certain prayers. In winter, after the tierce, which is said an hour earlier, namely, at eight o'clock, the monks go to their agricultural labors; and, with the exception of the sexts, which, if near, they attend at twelve, labor until nones, or three o'clock, when they dine. Their meals are two only, dinner and supper; and at both, flesh meat is prohibited. Each meal some brother reads aloud from the Scriptures, the expositions of the fathers, or any other edifying book. As to the vestments, each monk has two tunics, two cowls, and a scapulary, one for the night, and the other for the day. Each has a separate bed: ten or twenty sleep in the same dormitory, which throughout the night is lighted by a lamp, and superintended by one of the deans, who is always an aged man. After confession, no word is allowed to be spoken by any of the brethren, but one of the number usually reads aloud. Mental prayer concludes the arduous service of the day, a service which appears too much for human nature. No monk is allowed to receive letters or presents without the superior's permission, and if the necessary business of the community leads him outside the walls, he first commends himself to the prayers of the rest, and on his return passes some time prostrate at the foot of the Cross, to expiate or to recover from the distractions of which he may have been guilty; neither is he allowed to mention any report, any news, any transaction which he has heard or seen in the

2

world.' Such is Benedictine life, and no less beautiful to my eyes is the Benedictine temper :- To honor all men, to do as we would be done by, to deny ourselves so as to follow Christ, to discipline the body, not to follow pleasures, to love fasting, to fill the poor with joy, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick, to bury the dead, to rejoice in tribulation, to console the afflicted, to keep aloof from the world, to hold the love of Christ beyond every other tie, not to be angry, not to be deceitful, not to neglect charity, not to swear, to utter the truth always, not to return evil for evil, to suffer injury with patience, to love one's enemies, to bless those who curse us, to suffer persecution for righteousness' sake, not to be proud, nor a wine-bibber, nor a glutton, nor a sluggard, not to murmur or to slander, to trust in God, to ascribe whatever is good in ourselves not to our own merits but to God, always remembering, however, to take credit to ourselves for any evil we may do, to feel the last Judgment, to dread hell, to have death daily before our eyes, to long with a spiritual lust for eternal life, to watch our actions every hour of our lives, to feel that God is every where, to open our evil thoughts unto Christ and to some spiritual elder, to keep one's tongue from evil speaking, to refrain from much speaking, not to jest, not to love laughter, to hear with pleasure holy

2 Dunham, i. 188.

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reading, to be frequent in prayer, to confess past sins with tears and groans, not to fulfil the desires of the flesh, to hate our own will, to obey the precepts of the abbot in all things, not to aim at being thought holy, but to be really such, to fulfil daily God's commands, to love chastity, to hate nobody, to avoid jealousy, envy, contention, and pride, to reverence the old, to love the young, to pray for our enemies with the love of Christ, not to let the sun descend on our strife, never to despair of God's mercy.' This is the Benedictine mirror of the Gospel. This is what I called the true happy life, the life which may one day be lived here in this classic valley, a glory better far than that of Marathon."

We parted on the flight of stone steps which descends from the mountain side into the court of the convent. Suscipiat te Dominus," was his farewell, "secundum eloquium ejus, et vivas; et non confundat te ab expectatione tua."

The sun had not risen high when we left the convent at Marathon, the priest beneath the fig-tree, the lizard on the wall. The sea was gleaming like a "silver shield." We examined the remains of the Athenian monument; and then took the road to Oropo, recrossing the plain to the village of Marathon. The course of the river Marathona is very agreeable, and wild flowers and gum-bearing shrubs with pleasant smells are there in great abundance. We followed the course of the stream for a con

siderable distance, and found two old Venetian towers on its banks. After leaving the river we went over a tract of rugged, sterile ground, with occasionally a flowery, aromatic hollow, and almost always with fine views of Pentelicus and Parnes. On reaching the heights above Oropo the view was really magnificent, mountain, wood, plain, the Euripus, and the lofty headlands of Euboea over the sea. Indeed, both on the road from Athens to Marathon, and again from Marathon to Oropo, the scenery was more interesting than we had expected to find it.

Oropo, the scene of the old Amphiaræan games, retains no vestiges of antiquity to interest and delay the traveller. We left it the next morning and proceeded to Egripo. The road lay along the shores of the Euripus, the scenery of which very much resembles the salt-water lochs of Argylleshire. We passed under Mount Ktypa, crossed the narrow bridge from the continent, and entered Euboea, the modern Egripo. The town of Egripo is singularly oriental. The old walls and fort do not seem Turkish; but the mosques with their thin pillar-like tower, and the crescent still standing on them, the cypresses of the Turkish cemetery, the ruins of old Turkish palaces, and one tall palm-tree which hangs its fanlike leaves over the wall, give the place a completely eastern character. The water under the bridge, though a strong current, does not run so vehemently

as we had expected. We were almost vexed to find it so like other currents: yet the green hills of Euboea, and the exquisite sky of Greece, and the memory-peopled locality, made our visit to Egripo very pleasant.

When we surmounted the lower part of Mount Ktypa, a hill abundantly peopled with land-tortoises, harmless colonists, we gained our first view of the strange, green plains of Boeotia, with Helicon beyond. As we ascended the mountain several of the views were very fine, and one of them quite magnificent. When we reached the bottom, we entered upon a large, waterless plain, which seemed as if it had been the bed of a lake, the mountains rising up from it as from the level of the sea. The greater part of the Parnassian range lay before us. We counted nine distinct layers of mountain-ridge with different lights and mists upon them according to their distances; and on a green hill, backed by some bolder mountains, stood the straggling, disjointed houses of modern Thebes, amid beds of tall nettles, and mounds of ruined masonry, half grass-grown. As the sun set, it threw over all the huge ribs of Parnassus floods of dusky gold, illuminating the ragged mists, and shedding something like a glory over the home of Pindar and Epaminondas. But a few narrative sentences are but spiritless representatives of the feelings of a man riding towards nightfall among the sheep-flocks on the plain of Thebes.