the mice had been exiled
from this solitude. And truly the rule of the monastic order, no
less than the habit of Italian gentlemen, is frugal in the matter of
the table, beyond the conception of northern folk.

Monte Oliveto, the Superior told us, owned thirty-two _poderi_, or
large farms, of which five have recently been sold. They are worked
on the _mezzeria_ system; whereby peasants and proprietors divide
the produce of the soil; and which he thinks inferior for developing
its resources to that of _affitto_, or leaseholding.

The contadini live in scattered houses; and he says the estate would
be greatly improved by doubling the number of these dwellings, and
letting the subdivided farms to more energetic people. The village
of Chiusure is inhabited by labourers. The contadini are poor: a
dower, for instance, of fifty _lire_ is thought something: whereas
near Genoa, upon the leasehold system, a farmer may sometimes
provide a dower of twenty thousand _lire_. The country produces
grain of different sorts, excellent oil, and timber. It also yields
a tolerable red wine. The Government makes from eight to nine per
cent. upon the value of the land, employing him and his two
religious brethren as agents.

In such conversation the evening passed. We rested well in large
hard beds with dry rough sheets. But there was a fretful wind
abroad, which went wailing round the convent walls and rattling the
doors in its deserted corridors. One of our party had been placed by
himself at the end of a long suite of apartments, with balconies
commanding the wide sweep of hills that Monte Amiata crowns. He
confessed in the morning to having passed a restless night,
tormented by the ghostly noises of the wind, a wanderer, 'like the
world's rejected guest,' through those untenanted chambers. The
olives tossed their filmy boughs in twilight underneath his windows,
sighing and shuddering, with a sheen in them as eerie as that of
willows by some haunted mere.

IV

The great attraction to students of Italian art in the convent of
Monte Oliveto is a large square cloister, covered with
wall-paintings by Luca Signorelli and Giovannantonio Bazzi, surnamed
Il Sodoma. These represent various episodes in the life of S.
Benedict; while one picture, in some respects the best of the whole
series, is devoted to the founder of the Olivetan Order, Bernardo
Tolomei, dispensing the rule of his institution to a consistory of
white-robed monks. Signore