A college of two hundred students is maintained in the same range of buildings, and taught by some of the monks. Of these monks there are about forty, besides the priests who minister at the altars, and receive confessions in German, French, Italian, and Romanesch languages, according to the nationality of the pilgrims. The monks spend their time in reading, writing, and in the refectory, where they eat together, and enjoy the good things of this life as well as other people. Some of them are quite old. Death comes here as elsewhere, and closes up a life of apparent indolence, yet possessing some strange fascination that is hard to be comprehended by the outside world. It certainly is not favorable to the highest usefulness, for these men might be doing far more for God and their fellow-men in the pursuit of some honest calling, preaching the gospel, or working with their hands. They consume and do not produce. Nor is this mode of life friendly to holiness. Passions are part of man’s nature, and they are not quenched or dwarfed by seclusion from intercourse with the outer world. Human sympathies, which are cultivated and refined by the practice of social virtues, and so tend to make us better, are not apt to flourish in the cell of a monk. And although the walls of this magnificent monastery, in a sterile Alpine valley, shut out the pomps and vanities of the world, they cannot be made so high or so strong as to confine the wandering desire, which will sap the foundations of the sternest virtue, and make the bosom the seat of vice to which the soul consents, and therefore suffers. The pure in heart see God. Not in the cloister of the anchorite, the monk’s lonely cell, nor the hermit’s cave; but in the steadfast pursuit of the Good, the True, and the Great, in the daily walks of life. It is virtue to live above the world, while living in it. None but the children of the Holy One can walk through the furnace without the smell of fire on their garments. Such were my thoughts as I left the monastery, shaking hands with Father Reifle, the Benedictine, who had so kindly waited upon me, and by his intelligent conversation and lively interest in my enjoyment had won my warm regards. He put the key into the lock of the iron gate at the head of the stone stairs, and unlocking it let me out, and we bade each other Adieu, as he stood within and I without the door.