Whilst I
Was At Damascus I Had My Quarters At The Franciscan Convent There,
And Very Soon After My Arrival I Asked One Of The Monks To Let Me
Know Something Of The Spots That Deserved To Be Seen.
I made my
inquiry in reference to the associations with which the city had
been hallowed by the sojourn and adventures of St. Paul.
"There is
nothing in all Damascus," said the good man, "half so well worth
seeing as our cellars"; and forthwith he invited me to go, see, and
admire the long range of liquid treasure that he and his brethren
had laid up for themselves on earth. And these I soon found were
not as the treasures of the miser, that lie in unprofitable disuse,
for day by day, and hour by hour, the golden juice ascended from
the dark recesses of the cellar to the uppermost brains of the
friars. Dear old fellows! in the midst of that solemn land their
Christian laughter rang loudly and merrily, their eyes kept
flashing with joyous bonfires, and their heavy woollen petticoats
could no more weigh down the springiness of their paces, than the
filmy gauze of a danseuse can clog her bounding step.
You would be likely enough to fancy that these monastics are men
who have retired to the sacred sites of Palestine from an
enthusiastic longing to devote themselves to the exercise of
religion in the midst of the very land on which its first seeds
were cast; and this is partially, at least, the case with the monks
of the Greek Church, but it is not with enthusiasts that the
Catholic establishments are filled. The monks of the Latin
convents are chiefly persons of the peasant class from Italy and
Spain, who have been handed over to these remote asylums by order
of their ecclesiastical superiors, and can no more account for
their being in the Holy Land, than men of marching regiments can
explain why they are in "stupid quarters." I believe that these
monks are for the most part well conducted men, punctual in their
ceremonial duties, and altogether humble-minded Christians. Their
humility is not at all misplaced, for you see at a glance (poor
fellows!) that they belong to the LAG REMOVE of the human race. If
the taking of the cowl does not imply a complete renouncement of
the world, it is at least (in these days) a thorough farewell to
every kind of useful and entertaining knowledge, and accordingly
the low bestial brow and the animal caste of those almost Bourbon
features show plainly enough that all the intellectual vanities of
life have been really and truly abandoned. But it is hard to
quench altogether the spirit of inquiry that stirs in the human
breast, and accordingly these monks inquire - they are ALWAYS
inquiring inquiring for "news"! Poor fellows! they could scarcely
have yielded themselves to the sway of any passion more difficult
of gratification, for they have no means of communicating with the
busy world except through European travellers; and these, in
consequence I suppose of that restlessness and irritability that
generally haunt their wanderings, seem to have always avoided the
bore of giving any information to their hosts.
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