ormed by accident,
and was detained, in the same prison, by force or prejudice. Recluse
fanatics have few ideas or sentiments to communicate: a special license
of the abbot regulated the time and duration of their familiar visits;
and, at their silent meals, they were enveloped in their cowls,
inaccessible, and almost invisible, to each other. [59] Study is the
resource of solitude: but education had not prepared and qualified for
any liberal studies the mechanics and peasants who filled the monastic
communities. They might work: but the vanity of spiritual perfection was
tempted to disdain the exercise of manual labor; and the industry must
be faint and languid, which is not excited by the sense of personal
interest.

[Footnote 58: Pior, an Egyptian monk, allowed his sister to see him;
but he shut his eyes during the whole visit. See Vit. Patrum, l. iii. p.
504. Many such examples might be added.]

[Footnote 59: The 7th, 8th, 29th, 30th, 31st, 34th, 57th, 60th, 86th,
and 95th articles of the Rule of Pachomius, impose most intolerable laws
of silence and mortification.]

According to their faith and zeal, they might employ the day, which they
passed in their cells, either in vocal or mental prayer: they assembled
in the evening, and they were awakened in the night, for the public
worship of the monastery. The precise moment was determined by the
stars, which are seldom clouded in the serene sky of Egypt; and a rustic
horn, or trumpet, the signal of devotion, twice interrupted the vast
silence of the desert. [60] Even sleep, the last refuge of the unhappy,
was rigorously measured: the vacant hours of the monk heavily rolled
along, without business or pleasure; and, before the close of each day,
he had repeatedly accused the tedious progress of the sun. [61] In this
comfortless state, superstition still pursued and tormented her wretched
votaries. [62] The repose which they had sought in the cloister was
disturbed by a tardy repentance, profane doubts, and guilty desires;
and, while they considered each natural impulse as an unpardonable sin,
they perpetually trembled on the edge of a flaming and bottomless abyss.
From the painful struggles of disease and despair, these unhappy victims
were sometimes relieved by madness or death; and, in the sixth century,
a hospital was founded at Jerusalem for a small portion of the austere
penitents, who were deprived of their senses. [63] Their visions,
before they attained this ex