The abbey is surrounded by four hundred acres of land, tolerably fertile, though rough in part, and has excellent limestone quarries--the monks burning as much as one hundred barrels of lime at once in their kiln; they also manufacture all the bricks required for the multifarious works which are incessantly in progress. Their domain is well watered by a stream upon which the indefatigable monks have had a mill erected. At the date of our visit, they had just finished a new dam composed of immense blocks of limestone, and had almost completed a new and larger mill--to supersede the old one--and which in addition to the ordinary grist grinding will also be utilized, simultaneously, for carding, sawing boards, and sawing shingles. The new mill has dimensions of 150 x 40 ft., and the main barn 220 x 40 ft. The latter building now accommodates fifty heads of horned cattle, including some Jersey thoroughbreds and Durhams and six horses. We were also shown some Berkshire thoroughbred pigs, enormous, unwieldy brutes, one rather youthful porker being estimated to weigh nearly six hundred pounds. The monks make a large quantity of butter, all the year round, the sale of which forms an important item of their revenue. The abbey has made its repute all through the surrounding country, and it is scarcely possible to over-estimate the benefit of this _model_ farm to the inhabitants of adjacent lands; combining as it does the latest improvements in agriculture with the untiring industry of the Trappist Monk. For several years, their grist-mill was the only one for a great distance, and even now wheat is brought in, for grinding, from a radius of fifteen miles. The monks contain among themselves all the trades necessary to their well-ordered community, _ex-gr_ two blacksmiths, two tailors, two millers, a baker, shoemaker, and doctor, not forgetting the wonderful Brother Benedict, who is at once architect, carpenter, mason and clockmaker. In the last-mentioned capacity his ingenuity is shown by a clock which has four faces; one visible from the road approaching the abbey, the second from the chapel, the third from the infirmary, and the fourth from the refectory, where the modest table service of tin plates and wooden spoons and forks, offer but few attractions to those who overlooking the final end of all created things, look at life from the animal point of view. We are also taken to the dormitory, and look into the narrow compartments, where the good brothers sleep, with easy consciences, upon their hard beds; and are also shown the _discipline_, which, though no doubt a wholesome instrument of penance, does not in any way resemble the article of torture under which guise it masquerades in the average anti-Jesuit novel.