time come to be incumbered with many votaries in whom indolence and
improvidence were the only impelling motives. In all ages of the world
the unspiritual are the majority,--the spiritual the exceptions. It was
to the multitude that Jesus said, "Ye seek me, not because ye saw the
miracles, but because ye did eat and were filled,"--and the multitude
has been much of the same mind from that day to this.

The convent of which we speak had been for some years under the lenient
rule of the jolly Brother Girolamo,--an easy, wide-spread, loosely
organized body, whose views of the purpose of human existence were
decidedly Anacreontic. Fasts he abominated; night-prayers he found
unfavorable to his constitution; but he was a judge of olives and good
wine, and often threw out valuable hints in his pastoral visits on the
cooking of maccaroni, for which he had himself elaborated a savory
recipe; and the cellar and larder of the convent, during his pastorate,
presented so many urgent solicitations to conventual repose, as to
threaten an inconvenient increase in the number of brothers. The monks
in his time lounged in all the sunny places of the convent like so many
loose sacks of meal, enjoying to the full the _dolce far niente_ which
seems to be the universal rule of Southern climates. They ate and drank
and slept and snored; they made pastoral visits through the surrounding
community which were far from edifying; they gambled, and tippled, and
sang most unspiritual songs; and keeping all the while their own private
pass-key to Paradise tucked under their girdles, were about as jolly
a set of sailors to Eternity as the world had to show. In fact, the
climate of Southern Italy and its gorgeous scenery are more favorable
to voluptuous ecstasy than to the severe and grave warfare of the true
Christian soldier. The sunny plains of Capua demoralized the soldiers of
Hannibal, and it was not without a reason that ancient poets made those
lovely regions the abode of Sirens whose song maddened by its sweetness,