or rubricating the initial letters; while on the
other side, in the north alley, some were painfully getting by heart
the psalms, or practising meditation--alone in a crowd.
Within the retirement of that cloister, fenced all round, as I have
said, with the high walls and the great buildings, there the monks
were working, there the real conventual life was going on; but
outside the cloister, though yet within the precincts, it is
difficult for us now to realize what a vast hive of industry a great
monastery in some of the lonely and thinly-populated parts of England
was. Everything that was eaten or drunk or worn, almost everything
that was made or used in a monastery, was produced upon the spot. The
grain grew on their own land; the corn was ground in their own mill;
their clothes were made from the wool of their own sheep; they had
their own tailors and shoemakers, and carpenters and blacksmiths,
almost within call; they kept their own bees; they grew their own
garden-stuff and their own fruit; I suspect they knew more of fish-
culture than, until very lately, we moderns could boast of knowing.
Nay, they had their own vineyards and made their own wine.
The commissariat of a large abbey must have required administrative
ability of a very high order, and the cost of hospitality was
enormous. No traveller, whatever his degree, was refused food and
shelter, and every monastery was a vast hotel, where nobody need pay
more than he chose for his board and lodging.
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