active edifice,
not unlike a factory. The hermitage is placed in a loftier and wilder
region of the forest. It comprehends between 20 and 30 distinct
residences, each including for its single hermit an inclosed piece of
ground and three very small apartments. There are days of indulgence
when the hermit may quit his cell, and when old age arrives, he descends
from the mountain and takes his abode among the monks.

My companion had, in the year 1831, fallen in with the monk, the subject
of these two sonnets, who showed him his abode among the hermits. It is
from him that I received the following particulars. He was then about 40
years of age, but his appearance was that of an older man. He had been a
painter by profession, but on taking orders changed his name from Santi
to Raffaello, perhaps with an unconscious reference as well to the great
Sanzio d'Urbino as to the archangel. He assured my friend that he had
been 13 years in the hermitage and had never known melancholy or ennui.
In the little recess for study and prayer, there was a small collection
of books. 'I read only,' said he, 'books of asceticism and mystical
theology.' On being asked the names of the most famous mystics, he
enumerated _Scaramelli, San Giovanni della Croce, St. Dionysius the
Areopayite_ (supposing the work which bears his name to be really his),
and with peculiar emphasis _Ricardo di San Vittori_. The works of _Saint
Theresa _are also in high repute among ascetics. These names may
interest some of my readers.

We heard that Raffaello was then living in the convent; my friend sought
in vain to renew his acquaintance with him. It was probably a day of
seclusion. The reader will perceive that these sonnets were supposed to
be written when he was a young man.

308. _Monk-visitors of Camaldoli_.

'What aim had they the pair of Monks?' (XVII. l. 1.)

In justice to the Benedictines of Camaldoli, by whom strangers are so
hospitably entertained, I feel obliged to notice, that I saw among them
no other figures at all resembling, in size and complexion, the two
monks described in this Sonnet. What was their office, or the motive
which brought them to this place of mortification, which they could not
have approached without being carried in this or some other way, a
feeling of delicacy prevented me from inquiring. An account has before
been given of the hermitage they were about to enter. It was visited by
us towards the end of the month of May;