harpsichords, as well as good performers, beside an excellent organist.
The Prior, in particular, has so much address, of the polite world about
him, that he must have lived in it before he made a vow to retire from
it.

I never saw a more striking instance of national influence than in the
person of _Pere Tendre_, the Frenchman!--In spite of his holy life, and
living among Spaniards of the utmost gravity of manners, I could have
known him at first sight to have been a Frenchman. I never saw, even
upon the _Boulevards_ at Paris, a more lively, animated, or chearful
face.

Indeed, one must believe, that these men are as good as they appear to
be; for they have reason enough to believe, that every hour may be their
last, as there hangs over their whole building such a terrifying mass of
rock and pine heads, so split and divided, that it is difficult to
perceive by what powers they are sustained: many have given way, and
have no other support than the base they have made by slipping in part
down, among the smaller rocks and broken fragments. About an hundred
years ago, one vast block fell from above, and buried under it the
hospital, and all the sick and their attendants; and where it still
remains, a dreadful monument, and memento, to all who dwell near it!--I
should fear (God avert the day!) that the smallest degree of an
earthquake would bury all the convent, monks, and treasure, by one fatal
_coup_.




LETTER XXVII.