, everything to renovate the health and revive the spirits. Our
rule of daily life may appear odd enough to some, and perhaps not
altogether in harmony with the regulations of monastic houses, but it was
in exact adaptation to the circumstances and wants of our little
community.
Every morning, with the first dawn, before the earliest rays of the sun
struck upon our tent, we rose spontaneously, requiring neither call-bell
nor valet to rouse us. Our brief toilette made, we rolled up our
goat-skins and placed them in a corner; then we swept out the tent, and
put the cooking utensils in order, for we were desirous of having
everything about us as clean and comfortable as possible. All things go
by comparison in this world. The interior of our tent, which would have
made a European laugh, filled with admiration the Tartars who from time
to time paid us a visit. The cleanliness of our wooden cups, our kettle
always well polished, our clothes not altogether as yet incrusted with
grease; all this contrasted favourably with the dirt and disorder of
Tartar habitations.
Having arranged our apartment, we said prayers together, and then
dispersed each apart in the desert to engage in meditation upon some
pious thought. Oh! little did we need, amid the profound silence of
those vast solitudes, a printed book to suggest a subject for prayer!
The void and vanity of all things here below, the majesty of God, the
inexhaustible measures of his Providence, the shortness of life, the
essentiality of labouring with a view to the world to come, and a
thousand other salutary reflections, came of themselves, without any
effort on our parts, to occupy the mind with gentle musings. In the
desert the heart of man is free; he is subject to no species of tyranny.
Far away from us were all those hollow theories and systems, those
utopias of imaginary happiness which men are constantly aiming at, and
which as constantly evade their grasp; those inexhaustible combinations
of selfishness and self-sufficiency, those burning passions which in
Europe are ever contending, ever fermenting in men's minds and hardening
their hearts. Amid these silent prairies there was nothing to disturb
our tranquil thoughts, or to prevent us from reducing to their true value
the futilities of this world, from appreciating at their lofty worth the
things of God and of eternity.
The exercise which followed these meditations was, it must be admitted,
far from myst
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