File:The Argosy (1865) (14780464161).jpg

Identifier: argosythe30wood (find matches)
Title: The Argosy
Year: 1865 (1860s)
Authors: Wood, Henry, Mrs., 1814-1887 Wood, Charles W. (Charles William), b. 1850?
Subjects:
Publisher: London (etc.) R. Bentley (etc.)
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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k with age was in the middle of the church, and darkancient pews were amongst the interesting relics of antiquity. Asmall opening led into what must once have been a sacristy, with anold stone that no doubt held holy water in the days of the monks: About Norway. 297 whilst a railed partition up a narrow, quaintly-carved staircase mighthave secluded nuns at their devotions. In this little place, only afew feet square, one could stand and go back centuries in imagina-tion, to an age when men chanted their matins and their vespers,held their feasts and their fasts, and measured time not by eventsbut by the rolling hours: with only their little quips and cranks,small quibbles and jealousies amongst themselves, to vary the endlessmonotony of their existence. The world^ forgetting, by the worldforgot. It is a quiet and desolate enough place now; then it must havebeen the very embodiment of a living tomb : a death in life. Andfor that matter the monasteries of to-day, buried in those far-off
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OxNr our Way Southward. solitudes, amidst the eternal silence of dark, gloomy forests or lonelymountain heights, are no better. It is all a living death. Go, forinstance, to the Monastery of La Chartreuse. Watch a monk creepout of his cell with stealthy tread and disappear down the longcloisters until the far-off gloom hides him from view, whilst he goeson his way, it may be to perform some penance. See them all glidingout of their cells at midnight, a long, solemn, silent, mysterious, cowledprocession, each carrying a lantern which obscures yet more thesurrounding darkness and lights faintly their footsteps only: footstepsthat make no sound in the long, cold, stone corridors, and find noecho in the distant arches. Watch them gliding into the dark chapel,each taking his seat and placing before him his lantern : all done assilently as if they were hooded ghosts: listen to the melancholychant of the midnight mass, which sounds more like a requiem forthe dead than the prayers and praises

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