o point out her beauties, or share in his admiration
of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some Rock,
He gazes upon the tumbling waterfall with a vacant eye, He views
without emotion the glory of the setting Sun. Slowly He returns to his
Cell at Evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; He has no
comfort in his solitary unsavoury meal: He throws himself upon his
couch of Moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day
as joyless, as monotonous as the former.'

'You amaze me, Father! Suppose that circumstances condemned you to
solitude; Would not the duties of Religion and the consciousness of a
life well spent communicate to your heart that calm which....'

'I should deceive myself, did I fancy that they could. I am convinced
of the contrary, and that all my fortitude would not prevent me from
yielding to melancholy and disgust. After consuming the day in study,
if you knew my pleasure at meeting my Brethren in the Evening! After
passing many a long hour in solitude, if I could express to you the joy
which I feel at once more beholding a fellow-Creature! 'Tis in this
particular that I place the principal merit of a Monastic Institution.
It secludes Man from the temptations of Vice; It procures that leisure
necessary for the proper service of the Supreme; It spares him the
mortification of witnessing the crimes of the worldly, and yet permits
him to enjoy the blessings of society. And do you, Rosario, do YOU
envy an Hermit's life? Can you be thus blind to the happiness of your
situation? Reflect upon it for a moment. This Abbey is become your
Asylum: Your regularity, your gentleness, your talents have rendered
you the object of universal esteem: You are secluded from the world
which you profess to hate; yet you remain in possession of the benefits
of society, and that a society composed of the most estimable of
Mankind.'

'Father! Father! 'tis that which causes my Torment! Happy had it been
for me, had my life been passed among the vicious and abandoned! Had I
never heard pronounced the name of Virtue! 'Tis my unbounded adoration
of religion; 'Tis my soul's exquisite sensibility of the beauty of fair
and good, that loads me with shame! that hurries me to perdition! Oh!
that I had never seen these Abbey walls!'

'How, Rosario? When we last conversed, you spoke in a different tone.
Is my friendship then become of such little consequence? Had you never
s