an end of it. Nor could any explanation of this ceasing of a pancake
from the midst of the visible world be so much as divined by the
spectators. It was only when the brother, in church, knelt down to
meditate and drew his cowl about his head that the accident was
explained.

Every midnight the sweet contralto bells call the community, who get up
gaily to this difficult service. Of all duties this one never grows easy
or familiar, and therefore never habitual. It is something to have found
but one act aloof from habit. It is not merely that the friars overcome
the habit of sleep. The subtler point is that they can never acquire the
habit of sacrificing sleep. What art, what literature, or what life but
would gain a secret security by such a point of perpetual freshness and
perpetual initiative? It is not possible to get up at midnight without a
will that is new night by night. So should the writer's work be done,
and, with an intention perpetually unique, the poet's.

The contralto bells have taught these Western hills the "Angelus" of the
French fields, and the hour of night--_l'ora di notte_--which rings
with so melancholy a note from the village belfries on the Adriatic
littoral, when the latest light is passing. It is the prayer for the
dead: "Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord."

The little flocks of novices, on paschal evenings, are folded to the
sound of that evening prayer. The care of them is the central work of
the monastery, which is placed in so remote a country because it is
principally a place of studies. So much elect intellect and strength of
heart withdrawn from the traffic of the world! True, the friars are not
doing the task which Carlyle set mankind as a refuge from despair. These
"bearded counsellors of God" keep their cells, read, study, suffer, sing,