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building. It was surprise on surprise of delicate spiritual beauty. As for the cloisters, through which I passed to the kitchen, they were much like those of Magdalen College, Oxford, and, excepting on one side, were almost as well preserved. The kitchen was half choked with the fallen vaulting of its roof, and a crooked fig-tree grew in it. Perhaps the reader will think that in the kitchen, even of a monastery, spiritual beauty is hardly the beauty one would find ; but the prevailing sentiment of the building pene-trated every part of it, as its spirit was meant to penetrate every act of its inmates' life. And above was the fioorless gallery, where once its inmates slept, with a small window' and a little cupboard in the wrall at each place where had once been a brother's bed. Where are the brothers now ? Where are their prayers and vigils, and their souls, of which some at least the most cynical charity may presume to have been white and taintless ? Modern science wTould answer, in the wrords of Villon—and it is the only answer it can make—' Where are the last year's snows ? ' Quitting this side of the building, I sought out the refectory. Its door opened from the cloister on the side facing the precipice and opposite to the church. I entered. I was in a magnificent hall more than a hundred feet in length, more than forty feet in height, and in width more than thirty. Nowhere a stone was chipped, nowhere an angle obliterated. Not York Minster nor Westminster 218 IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

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