the ninth hermitage, _St. Benito_; the situation is very pleasing, the
access easy, and the prospects divine. It was founded by an _Abbot_,
whose intentions were, that it should contain within a small distance,
four other cells, in memory of the five wounds made in the body of
Christ. This hermit has the privilege of making an annual entertainment
on a certain day, on which day all the other hermits meet there, and
receive the sacrament from the hands of the mountain vicar; and after
divine service, dine together. They meet also at this hermitage on the
day of each titular saint, to say mass, and commune with each other.




LETTER XXIV.


I cannot say a word to you on any other subject, till you have taken a
turn with me in the shrubberies and gardens of the glorious (so they
call it) hermitage of _St. Ana_. Coming from _St. Benito_, by a brook
which runs down the middle of the mountain, six hundred paces distant
from it, stands _St. Ana_, in a spacious situation, and much larger than
any other, and is nearly in the center of them all. The chapel here is
sufficiently large for the whole society to meet in, and accordingly
they do so on certain festivals and holidays, where they confess to
their mountain vicar, and receive the sacrament, This habitation is
nobly adorned with large trees; the ever-green oak, the cork, the
cypress, the spreading fig-tree, and a variety of others; yet it is
nevertheless dreadfully exposed to the fury of some particular winds;
and the buildings are sometimes greatly damaged, and the life of the
inhabitant endangered, by the boughs which are torn off and blown about