From mere gayety of heart, from the exuberant jollity of a well-beneficed scholar, whose future was secure and whose time was all his own, some of the higher clergy appear to have jested upon themselves and their office. Two finely engraved seals have been found in France, one dating as far back as 1300, which represent monkeys arrayed in the vestments of a Church dignitary. Upon one of them the monkey wears the hood and holds the staff of an abbot, and upon the other the animal appears in the character of a bishop. [Illustration: Bishop's Seal, A.D. 1300.] One of these seals is known to have been executed at the express order of an abbot. The other, a copy of which is given here, was found in the ruins of an ancient château of Picardy, and bears the inscription, "LE: SCEL: DE: LEUECQUE: DE: LA: CYTE: DE: PINON"--"The seal of the bishop of the city of Pinon." This interesting relic was at first thought to be the work of some scoffing Huguenot, but there can now be no doubt of its having been the merry conceit of the personage whose title it bears. The discovery of the record relating to the monkey seal of the abbot, showing it to have been ordered and paid for by the actual head of a great monastery, throws light upon all the grotesque ornamentation of those centuries. It suggests to us also the idea that the clergy joined in the general ridicule of their order as much from a sense of the ludicrous as from conviction of its justice. In the British Museum there is a religious manuscript of the thirteenth century, splendidly illuminated, one of the initial letters of which represents a young friar drawing wine from a cask in a cellar, that contains several humorous points. With his left hand he holds the great wine-jug, into which the liquid is running from the barrel; with his right he lifts to his lips a bowlful of the wine, and from the same hand dangle the large keys of the cellar. If this was intended as a hint to the younger brethren how they ought not to behave when sent to the cellar for wine, the artist evidently felt also the comic absurdity of the situation. The vast cellars still to be seen under ancient monasteries and priories, as well as the kitchens, not less spacious, and supported by archways of the most massive masonry, tell a tale of the habits of the religious orders which is abundantly confirmed in the records and literature of the time. "Capuchins," says the old French doggerel, "drink poorly, Benedictines deeply, Dominicans pint after pint, but Franciscans drink the cellar dry." The great number of old taverns in Europe named the Mitre, the Church, the Chapel-bell, St. Dominic, and other ecclesiastical names, point to the conclusion that the class that professed to dispense good cheer for the soul was not averse to good cheer for the body.[9] [Footnote 9: "History of Sign-boards," p. 319, by Larwood and Hotten, London.]