhile, however,' I observed, 'the monks had an easy life of it, and, as the old song goes,

'I understand you, sir,' said the Benedictine; 'it is difficult, saith the proverb, to carry a full cup without spilling. Unquestionably the wealth of the community, as it endangered the safety of the establishment by exciting the cupidity of others, was also in frequent instances a snare to the brethren themselves. And yet we have seen the revenues of convents expended, not only in acts of beneficence and hospitality to individuals, but in works of general and permanent advantage to the world at large. The noble folio collection of French historians, commenced in 1737 under the inspection and at the expense of the community of Saint Maur, will long show that the revenues of the Benedictines were not always spent in self-indulgence, and that the members of that order did not uniformly slumber in sloth and indolence, when they had discharged the formal duties of their rule.'

As I knew nothing earthly at the time about the community of Saint Maur, and their learned labours, I could only return a mumbling assent to this proposition. I have since seen this noble work in the library of a distinguished family, and I must own I am ashamed to reflect that, in so wealthy a country as ours, a similar digest of our historians should not be undertaken, under the patronage of the noble and the learned, in rivalry of that which the