There Was A Time
When I Would Have Dilated Lovingly Upon This Structure - A Time When I
Probably Knew As
Much about Carthusian convents as is needful for any of
their inmates; when I studied Tromby's ponderous work and God
Knows how
many more - ay, and spent two precious weeks of my life in deciphering
certain crabbed MSS. of Tutini in the Brancacciana library - ay, and
tested the spleenful Perrey's "Ragioni del Regio Fisco, etc.," as to the
alleged land-grabbing propensities of this order - ay, and even
pilgrimaged to Rome to consult the present general of the Carthusians
(his predecessor, more likely) as to some administrative detail,
all-important, which has wholly escaped my memory. Gone are those days
of studious gropings into blind alleys! The current of zeal has slowed
down or turned aside, maybe, into other channels. They who wish, will
find a description of the pristine splendour of this monastery in
various books by Pacicchelli; the catastrophe of 1783 was described by
Keppel Craven and reported upon, with illustrations, by the Commission
of the Naples Academy; and if you are of a romantic turn of mind, you
will find a good story of the place, as it looked duringthe ruinous days
of desolation, in Misasi's "Calabrian Tales."
It is now rebuilt on modern lines and not much of the original structure
remains upright. I wandered about the precincts in the company of two
white-robed French monks, endeavouring to reconstruct not the convent as
it was in its younger days, but them.
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