things_ as _us_. We therefore, after peeping into his apartments, took
his benediction, and he retired, leaving us all his worldly possessions,
but his straw bed, his books, and his beads. This hermitage is confined
between two pine heads, within very narrow bounds; but it is artfully
fixed, and commands at noon day a most enchanting prospect to the East
and to the North. Though it is upwards of two thousand three hundred
paces from the convent, yet it hangs so directly over it, that the rocks
convey not only the sound of the organ, and the voices of the monks
singing in the choir, but you may hear men in common conversation from
the piazza below.

This is a long letter; but I know you would not willingly have left me
in the midst of danger, or before I was safe arrived at the first stage
towards heaven, and seen one humble host on GOD's high road.

_P.S._ At two o'clock, after midnight, these people rise, say mass, and
continue the remainder of the night in prayer and contemplation. The
hermits tell you, it was upon high mountains that God chose to manifest
his will:--_fundamenta ejus in montibus sanctis_, say they;--they
consider these rocks as symbols of their penitence, and mortifications;
and their being so beautifully covered with fine flowers, odoriferous
and rare plants, as emblems of the virtue and innocence of the religious
inhabitants; or how else, say they, could such rocks produce
spontaneously flowers in a desart, which surpass all that art and nature
combined can do, in lower and more favourable soils? They may well think
so; for human reason cannot account for the manner by which such
enormous quantities of trees, fruits, and flowers are nourished,
seemingly without soil. But that which established a church and convent
on this mountain, was the story of a hermit who resided here many years;
this was _Juan Guerin_, who lived on this mountain alone, the austerity