housekeepers of royal palaces that exist only in name.
Besides see what advantage to a minister if the unendowed
aristocracy were thus provided for now. He need not, like a
minister in these days, entrust the conduct of public affairs
to individuals notoriously incompetent, appoint to the command
of expeditions generals who never saw a field, make governors
of colonies out of men who never could govern themselves, or
find an ambassador in a broken dandy or a blasted favourite.
It is true that many of the monks and nuns were persons of
noble birth. Why should they not have been? The aristocracy
had their share; no more. They, like all other classes, were
benefitted by the monasteries: but the list of the mitred
abbots when they were suppressed, shows that the great
majority of the heads of houses were of the people."

"Well, whatever difference of opinion may exist on these
points," said Egremont, "there is one on which there can be no
controversy: the monks were great architects."

"Ah! there it is," said the stranger, in a tone of
plaintiveness; "if the world but only knew what they had lost!
I am sure that not the faintest idea is generally prevalent of
the appearance of England before and since the dissolution.
Why, sir, in England and Wales alone, there were of these
institutions of different sizes; I mean monasteries, and
chantries and chapels, and great hospitals; considerably
upwards of three thousand; all of them fair buildings, many of
them of exquisite beauty. There were on an average in every
shire at least twenty structures such as this was; in this
great county double that number: establishments that were as