Free The Monk by Matthew Lewis

and could yet feel the contented tranquillity which these lines express, I allow that the situation would be more desirable, than to live in a world so pregnant with every vice and every folly. But this never can be the case. This inscription was merely placed here for the ornament of the grotto, and the sentiments and the hermit are equally imaginary. Man was born for society. However little he may be attached to the world, he never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of mankind, the misanthrope flies from it; he resolves to become an hermit, and buries himself in the cavern of some gloomy rock. While hate inflames his bosom, possibly he may feel contented with his situation: but when his passions begin to cool; when Time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which he bore with him to his solitude, think you that Content becomes his companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained by the violence of his passions, he feels all the monotony of his way of living, and his heart becomes the prey of ennui and weariness. He looks round, and finds himself alone in the universe: the love of society revives in his bosom, and he pants to return to that world which he has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: no one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some rock, he gazes upon the tumbling water-fall with a vacant eye; he views, without emotion, the glory of the setting sun. Slowly he returns to his cell at evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; he has no comfort in his solitary, unsavoury meal: he throws himself upon his couch of moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former.”
    “You amaze me, father! Suppose that circumstances condemned you to solitude; would not the duties of religion, and the consciousness of a life well spent, communicate to your heart that calm which——”
    “I should deceive myself, did I fancy that they could. I am convinced of the contrary, and that all my fortitude would not prevent me from yielding to melancholy and disgust. After consuming the day in study, if you knew my pleasure at meeting my brethren in the evening! After passing many a long hour in solitude, if I could express to you the joy which I feel at once more beholding a fellow-creature! ’Tis in this particular that I place the principal merit of a monastic institution. It secludes man from the temptations of vice; it procures that leisure necessary for the proper service of the Supreme; it spares him the mortification of witnessing the crimes of the worldly, and yet permits him to enjoy the blessings of society. And do you, Rosario, do you envy an hermit’s life? Can you be thus blind to the happiness of your situation? Reflect upon it for a moment. This abbey is become your asylum: your regularity, your gentleness, your talents have rendered you the object of universal esteem: you are secluded from the world which you profess to hate; yet you remain in possession of the benefits of society, and that a society composed of the most estimable of mankind.”
    “Father! father! ’Tis that which causes my torment. Happy had it been for me, had my life been passed among the vicious and abandoned; had I never heard pronounced the name of virtue. ’Tis my unbounded adoration of religion; ’Tis my soul’s exquisite sensibility of the beauty of fair and good, that loads me with shame—that hurries me to perdition. Oh! that I had never seen these abbey-walls!”
    “How, Rosario? When we last conversed, you spoke in a different tone. Is my friendship then become of such little consequence? Had you never seen these abbey-walls, you never had seen me. Can that really be your wish?”
    “Had never seen you?” repeated the novice, starting from the bank, and grasping the friar’s hand with a frantic