half-dozen long aisles, narrow and low-arched, out of which the cells of the monks open, and other apartments. Each cell had a private court of its own, open to the sky, but closed by high walls from all outward observation.
There were a multitude of smaller courts, three or four chapels or oratories, besides the church, and two large inclosures of several acres, which were possibly its gardens and possibly a portion of its approaches. The chief church was used for several years as a glass factory, and a huge furnace built under the dome and blackened walls still attest its change of use. It reminded one of the hero of "Put Yourself in his Place," who used an abandoned church as his furnace for the making of his tools, and thus made the ghosts useful in protecting his rights against opposing trades-unions and his high Tory uncle. So even the fertile genius of Charles Reade finds his fiction lagging behind this fact; and thus there is nothing new, not only under the sun, but even in the realm of the imagination. It did seem a little out of place, this glass-furnace where the altar stood; but the idolatry of the mass deserved perhaps this desecration, as Palestine had to be trodden under foot of the Gentiles because its chosen people had themselves trodden under foot the Son of God, an identity of words which the Holy Spirit expressly uses, with that verbal exactness which He always employs, in order to set forth the righteousness of that banishment and punishment which has continued now over eighteen centuries.
The mass is still an idolatry, worse than any the Jews fell into; and this desecration is but a type of many that have preceded it, and more that shall follow, until the true worship shall not be a repetition of an accomplished and, therefore, now idolatrous sacrifice, but a setting home of this sacrifice divine, with faith and prayer and earnest exhortation and conclusive reasoning, to the hearts and lives of the hearer and believer.
Outside this church is a spacious patio, or court, once surrounded by broad arches and shaded walks, only an arch or two of which remain. Go to the outer edge of it and wind down a narrow stair-way, and you enter an under-ground series of cloisters, the size
