Meanwhile the successors of the thirteenth-century monasteries are
rising up around us each after his kind; Pall Mall swarms with them,
hardly less splendid than their progenitors, certainly not less
luxurious. Our modern monks look out at the windows of the Carlton
and the Athen?um with no suspicion that they are at all like the
monks of old. Nor are they. They lack the old faith, the old loyalty
to their order, and with the old picturesqueness something else that
we can less afford to miss--the old enthusiasm. We look back upon the
men of the thirteenth century with much complacency. A supercilious
glance at the past seems to give the moderns an excellent opinion of
themselves. But suppose the men of the thirteenth century could turn
the tables upon us, and, from their point of view, pass their
judgment upon the daily life of the conventuals of St. James's, who
are, after all, only survivals, but just conceivably not quite
survivals of the fittest; would the monks of old find all things
quite up to the highest ideal, or would they hide their heads in
shame and confusion of face compelled to acknowledge that the new is
in all things so much better than the old?
IV.
THE BLACK DEATH IN EAST ANGLIA.
"So they died! The dead were slaying the dying,
And a famine of strivers silenced strife:
There were none to love and none to wed,
And pity and joy and hope had fled,
And grief had spent her passion in sighing;
And where was the Spirit of Life?"
From across the Channel during the last few months [Footnote:
February, 1884.
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