e horizon, tinged with the light of its
dying glory.

[Sidenote: The monks of the London Charterhouse.]

Secretary Bedyll, as we saw above, complained to Cromwell of the
obstinacy of certain friars and monks, who, he thought, would confer a
service on the country by dying quietly, lest honest men should incur
unmerited obloquy in putting them to death. Among these, the brethren of
the London Charterhouse were specially mentioned as recalcitrant, and
they were said at the same time to bear a high reputation for holiness.
In a narrative written by a member of this body, we are brought face to
face, at their time of trial, with one of the few religious
establishments in England which continued to deserve the name; and we
may see, in the scenes which are there described, the highest
representation of struggles which graduated variously according to
character and temper, and, without the tragical result, may have been
witnessed in very many of the monastic houses. The writer was a certain
Maurice Channey, probably an Irishman. He went through the same
sufferings with the rest of the brethren, and was one of the small
fraction who finally gave way under the trial. He was set at liberty,
and escaped abroad; and in penance for his weakness, he left on record
the touching story of his fall, and of the triumph of his bolder
companions.

[Sidenote: Story of Maurice Channey.]

[Sidenote: Unity of the monastic life.]

He commences with his own confession. He had fallen when others stood.
He was, as he says, an unworthy brother, a Saul among the prophets, a
Judas among the apostles, a child of Ephraim turning himself back in the
day of battle--for which his cowardice, while his brother monks were
saints in heaven, he was doing penance in sorrow, tossing on the waves
of the wide world. The early chapters contain a loving lingering picture
of his cloister life--to him the perfection of earthly happiness. It is
placed before us, in all its superstition, its devotion, and its
simplicity, the counterpart, even in minute details, of the stories of
the Saxon recluses when monasticism was in the young vigour of its life.
St. Bede or St. Cuthbert might have found himself in the house of the
London Carthusians, and he would have had few questions to ask, and no
duties to learn or to unlearn. The form of the buildings would have
seemed more elaborate; the notes of the organ would have added richer
solemnity to the services; but the salien