But who can judge such a life save him who has lived it? Who can say what undreamt-of spiritual compensations may not come even in this present time as a reward for bodily austerities? What fine realities may not body themselves forth to the eye of the soul, strained of grossness, steadied from worldly agitation, and taught to gaze year after year into the awfulness and mystery of its own being and deep destiny? "Monasticism," says Mr. Froude, "we believe to have been the realization of the infinite loveliness and beauty of personal purity; and the saint in the desert was the apotheosis of the spiritual man." However this may be, here at Gethsemane you see one of the severest expressions of its faith that the soul has ever given, either in ancient or in modern times; and you cease to think of these men as members of a religious order, in the study of them as exponents of a common humanity struggling with the problem of its relation to the Infinite. One would wish to lay hold upon the latent elements of power and truth and beauty in their system which enables them to say with quiet cheerfulness, "We are happy, perfectly happy." Excepting this ceaseless war between flesh and spirit, the abbey seems a peaceful place. Its relations with the outside world have always been kindly. During the Civil War it was undisturbed by the forces of each army. Food and shelter it has never denied even to the poorest, and it asks no compensation, accepting such as the stranger may give. The savor of good deeds extends beyond its walls, and near by is a free school under its control, where for more than a quarter of a century boys of all creeds have been educated. There comes some late autumnal afternoon when you are to leave the place. With a strange feeling of farewell, you grasp the hands of those whom you have been given the privilege of knowing, and step slowly out past the meek sacristan, past the noiseless garden, past the porter's lodge and the misplaced rabbits, past the dim avenue of elms, past the great iron gate-way, and, walking along the sequestered road until you have reached the summit of a wooded knoll half a mile away, turn and look back. Half a mile! The distance is infinite. The last rays of the sun seem hardly able to reach the pale cross on the spire which anon fades into the sky; and the monastery bell, that sends its mellow tones across the shadowy landscape, is rung from an immemorial past. [Illustration: THE GARDEN.]