It is no wonder then, that such a place should be fixed upon for the
residence of holy and devout men; for there is not surely upon the
habitable globe a spot so properly adapted for retirement and
contemplation; it has therefore, for many ages, been inhabited only by
monks and hermits, whose first vow is, never to forsake it;--a vow,
without being either a hermit or a monk, I could make, I think, without
repenting.

If it be true, and some great man has said so, that "_whosoever
delighteth in solitude, is either a wild beast, or a God_;" the
inhabitants of this spot are certainly more than men; for no wild beast
dwells here. But it is the _place_, not the people, I mean at present to
speak of. It stands in a vast plain, seven leagues they call it, but it
is at least thirty miles from _Barcelona_, and nearly in the center of
the principality of _Catalonia_. The height of it is so very
considerable, that in one hour's slow travelling towards it, after we
left _Barcelona_, it shewed its pointed steeples, high over the lesser
mountains, and seemed so very near, that it would have been difficult to
have persuaded a person, not accustomed to such deceptions, in so clear
an atmosphere to believe, that we had much more than an hour's journey
to arrive at it; instead of which, we were all that day in getting to
_Martorel_, a small city, still three leagues distant from it, where we
lay at the Three Kings, a pretty good inn, kept by an insolent imposing
Italian. _Martorel_ stands upon the steep banks of the river
_Lobregate_, over which there is a modern bridge, of a prodigious
height, the piers of which rest on the opposite shore, against a Roman
triumphal arch of great solidity, and originally of great beauty. I
think I tell you the truth when I say, that I could perceive the
convent, and some of the hermitages, when I first saw the mountain, at
above twenty miles distance. From _Martorel_, however, they were as