celebrant who at once begins a second Requiem mass, while the same Brother Raphael on his part recommences from the beginning his funereal dirge, a mixed impression made up of the singularity of the spectacle, its musical peculiarities, and what should be, to orthodox believers, the mystic solemnity of a sacrificial celebration, dwells on ear and memory, as, leaving behind you the towering transept, and walking down the no less soaring nave, silent and empty, you pass out beneath the western portal surmounted by its sculptured frieze of the Last Judgment. Glad, it may be, to breathe once more the fresh air of heaven, you climb perchance the vine-clad hills which, stretching away to the east, hem in within their close embrace the mist-shrouded vale of the Louche.

A few hours later, and the curtain rises on another aspect of the scene. It is now nightfall. Oil lamps light up the lofty chancel where a numerous choir of white figures are singing, to an instrumental accompaniment, the Psalms and anthems of the concluding office of the day, thence called Complin. Over against the resounding and brilliant chancel is the gloomy nave. Lit only by a tin lamp or two fixed at rare intervals to a column, there is barely light enough to show (should you glance round into the deep and darkened recesses of the nave) some three or four

Nor

peasant women at their devotions, who have found their way up to church by aid of a lantern, or, oftener still, by a scrap of wax-candle held in the bare hand. The chant of monk and chorister meanwhile proceeds; the chancel, with its comparative brilliancy and full harmony of sound, together with its little crowd of monkish occupants, contrasting strongly with the subdued light, the silence, and the emptiness of the vast nave. could you tread the pavement, in many places rough and broken, without risk of a fall-unless indeed, as happened during the writer's stay, the moon had risen early enough to pour in a flood of light through the southern windows of the church, and thus to cast her rays, with many an intervening shadow, over curving arch, clustered column, and dilapidated pavement. The chant at length is hushed; the brethren are slowly issuing, one by one, out of the south transept; and, as they cross the moonlit path that divides the minster from their convent home, the bell-turret overhead sends forth its summons, inviting them to the Library, there to be edified by a quarter of an hour's 'spiritual reading.' Yet another clang of the bell, and the brotherhood are moving in single file towards the refectory, where a frugal repast awaits them preparatory to seeking repose for the night in the dormitory above.

A visitor finding his way to the Library could hardly fail to be struck by a corridor hung on both sides with ponderous tapestry which, like that in the refectory, dates from the reign of Francis I., and illustrates passages in the life of St. Faith, who suffered martyrdom at Agen in the third century, and from whom church and convent take their name. This arras, the design of which is singular rather than of a high order of art, is worked for the most part in colours of blue and yellow, and exhibits some curious views of dwelling-houses; also a Roman judge and soldiery St. Faith with the inscription S. Foy' beneath her roughly drawn figure; and other objects of more or less interest, but all displaying characteristics of the sixteenth century-such as the stiff ruff collars of the timewithout any attempt to reproduce those of the Gallo-Roman period.

A high terraced walk hung with vines, which at this season were bending beneath their purple fruit, was a favourite haunt of the present writer during his sojourn within these claustral walls, Leaning over the stone parapet, one looks down upon the confined valley of the Louche gurgling below. From the opposite bed of that turbid stream spring wooded cliffs almost perpendicular; while, turning sharp round and backing the torrent, the abbey church rises to view, the stubborn

masonry of the Norman pile competing in endurance with the tall rocks that overhang it from behind. On sunny autumn mornings the temporary sojourner among the canons regular would entertain himself with a book as he paced leisurely up and down this broad gravel terrace; or, at another time, share the conversation of the Prior, seated on a stone bench beneath a vine-trellised arbour at one end of the terrace-whence a fine prospect opens out over the town of Conques, the river Dourdou at foot (just where it is joined by the Louche), and the mountains bounding the view away to the west. A flight of steps leads down hence into a quadrangular orchard planted with pear and other fruit trees, with big yellow gourds spreading over the ground or hanging here and there from the walls. This seems to have formed the site of the ancient cloister, whose sole remaining fragment is in line with the boundary of the existing garden. A circular stone basin or fountain, which doubtless occupied the centre of the cloister court, is still standing in the middle of the square orchard, and supplies the modern monks with water even as it did their predecessors.

Beyond, and carefully fenced in, are some flower beds, sparkling with colour, where fancy would occasionally take one for a stroll, to the music of the rushing torrent beneath, broken in

upon at times by the oft-recurring sound of the great bell in the tower of yonder minster, or by the bass tones of the Premonstrant monks rehearsing their office within a Gothic chapel hard by. This is an elegant edifice of the Perpendicular order of architecture, and exhibits some good pointed windows of the fifteenth century. It had formerly been an adjunct to the Abbot's Lodge, but now serves as a sort of subsidiary choir to that of the great church close at hand. The restoration of this fifteenth-century chapel to monastic uses by the canons regular of our own day carries back the mind to the Benedictines of Conques long centuries ago, and may recall the poet's words

And now the priests of later times

Sing mass above their graves.

The dedication of the old Gothic chapel to the new-fangled apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes breaks in, however, somewhat rudely upon the more venerable traditions and associations of the place. The rough angles of Catholicism get smoothed away and its too lurid lights toned down when seen through a far-off past; but with the corners fresh cut and the colours newly laid on the result is apt to be hard and uninviting. So it is with the modern miracles of Lourdes and La Salette. Many a time-honoured legend, in