III. Letters from Rome

THE most superficial reader of Monsignor Benson's books will be familiar with his descriptive style; but the difference between his books and his letters is very much that between a large, highly-finished picture and a rough water-colour sketch, slight, perhaps, in itself, but eminently characteristic, more suggestive in its incomplete perfection than even the finished study. Yet, again, some of these exquisite pen-pictures — such as that of the Holy Father's Mass — are tiny miniatures, perfectly finished with his own consummate and distinctive art. The greater part, however, are sketches; and the difficulty is, in such a port folio — the brilliant impressionist product of a master-mind, colour and outline dashed in with no uncertain hand — to choose the most attractive, where all are beautiful. These Roman letters have at least this special interest for his friends: they give us his first impressions as a Catholic of the Eternal City, which he learnt to know so well in later years. Monsignor Benson's novels contain singularly few descriptions of Rome, though those in, e.g., Initiation and The Coward may be said to compensate for this by their great beauty. Still, I cannot remember any such pen-pictures as those presently to be quoted, and 48

I may perhaps say that their possession first inspired me with the desire to give certain of Monsignor Benson's letters to the world.

The day after his arrival at San Silvestro he wrote:

(i) " Rome is like a sort of sacrament of the New Jerusalem. You meet the four marks of the Church, incarnate, in the streets and churches. The Unity is visible; church after church precisely the same; with the Blessed Sacrament, like a beating heart, in each.

" And the Holiness is evident in the faces of the Religious and priests and children one meets, as well as the simple people at their prayers every where. And the Catholicity is evident.

" This morning I, an Englishman, knelt with Italians before an Italian altar, and heard a German priest say Mass, with a negro server from Africa!

" And you hear every language of the civilised world in the streets. And as for the Apostolicity, we know that SS. Peter and Paul died here and lie here: and that the successor of Peter, and the Vicar of Christ is here, in the Apostolic See, radiating unity of faith throughout the City and the World! It is marvellously ' good for us to be here.' The last time I was here I was out of communion with it all, and ran to my own church as to a sort of Zoar. I was suspicious and un happy at everything. The goodness of God carries one off one's feet!

" I so much wonder how all is going with you; and whether you are seeing more clearly yet. I wonder so much how your talk with went off.... Even from my point of view, how ever, it is perfectly natural that God should raise up saintly souls like his to do the very peculiar and delicate work that is to be done in England; and of course, too, He must permit them to be in perfect peace and confidence as to their position, or they could not do the work. But for us who have heard the Call it is very different: to be ill-at-ease is one syllable of the Divine Mes sage, and to receive the full certitude of Faith is the whole Message.

" Meanwhile I enclose a picture of [the Holy Father]. He preaches to the people once a fort night, you know, in the Vatican Garden.

went to hear him; and says that his simplicity and tenderness are indescribable: like a very holy parish-priest talking to his people.

" I went to St. Peter's yesterday alone. But it is indescribable!... I pray continually that you may see light fully and clearly. It is all so easy and coherent when the last mist rolls up.

(ii) " May I first wish you every possible happiness and gift from God; and above all the great gift that I feel so sure is coming down to you from ' the Father of Lights.'

" Since you want more about Rome, let me tell you about Sunday. We went to hear the Pope preach. It was in a huge courtyard; heavenly blue sky overhead. A great red canopy and throne had been erected against the end wall, on a platform, and two Swiss Guards were guarding it. The court and the windows and roof were filled with a crowd of 20,000 — again of all nations of the world. And at last we saw halberds moving along the cloister behind, and the crowd began to sway and cheer; and then troops of prelates began to pour in; and last of all he came, walking, all in white — beaming, smiling, blessing, and waving his hand. Then he sat down, and there was a hymn sung by a choir; and then he preached in a loud voice, with ges tures, and an extraordinarily fatherly, loving look in his face.... The enthusiasm was extraordinary. One felt that here was the fulfilment of everything; it was a sacrament of the Unity of

God and the Body of Christ.... Nationalism is a poor thing beside that unity we can see here. One sees that Christ's promise has not failed; and that the Roman theory is the only one that makes it possible to believe that.

" However, when he had finished he intoned a kind of versicle, and everybody responded; and then he gave the Apostolic Benediction; and then rolled out a huge ' Amen ' from the crowd. Then some one put a scarlet cloak and hat on him, and he stood there again, beaming out at us all, and the crowd once more went wild with enthusiasm, cheering again and again, as he went round the platform blessing and waving his hand, and long after he had disappeared. It was like a day of Pentecost. ' Parthians and Medes and Elamites... we do hear in our own tongue the wonderful works of God/

"It is all a matter of seeing, not argument. It suddenly becomes apparent — emerges from chaos — and one wonders what in the world has been the difficulty. This emergence from theories to fact is an extraordinary experience. In the Church of England I took up theory after theory, ransacked books for supporters, and history for evidence; and now one has come out into a sort of sunshiny day, with a great many things perhaps as one would not have them, and many difficulties; but into Reality: with Christ's promises and kingdom made manifest.

" But I could go on for ever — and must not. Only it surely must be true that the simplest arguments are the best; and that the evident Catholicity, Apostolicity, Unity, Holiness, of the Roman Church are worth, a thousand times over, the possible Catholicity... of the English Church. There I felt as if / had to defend the Church against her enemies: here I feel that she defends me against mine.

" Another thing that impresses me enormously is the faith of the people. Yesterday I was kneeling for a few minutes before a statue of ' Our Lady, Hope of England/ and in three minutes, first, a young man came, knelt, dipped his finger in the oil of the lamp and crossed himself; then an old man came, said the Italian prayer for the conversion of England, and kissed the glass in which it was framed; then a third man came and prayed. Then I moved across to the life-size ' Pieta.' An old man came almost at once, moaning a prayer as he walked; held both his hands out with a rosary towards the group; got up, reached over and touched Our Lady's foot, and then kissed his hand. They were poor and middle-class people. In the evening I went to the gallery, where I was alone. Benediction was going on below; nothing to attract; hideous music, the continual creaking and groaning of chairs, no organ or choir; and a crowd of seventy or eighty people (just an ordinary week-night) and a breathless, rapt silence at the moment itself. The atmosphere of faith and worship was overwhelming; especially as it was so singularly unattractive from every physical point of view.... Yet [there was] this crowd, scattered in a great disorderly group, all adoring That which was in the monstrance in the little dim side-chapel. And that goes on night after night all the year round; and the church is not exceptional at all.

" Yesterday morning I went to see the Pope and Cardinals go into the Consistory: a crowd of some hundreds filled the corridor where I was, simply to see them go through it, twice, with half an hour's wait, standing up, before, and three quarters of an hour in between. The Holy Father walked, blessing as he went, with a great jewel on his finger, and his blazing cap and mitre, and the people shouting: ' Evvivd il Papa,' and a few Frenchmen, ' Evvivd il Papa-Re '; but the Pope doesn't like that, and has forbidden it.

" Oh! I wish I could tell you better the conviction that one has! There are loads of things I dislike.... But as to the Catholic Church, there is simply no question at all. IT is IT: and that is an end of the matter. It is incredible how little England is understood (and though it sounds arrogant to say so, one feels sure that the great work God has for English converts is to explain... what the Church of England has done and is doing). Yet Her claim is beyond doubt or question, when once one has seen it. Her people may be stupid, or money-grubbing, or ambitious, or vicious, or anything else that Her enemies say: but She Herself is the Bride of Christ and Mother of us all....

"... I shall remember you most earnestly on Sunday. Perhaps that day even God may give you the best birthday present you have ever had. I pray so."

I had been begged, by an Anglican friend, to ask Father Benson if the stories in the Light Invisible were true. It is a question which is still sometimes asked. Here is the answer:

(iii) " I am most grateful for what you say about my book.... As to the ' truth of the book,' I must explain how it came to be written. I had a large number of stories of things of that kind that were literally ' true,' and was pro posing to make a book of them. I happened to mention it to a clergyman whose judgment I trusted, and he was so emphatic one had no right to make these things public that I gave up the idea: and instead of it I made this book of stories, none of which actually happened, but all of which, I think, I can parallel from facts; and some elements in many of them are actually true. Personally I hold strongly that ' spiritual fiction ' is like any other ' fiction '; it is bound to contain things that either have happened, or might happen at any time. What I tried to do was to take things that I knew to be true, and represent them in a way that everybody could understand.

"... I needn't say how thankful I am that you are so near the step into the full light.... It always seems as if God gave the corresponding compensation: the mere fact of being out in broad daylight, after twilight and glimpses and shadows (however homely and dear they are, and however much of God's own truth and beauty they contain) — that broad sunlight is the intensest joy. How hard it is to explain! But the metaphor of light and twilight seems the best, at least for my own experience. One is not frightened of shadows in the sunlight, because one knows what they are: but in twilight one is not certain that they are not monsters or pits or traps. For example, clerical scandals, apostacies, episcopal mistakes, hideous accessories of worship — all those things are terrible in twilight, and tempt one to doubt or coldness or depression. But in the sunlight they are disagreeable and lamentable, but they are no more.

" To-day I went to hear Mass, St. Cecilia's day, in the Catacomb of St. Callistus, where her body was found, resting quietly on its side.... Yesterday I visited her basilica and heard the ' In Organis Cantantibus,' her antiphon, sung magnificently over her body, where it rests down in the crypt below the high altar. Well, to-day we drove out early, about six miles, along the Appian Way; brilliant sunlight and blue sky; and the ruins and the cypresses and the colours and sounds were indescribable. Then at last we got there, saw the Trappists who guard it, and went down into the depths, about sixty feet; all the passages cut out, as you know, in the solid rock. There are at least five hundred miles of catacombs in Rome! On every side, as we went down, there were shelves filled with the dust of saints and martyrs. At last we got to her chapel; it was blazing with candles, and the roof was almost hidden by chrysanthemums and dahlias. A low Mass was just ending. It was, I think, in some ways the most extraordinary experience of my life. Certainly it has impressed me more than anything I have seen in Rome.

To watch the faces of the huge crowd (there was hardly room for the priest and server) peering out of the gloom on every side; and to hear the same words and the same accent, and to see the same kind of faces, and all in the same place as in St. Cecilia's time — it was overpowering. The sense of continuity, and of the Communion of Saints and the Catholic Church was indescribable. " And then the High Mass surpassed every thing; a little choir sang Palestrina exquisitely; and three German priests in crimson were at the altar; and to hear all that going on under the stone roof, sixty feet below ground; and to know how the Christians, our fellow citizens, went through many of the same ceremonies in the same tongue, and adored the same Lamb sixteen cen turies ago in the same place—all that had an extraordinary effect over us all. There was an American and an Irish priest with me, and they both felt the same. All the breathing and stirring stopped, and there was a silence like death as the bell tinkled; and the mingling of the incense with the flowers — well, it is quite useless to try to describe it! Then we went on, when Mass was over, through the passages and saw the frescoes of the Last Supper; and Jonah rising from the whale, and the dove of peace, and the IN PACE, on every side; and at last we came up again, up a long staircase down which one brilliant ray of sun poured; up into the sharp, clear air, and saw Rome, three miles off across the country. Please God you will see it all yourself, one day. I am going to serve a Mass there one day soon, and, I hope, in a year or two, say one.

" Then this afternoon, I walked over to First Vespers of St. Clement in his basilica, and kissed a relic of his, and St. Lawrence and St. Ignatius of Antioch; and prayed before St. Clement's body and the bodies of SS. Cyril, Methodius, and Catherine. Just imagine what all that means to one — their actual bodies in which they suffered and died!... I enclose a leaf or two of the decorations of the Catacomb to-day: I picked them off the floor, and they have heard Mass there to-day too.... I prayed for you specially at Mass in the Catacomb, and offered my Communion for you again: as I am sure the crisis is near, and I do pray God, again and again, to be with you."

Another note on Indulgences:

(iv) " We do not know what a ' day ' means: call it x — an unknown quantity: one must use some measure, and the canonical day of penance is an obvious one. What it all amounts to is that every real spiritual effort we make (and our earnestness is guaranteed by fulfilling certain precise conditions of prayer), remits so much temporal penalty. It is only natural. A father might say this to his son: ' You need not attend family prayers; but if you do, you will have half an hour's less school; and if you attend twice a day, you shall have one hour's re mission.' '

On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception:

(v) " To-night, on this splendid Feast, I have just been down to the Church, and put a candle for you, as you wished, and I chose ' Our Lady, Hope of England,' where I have often prayed for you; and there it is, and will burn for you to-morrow.

" This place is as wonderful as ever — methods of worship very startling to the English mind, but marvellous helps to faith when one begins to grasp that Catholicism means the inclusion instead of the exclusion of other religions. 'All things are ours,' since we are Christ's and Christ is God's. The way in which the dominion of Rome has passed from the temporal to the spiritual sphere is very striking.... The old temples are turned into churches, and the obelisks and columns crowned with the cross or a Christian saint; and even the old images consecrated to Christianity and re-baptized.

" But I could go on for ever; and I mustn't.... I shall be so anxious until I hear that you are safe, though of course I oughtn't to be.... Well — I know God has you by the hand; so why should I be anxious? "

With reference to some " smart and sarcastic " controversial tracts, Father Benson writes:

(vi) " I cannot bear these assaults on Anglicanism: although one feels that Anglican theories are quite impossible, and says so: yet bitterness in saying so seems to me quite detestable, and to do no good at all.... There is a good deal of comfort in the thought that Catholicism includes all that [Anglicans] hold (we know it if they don't), and that it is merely a question of time, in this world or the next, when they will hold it all too. To go from Anglicanism to Catholicism is an acceptance more than a renouncing.... Yes 1 I know what you mean about ' If all churches were like / But then it would not be the Church of England! A church could not, I believe, keep up the standard of

• in all her parishes without being in communion with the Catholic Church. It is because she does not that one can recognise that she is only human; and that the foundation of the Rock of Peter is the only stable one. A succession of holy men can keep up the standard, here and there: but in the Catholic Church it keeps up without them! "

In the same letter:

" ' Subjectivity ' has, one might almost say, no more to do with egoism or pride, than being five feet tall has! It is a method of thought; and has, of course, its peculiar dangers, exactly as ' objectivity ' has. It is a puzzling question, I think, as to how far one ought to develop one's method, whichever of the two it may be; or to develop what one lacks, in order to make oneself balanced. Roughly, one would say that imagination, intuition, subtlety, &c., are subjective; and that steadiness, practical ability, governing power, are objective. At least I think so. It is a fascinating study — psychology: I wish I really knew it."

This letter announces the approaching publication of A Book of the Love of Jesus. Father Benson says he is " delighted " about it.

" They are beautiful prayers and verses. You will love them, I think."

On Christmas Day:

(vii) " The midnight Mass here (San Silvestro in Capite) was beautiful last night. Behind the high altar there is a door, about four feet high, opening into a tiny room where nuns used once to hear Mass. This room was turned into a stable, with a scene of clear sky and clouds and trees behind, and a wooden roof overhead, with creepers, and a little pillar of wall supporting it; and in front a great bundle of straw, with the Holy Child lying upon it with outstretched arms; and all in a brilliant suffused light. It was quite beautiful; and we had an orchestra and harp in the west gallery. This morning after High Mass the sun suddenly blazed out on the gold of the altar, and the Child lying in the door way, and all the candles turned to a smoky yellow, suddenly."

One has seen that very effect a dozen times, but it needs Monsignor Benson to express it.

" Yesterday afternoon I went to St. Mary Major, and heard a part of Vespers, and saw the Cradle exposed in its glass and silver reliquary; and then went on to the Armenian Uniat Church, to Mass at 4 P.M.! It was all very odd, with barbaric music and rattles; with the words of Consecration sung out loud, and a white veil run across the altar suddenly after the Elevation, showing the officiants in a kind of mist behind: and then when it was withdrawn the priest was wearing a jewelled crown! But it gave one a great sense of Catholicity, and completely went against the idea that Rome wrenches everything to her own standard.

"It is really the best Festival of all, this, don't you agree? God coming to our level, whereas in all others we have to aspire to His! I suppose that is why it is the most popular. The Church here is still swarming with people, and tinkling with bells, at noon; continuously since I don't know what hour this morning. All the priests of course are saying their three Masses to-day; and the devotion of the people is beyond all description, especially, I really think, of the men, who form quite half if not more of all the midday congregations. Everyone gets his own chair and kneeler, and plants it exactly where he likes, at any angle, pointed towards any Mass that he likes. One suddenly finds people kneeling straight at oneself and beginning to hear another Mass; nearly all the faithful hear three Masses to-day. I was watching a well-dressed man this morning, with no book, but whose lips were moving quite incessantly; and another, rough-haired boy from the country absolutely rapt and motionless, kneeling on the stones, with his face hidden for, I should think, half an hour. The sense of worship is beyond anything I have ever dreamt of, out of heaven! Then this morning a boy followed me out of church, and suddenly took my hand and kissed it, as they do to priests here. I am afraid he wanted a Christmas present, but it was a touching way of asking for it! "

Father Benson went to Naples at Christmas time. Lovers of his word-pictures will remember a phrase or two in one of his books, describing the piping of the shepherds before an ivory statue of the Mother of God, while across the bay, in the early morning, Vesuvius lay " all vast and violet " against a rosy dawn. Continuing the above letter there, he says:

" The Neapolitan religion is very wonderful; the most intense devotion, combined with very odd ways of behaving. I went out to Mass and Communion this morning, and people were praying in low voices during their Communion, and when they came in; and there were the most remarkable images I have ever seen — Our Lady dressed in blue silk, with a lace handkerchief in her hand! "

Father Benson had, evidently, not yet been to Mantua, where in the great Church of Sant' Andrea Our Lady of the Seven Dolours, still with a lace handkerchief, is dressed in a very elaborate tight-waisted black velvet gown, with diamond ornaments and a Medici collar!

In another letter from Naples, in which he is revelling in the thought of the whole creation, animate and inanimate, being caught up into and absorbed by the Catholic Church as a means of rendering honour and glory to the Divine Creator in beauty and splendour, Father Benson says:

(viii) " This morning there was a cat sitting upon the rails while Holy Communion was being given. No one paid any attention to it. It did not seem out of place.... Does that seem quite mad? "

(ix) " Now let me tell you more about Rome, as it all belongs to you now. First of all, this octave of services (Epiphany). We are having, as I think I told you, most of the Eastern rites here. They are very curious, and sometimes grotesque. There is an extraordinary custom of rattling long wands over the altar, with jingling heads to them, that comes from having to keep flies away from the Blessed Sacrament and the priest. In some of the rites the priest wears a kind of imperial crown after the Consecration; and in many of them Communion is given in both kinds. It is all a very striking illustration of the Catholicity of the Church: there is none of that crushing-out of individualism that the Church is so often accused of. There is a most wonderful Italian preacher here.... a most beautiful enunciation, very graceful gestures, and extraordinary passion; and the church is crowded every evening. I wish I could follow him, but I don't know enough Italian yet.

" [San Silvestro in Capite] is a beautiful church; I wish I could describe it. First, it is in the regular Italian architecture; and frescoed and gilded all over; with little galleries on the left, through the gratings of which we hear Mass sometimes; a long west-end gallery for choir and musicians; four chapels each side, and a very large foot-pace, with four or five steps going up to it, and the High Altar.

"It is very moving being down there in the early morning at Mass, and Meditation.... I always go inside one of the chapels, opposite the one where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved, and where most of the Masses are said. It is quite dark, except for the lights; and the two or three Altars where Masses are going on; and one generally is present for at least three or four Consecrations, and for about two complete Masses, as they go on continuously from about half-past five to eight. Then the dawn begins to creep in; and more and more people come;

and one sees them kneeling at all angles, many sitting, some standing, attending to different altars. They have an extraordinary power of remaining perfectly still without any book, apparently in deep prayer; one doesn't expect it, except of Religious, or of people who have had especial training; but I suppose it is the highest form of prayer to those who can do it. They seem to have got below the surface down to the silence of Grace; and Low Mass is exactly the worship that fits it and makes it fruitful. One feels that the whole world is a kind of restless, useless activity when one catches a glimpse of where those people's souls are. All the cries in the street, and even the expectation of hearing that war is declared [January 1904], and the English post — it all seems so external and superficial, because just down below, if one could only get there and stop there, there is reality....

" But it seems to me that that is the place where we who are Catholics really meet one another, and the departed, and our Lord: and that Rome and Woodchester and our own homes and the whole world are just there, if we could only make one more effort and get there; and that the Mass that a priest says here is not an other Mass, but the same as that which Father says in England, and that some unknown priest says in Australia....

" Well, this is a dreary letter, I am afraid, but my only excuse is that I am not very well just now.... You know that it is not for want of a very deep happiness and gratitude in my heart, that I can't put it all down on paper. I must do my best to make up by thanking God more and more for the great grace He has given you."

(x) " It is so inexplicable to us, when we have had the great grace of entrance into the Church, how everyone else does not see it too — it is inexplicable, and that is the end of it; but just because we are so wholly certain of Catholicism, we can dwell on the common life in Christ which we of the Body of the Church share with those who are of her Soul.

" It does seem to me, more and more, that as soon as we have convinced our friends that we are whole-hearted and loyal in our Catholicism, we can, after that, dwell much more on what we have in common with them than on what we differ from them in. It is really horrifying some times to hear old Catholics talking of everything outside the Church as * Anti-Christ '; and it seems to me that perhaps one of the greatest works we converts can do is to show old Catholics that our life outside the Church was real and Christian, though mistaken and imperfect."

(xi) " This morning I prayed for you under very exceptional circumstances, just after re ceiving Communion at the Pope's hands. We went to his Mass in his private chapel; about fifty people there. A little room opened on to the one where we knelt, with the altar in full view. He said Mass with such simplicity and humility, like a country priest; I needn't try to tell you how touching it was, and what it all meant to one; and this Sunday, a year ago, I was beginning a parochial mission at Cam bridge!... There is little to describe as to the Mass. Imagine an immensely high room, hung with red damask and tapestry; folding doors, and a great gold altar just beyond, with a communion rail in front of it, and a holy, simple old priest with a ruddy-brown face, in a purple jewelled chasuble and white cap; and three officials in white and scarlet serving him: and a dead silence, except for the very soft murmur of a rather pathetic voice. He gave us all communion after his own."

(xii) " I am sending you two leaves — real Valentines — because they came from the Catacomb-Chapel of St. Valentine on his day. (Please give Father one.) We went to hear Mass there, sung and performed by the Pallottini and their students. The catacomb-chapel opens by a door in the side of a hill: and the catacombs themselves open out in passages on the same level on the left: but these have been spoilt by Augustinians, who turned them into cellars — apparently not realising what they were doing....

"... I think [born Catholics] have an idea that most of the [Anglican] clergy preach a sort of Calvinism in a black gown; and that just a few silly young men put on vestments sometimes as a kind of ' joke' — behind locked doors. It does seem to me more and more that the first work of converts is to clear up this kind of misunderstanding. The conversion of England can never take place until England is understood. The whole position of High Churchmen seems to old Catholics utterly insincere; and that it cannot be held in good faith: and it becomes more possible to understand their mistake as one sees for oneself what a strange position it is. I read the Thirty-nine Articles again yesterday! and it does seem very odd how one could have signed them (as one did, and as thousands are doing to-day) in absolute good faith and sincerity....

"... Ash Wednesday was very touching at

St. John Lateran — where I went out of pure love to John Inglesant, who ' received the sacred ashes there/ What a wonderful book that is as regards the inner life."

At Easter, Father Benson writes:

(xiii) " Here, there is so much to say that one doesn't know where to begin; but I suppose the chief thing is the Pope's Mass in St. Peter's.

" It was overwhelming! The whole church was cobbled with heads, and over that pavement came the huge canopy, with the great jewelled figure below it, and the solemn fans waving behind. That was one of the keenest moments. In front came an almost endless row of mitres moving along. Then the plain song was like one enormous deliberate voice talking, and every now and then shouting, in that enormous place. And then of course the final great moment was the Elevation, in dead silence, and only broken by the silver trumpets exulting up in the dome. It gave one a sense of an extraordinary consummation — the Vicar of Christ offering Christ, in the very centre of the world, with representa tives of the whole Christian world there, and the angels blowing their trumpets overhead. One felt as if everything that was important or real was focussed there. And then the procession went out again in silence, with the trumpets blowing every now and then; and then out we went, too, and the whole piazza was one black crowd. Other things seem very small after that.... We have scirocco just now, and heavy thundery clouds, and a white glare over every thing: most exhausting and trying to the temper. English people swarm everywhere, with red Baedekers under their arm.

" The proofs of the book of Pre-Reformation Devotions have begun to arrive again: and it is such a joy correcting them: but I am terribly afraid that Catholics will not care for the book. It is too Saxon — such words as ' amiable ' are not permitted for a moment. But I am sure you will like it. The devotions are an extraordinary mixture of passion and restraint, strength and delicacy.... This is a dull letter, I am afraid, but scirocco and mild feverishness are responsible. I tremble to think of these coming months of heat."

I wish it was possible to reproduce, in the text of the following letter, the delightful little sketch — of a Benedictine lay-brother with a long broom — which illustrates the original. It is about an inch and a quarter high, and absolutely true to life, in spite of the artist's own criticism. The letter is written from Sant' Anselmo.

(xiv) " and I are having the most delightful time — in this Benedictine Monastery — in Retreat. It is the best Retreat, so far, I have ever spent, even from the subjective point of view. There are no rules and no addresses, and we do exactly what we like, get up when we like, pray for as long as, and when and how and where we like, and it is consequently a kind of foretaste of Paradise. And the Benedictines radiate tranquillity and the Love of God, and have a sense of humour, and provide cold baths; and I really don't know what more one could want. It is a new monastery, very large, with a tall Abbey-Church, and an avenue of ilexes; and lizards; and blue hills in the distance, and vineyards all round; and great cool marble rooms and staircases. And they sing like angels, and their ceremonial is ideal. We had Pontifical Vespers this afternoon; and they did it as if (and indeed it is) more important to praise God well than to do anything in the world: and one felt that there was plenty of time and space. I had a gallery in the roof all to myself.

" There are some delightful lay-brothers here, like Gnomes (I have drawn the habit wrong, of course, but it gives the general impression), who do one's room, and beam all over: one of them brought up your letter this afternoon.

" I feel I could retreat here for ever. Each one, properly speaking, is ten days: but I expect they will shorten the others; as thirty days' retreat in six weeks is rather long. But I don't mind in the least if they don't.... I have seen nothing so like Mirfield since I left it; and that was Heaven....

" My first Mass is certainly going to be over the body of St. Peter. But dates are absolutely uncertain at present. I will let you know as soon as I know myself.... But the Italian way is to take a pinch of snuff, when they are asked anything, and to say: ' Fa niente! Time was made for slaves! '

" Your account of the French [Religious] and the Salve Regina is most touching. But how splendid it is that England should give them a refuge. It is a kind of reparation for Tyburn, and may bring immense blessings....

" I am afraid old Catholics won't [like my 'Book of the Love of Jesus']. Their taste for English is wholly corrupted by modern Latinised prayers, full of words like ' amiable,' ' condescension,' ' fervour,' and so on. It needs to be brought up on the Book of Common Prayer to know what the English language can mean in prayer. But I hope that converts and Anglicans will buy the book....

"... This is a very unsuitable letter to write from a Retreat, I am afraid — what pious persons would call ' disedifying.' But I can't help that: I haven't time to write another."

Any comment upon these most beautiful letters would most certainly be " disedifymg," though there is much which one's heart burns to say. But if Monsignor Benson ever, at any time, wrote a more moving description than that of the Pope's Mass in St. Peter's, at Easter, I, for one, have never seen it.

The letter from Sant' Anselmo was written in May 1904. Father Benson was ordained priest on the Feast of St. Antony of Padua, June 13; and after saying his first Mass, not over the body of St. Peter, but at the altar of St. Gregory on the Coelian Hill, he returned to England.