morally bound, but not legally so, as now the arm of the law cannot be employed to force back any monk who may desire to leave. The youngest members are provided with one cell for each pair, but when more advanced each has a room to himself. The monks who act as professors have each two rooms, the prior has three rooms, and the abbot a whole suite of apartments. They have much land, none of which is let to farmers, but is entirely cultivated by hired labour, except of course their forests. These are to be seen from the abbey windows extending up the sides of distant mountains, and our host assured us they were richly stocked with deer and roebuck, pheasants and partridges.

As to their church services, they do not rise at night nor extraordinarily early. All their office is but recited in monotone, and the matins of each day are said the evening before, not in church, but in a room set apart for that purpose. They do not have high mass even on Sundays, but only on great festivals, when each wears a cowl in choir. On all other occasions they only wear their ordinary black cassock and scapular without any hood, nor have they, any more than the Augustinians, a large monastic tonsure.

The abbot, in spite of his stately lodgings and his importance, ordinarily dines with the community in their refectory, and no special dishes are served at the high table, but only those of which all are free to partake.

At the time of our visit the students and most of the professors were away for their vacation, and we could but inspect the means and appliances of learning.

The immense tower, at the summit of which is the observatory, has each story devoted to a scientific collection of a different kind. Thus there is a large collection of fossils and minerals; another of chemical materials and instruments; another is a cabinet of physics, and there is besides a moderately good zoological gallery, and also some skeletons and anatomical preparations. Lining the whole staircase, and also in other parts of the tower, are some hundreds of portraits in oil of former students, each one with his powdered wig, and all anterior to 1799. Every portrait is numbered, but unfortunately in the troubles of the Napoleonic wars the list was lost. It was to me a very sad sight to see this multitude of young faces about whom no one now knew anything, not even a name-lifelike shadows of the forgotten dead!

At Kremsmünster, as at St. Florian, there are royal apartments and also a picture gallery, a gallery of engravings, and other galleries of old glass, china, and objects of vertu. In the church. treasury are many relics, much plate, and expensive vestments-some given by the Empress Maria Theresa. There is, however, hardly anything mediæval, except a very large chalice of the time when communion in both kinds was partaken of by the laity.

The library contained, we were told, no less than eighty thousand volumes, but to our regret we had no time to properly inspect even a portion of its contents, though some things in it are very curious and others beautiful. There is an elaborate manuscript treatise of magic with illustrations, and another on astrology. A book of the Gospels of the eighth century is wonderful for its most beautiful writing, and there are various ancient missals admirably illuminated. The works treating on the different physical sciences were, we were told, not in the general library, but in separate departmental libraries for the use of each professor. I did not succeed in ascertaining that there was any record or recollection of Dr. Dibdin's visit. The librarian, however, was away for his vacation.

The gardens are attractive, with many interesting plants and various greenhouses, but the most interesting object external to the monastery was what at first sight might be mistaken for a sort of campo santo. This consisted of a large space, in shape an elongated parallelogram, bounded by a sort of cloister with an open arcade of pillars and round arches. This space was traversed at intervals by passages similarly arcaded on either side, and these passages connected the two arcades on each longer side of the parallelogram. In each rectangular space, thus enclosed by arcaded passages, was a large fishpond abundantly furnished with large trout or gigantic carp. The walls of the quasi cloister were hung round on every side with deer's heads and antlers, and the venerable monk who went round this place with us assured us they had all been shot by members of the community, he for one having been a very keen monastic sportsman in his younger days, as were many of his younger colleagues now, who found good sport in their well-stocked forests.

From the fishponds we were conducted to the monastic lavatory, and thence to the refectory, with many hospitable regrets that our visit should have taken place on a Friday, with its consequently restricted table.

In the refectory we were received by the prior, Father Sigismund Fellöcker, a monk devoted to mineralogy.

The party having assembled, all stood round and repeated the ordinary monastic grace, after which, being placed at the prior's right hand at the high table, we all fell to amidst a lively hum of conversation, no one apparently being appointed to read aloud during an obligatory silence, as is usually the case in monasteries.

The feast consisted of maigre soup, omelettes, sauerkraut, excellent apple turnovers, and cray fish. Before each monk was a small decanter of white wine, made at one of their houses in Lower Austria, for at Krems the vine will not ripen enough for winemaking. Dinner being over and grace said, the prior and most of the monks retired, but the sub-prior invited us and another guest and two monks to sit again and taste some choicer wine, white and

red, which we did willingly, for the rain was pouring in torrents and we could not leave. Droll stories and monastic riddles went round till coffee came and also the hour at which we had intended to depart. Not liking, however, to begin our long and tedious railway journey to Linz wet through, we accompanied our kind young guide Brother Columban to his cell, where, at our request, he played with skill and taste air after air upon the zitta till the clouds cleared and he was able to escort us, as he kindly insisted on doing, to the outside of the ample monastery's walls.

Much interested with our first experience of the Austrian Benedictines, we looked forward with pleasure to our visit next day to their far-famed monastery of Mölk.

Leaving Linz by steamer at half-past seven on the morning of the 22nd of August, we reached in four hours our point of disembarkation. Long before our arrival there the magnificent palatial monastery was a conspicuous object, with the soaring towers and cupola of the abbey church, the whole massed on the summit of a lofty cliff very near the right bank of the river. This commanding position was in the later part of the tenth century a fortified outpost of the heathen Magyars, from whom it was taken in 984 by Leopold, the first Markgrave of Austria, the founder of the present monastery, who, with his five successors, is buried in the conventual church. Centuries afterwards it had again to do with Hungarians, who besieged it for three months in 1619. When visited by Dr. Dibdin it had also recently suffered from war. The French generals had lodged in it on their way to Vienna, and during the march through of their troops it was forced to supply them with not less than from fifty to sixty thousand pints of wine per day.

In spite of the antiquity of its foundation, the monastic buildings are all modern, having been erected between 1707 and 1736.

A walk of about a mile from the landing-place led us (after passing round beneath the walls of the monastery and ascending through the town of Mölk) to a gate, passing through which, and traversing a spacious quadrangle, we ascended a stately staircase to the Prelatura, or abbot's lodgings. The community were at dinner, but we ventured to send in our letters, and the first to come out and welcome us was the prior, Herr Friedrich Heilmann, a monk who had inhabited the monastery for forty years, but who was as amiable as venerable, and full of pleasantry and humour. He introduced us to the Herr Prelat, Herr Alexander Karl, who then came up conversing with the monks who attended him on either side.

Rather short in stature, he wore his gold chain and cross over his habit, and on his head a hat, apparently of beaver, shaped like an ordinary chimneypot,' except that the crown was rather low. He displayed at first a certain stiffness of manner, which made us feel a little ill at ease, and which seemed to bespeak the territorial magnate,

no less than the spiritual superior. This uneasy feeling, however, was soon dissipated, for nothing could be more cordial and friendly than the whole of his subsequent demeanour to us throughout our visit. As we were too late for the community dinner, the abbot consigned us to the hospitable care of the prior, and sent word to ask the librarian to show us whatever we might wish to see after dinner. Since many of the ninety monks who have their home at Mölk were now away, the community had not dined in their great refectory, but in an ordinary, much smaller apartment. To the latter the genial prior conducted us, and sat beside us, chatting of the good game which stocked their forests—their venison, partridges, and pheasants—while we, nothing loth (for the river journey and walk had given us a hearty appetite), partook of soup, boiled beef, roast lamb, salad, sweets and coffee, which were successively put before us. The prior had been a keen sportsman, and still loved to speak of the pleasures of earlier days. Invigorated and refreshed we set out to see the house, and our first visit was to the adjacent refectory. It is a magnificent hall, worthy of a palace, with a richly painted ceiling and with pictures in the interspaces of the great gilded caryatides which adorn its walls.

Passing out at a window of the apsidal termination of the refectory, we came upon an open terrace, whence a most beautiful view of the Danube (looking towards Linz) was to be obtained, with a distant prospect of some of the mountains of the Salzkammergut. We here met the venerable librarian, Herr Vincenz Staufer, Bibliotekar des Stiftes Mölk, into whose hands the prior now consigned us. After contemplating with delight the charming scene before us and viewing with interest the parts which had been occupied by Napoleon's troops, we entered the library, which is a hall corresponding in shape and size with the refectory, and like it abutting on the terrace balcony by an apsidal termination.

It is a stately apartment furnished with costly inlaid woods, and with a profusion of gilding on all sides, including the gilt Corinthian capitals of its mural pilasters. The library is much richer now than it was when visited by Dibdin, and it contains sixty thousand volumes. Amongst its treasures are an original chronicle of the abbey begun in the twelfth century, a copy of the first German printed Bible, and a very interesting book about America, executed only two years after its discovery by Columbus. There are also mediæval copies of Horace and Virgil. Various other apartments, besides this stately hall, are devoted to the library, amongst them one containing four thousand volumes of manuscript. The librarian turned out to be an enthusiastic botanist; so with his help we made out the names of several Austrian wild plants which had interested us. Having done the honours of his part of the establishment, he reconducted us along several spacious corridors to the

prior, whom we found in his nice suite of five rooms, well furnished, ornamented with flowers, and with his pet Australian parrot. He took us to see the royal apartments, which are less handsome than those of St. Florian, and to the abbey church, which is exceedingly handsome of its rococo kind. It is cruciform with a high and spacious central dome. The choir is in the chancel, but there is a large organ and organ gallery at the west end. All round the church-where a clerestory would be in a Gothic building-are glazed windows that look into the church from a series of rooms which can be entered from the corridors of the monastery. The church is rich in marbles and profusely gilt.

We were finally conducted to the lodging assigned us, which opened (with a multitude of others) from the very long corridor at the top of the staircase we first ascended. On the opposite side of the corridor is the door which gives entrance to the abbot's quarters. This very long corridor is ornamented with a series of oil paintings representing the whole house of Hapsburg as figures of life size. It begins with fancy portraits of Hapsburgs anterior to the first Imperial Rudolph, and continues with portraits, more or less historical, of all the Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and with the subsequent Emperors of Austria, including the present Francis Joseph. Ample vacant space remains to similarly depict a large number of his suc

cessors.

Our room was comfortably furnished with all modern appliances, including a large looking-glass and a spring bed, and the window commanded a fine view of the mountains towards Vienna. After a little more than an hour's rest the abbot himself came to invite us to go with him to see his garden and join in a slight refection habitually partaken of between dinner and supper-a sort of Teutonic afternoon tea.' The garden was very pleasantly situated, with a well-shaded walk overlooking the Danube, and with a fine view of the mountains of the Soemmering Pass, between Vienna and Gratz. He told us that his lands were only in part cultivated by hired labour, the more distant being let out to tenants at fixed rents. As abbot he had the right of presentation to twentyseven livings. We then entered a very large summer-house, a long hall lined with frescoes illustrating the four quarters of the world, and representing their beasts, birds, flowers, as well as their human inhabitants. The painting was wonderfully fresh, though it was done 130 years ago. Here was taken the afternoon tea,' which consisted of most excellent beer, a dish of cold veal, ham, and tongue, cut in thin slices, a salad, cheese and butter. The abbot sat at a principal table with his guests, including a monk from Kremsmünster, the aunt and sister of a freshly ordained young monk who was to sing his first mass the following day, the young monk himself, and a secular priest who had come to preach on the occasion, and also