“Within the central courtyard, an isolated _square tower_ of masonry, which is approached by a drawbridge, holds a formidable station. Here the Cophtes preserve whatever wealth or precious objects they possess; and if assailed by the plundering Arabs, defend themselves with stones. There are four more celebrated monasteries in the desert of St. Macaire, distant about three days’ journey from Grand Cairo. The first is the convent of St. Macaire, which is ancient and in a ruinous state--the bones of the founder are enshrined in a stone coffin, placed behind an iron gate, enveloped in a chafe or pluvial (a sort of church ornament), formed into a canopy. A _square tower_ of stone, which you enter by a drawbridge, is the only solid building belonging to the Abbey that remains. The friars store their books and their provisions, and obstinately defend themselves in this _hold_, whenever the wild Arabs come to pay them a predatory visit. “There are _similar_ (square) towers attached to the three other monasteries in the desert, the doors of which, and of the convent of St. Macaire, are alike covered with iron plates,” etc. To the candid and dispassionate reader,--who has gone through this extract, and who is told that _this_ is the _basis_ upon which Colonel de Montmorency builds his superstructure of monastic appropriation,--to such I fearlessly appeal whether he will not scout the indignity with _intellectual_ scorn. Here are edifices spread, _in numbers_, over our island, in unity of design and elegance of execution, admitted by this writer himself as “the most imposing objects of antiquity in all Christendom,” and “placed by an almost supernatural power to brave the stormy winds and the wrath of time”; yet, in the same breath, made the counterparts of a _few trumpery_, _temporary_, and _crazy_ old piles, which were originally erected as military stations, totally distinct from religion or religious uses--similar to those erected by Helena, mother to Constantine the Great, on the coast of Syria, against piratical incursions, and analogous to what we find in India, viz. a whole fortress converted into a conventual establishment. The thing is absurd,--it is revolting to _common sense_,--and bears on its forehead its own discomfiture. CHAPTER III.