Psalm, and when he comes to the words, 'The Lord is the portion of my inheritance,' the father-general takes from him the black cope, and puts the large white Carthusian garment, called cuculle, over him.

Four years later the final solemn profession is made, during high mass, at the foot of the altar, where the profès lays down his written declaration, 'signed, not with his name, but with a cross, for he is now dead to the world.'

Besides the fathers there are two categories of lay brothers: the frères convers, who have taken vows, and the frères donnés, who are only bound by a civil contract, though they may in course of time, after a trial of eleven years, become frères convers. The former are dressed in white, like the fathers; they wear beards, and have their heads shaved. The donnés wear brown on week-days and white on Sundays. These all do the practical work in and out of the house, and are responsible to the père procureur, who has charge of all temporal matters.

St. Hugh of Lincoln, of whom the Carthusians are justly proud, was once procureur of the Grande Chartreuse. In those days, and until the end of the seventeenth century, the père procureur lived with the frères convers in an establishment called La Correrie, on the road from the Grande Chartreuse to Grenoble by the Sappey-a kind of supplementary Chartreuse, where all the practical work was done, and where the servants of the priors who came to the general chapter received hospitality. It was destroyed by a fire in 1674, and partly rebuilt. During the French Revolution it fell into ruins, and the Carthusians have since turned it into a hospital for the sick poor of the neighbourhood.

The Carthusians, owing to their own exertions, once had large possessions. They turned part of the desert into arable, and part of it into pasture land, and they kept large flocks and herds. Pope Innocent the Fourth allowed them as many as sixty cows. Their iron-founderies were famous throughout Dauphiné on account of the excellent work they produced. They manufactured their own cloth, they had their own printing-presses.

During the French Revolution they were, like all the other Orders; driven away, their property was confiscated, and though they were allowed to re-enter their monastery at the Restoration, they own the desert no longer, but pay a small rent to the State. It is said they make a large income from their liqueur; and this they put to the best use, for their charity is proverbial throughout the country, though by no means of the mischievous kind—that is, indiscriminate.

They have founded schools, churches, hospitals. Wherever there is a disaster in Dauphiné they assist liberally. At Currière, above the Pont St. Bruno, they have a school for the deaf and dumb, and, inconsistent as it may seem, they are teaching the dumb to speak.

It would be impossible, in a short space, to go through all the remarkable names connected with the Grande Chartreuse. St. Bernard was one of its earliest visitors, in the days of the first monastery. Petrarch, whose brother Gerard was a Carthusian, visited him there in 1352, and afterwards wrote that, instead of finding only one brother, as he expected, he had met one in every member of the community. Dom Gerard Petrarca distinguished himself by his piety and devotion during the Black Death, to which no less than 900 Carthusians fell victims. Richelieu's eldest brother, who became cardinal and great almoner of France, once filled the office of assistant sacristan; he remained twenty years in the Order, and always regretted his cell. His portrait, which hangs in one of the passages, strikes the visitors by its likeness to the great Cardinal. Rousseau and Chateaubriand both visited the Grande Chartreuse. Unfortunately, the Visitors' Book, in which Rousseau wrote 'J'ai trouvé ici des plantes rares, et des vertus plus rares encore,' has been defaced by the modern tourist with profane remarks, and is now no longer presented, and the guests are asked for their cards instead.

It has sometimes been made a reproach to the Carthusians that, unlike other Orders, such as the Benedictine, they have exercised no influence over the intellectual world; but if they have not educated mankind, they have at least educated themselves. They have practised the gospel of silence for 800 years, and, according to all ecclesiastical historians, they have always led irreproachable lives. Their Order has never required reform. Cartusia nunquam reformata quia nunquam deformata.' In this matter-of-fact century, with its universal craving for material prosperity, its refinement of material comforts and luxury, where the spiritual life too often stagnates, it is refreshing to breathe, if but for a few hours, that rarefied spiritual atmosphere where the ideal alone is real, and where all Christian creeds may meet.

ELISABETH LECKY.

OVER-MORTGAGING THE LAND.

FROM time immemorial periodical complaints of depression have been heard from those engaged in agricultural pursuits. They attracted more attention in years gone by, because agriculture was one of the few productive industries, and a large proportion of the community were interested in its prosperity. This proportion has slowly diminished in all countries, more particularly in England, where the food producers have dwindled to about ten per cent. of our working population; and the voice of ten complaining is as nought against ninety demanding the cheapest possible food.

The farmers have abandoned all idea of stimulating the supply of home-grown food by artificial means, and have turned their attention to the possibility of ameliorating their lot in some other way. It is the desire to assist them in their laudable endeavours that has caused many people to advocate the abolition of the law of primogeniture, the cheaper transfer of land, the equal distribution of property, the confiscation of tithes, the registration of land, the acquisition of the land by the State, the increase of allotments, the reduction of railway rates, and technical education; amidst a host of minor measures brought forward for alleviating the burden of the landowner and farmer. The agriculturists who were to benefit by these proposals have threshed them well out, and have reluctantly come to the conclusion that they are unable to see how such legislation would materially benefit their condition. The landowner naturally disapproves of most of the proposals on principle. The farmer argues that, as the land must belong to some one, and as it is impossible he should own it if the capitalist willing to take two per cent. for his money opposes him, cheapening the transfer is as much a matter of indifference to him as the ownership; he objects to the equal distribution of property because he considers one landlord quite troublesome enough to deal with, and the possibility of multiplying the number is to him a distinct disadvantage. The confiscation of tithe had at first a very strong attraction for him, as he thought he would put his share of four millions annually into his breeches pocket; but finding that it was to be taken for national purposes other than the Church, he failed to see, as far as his own - interests were concerned, what better use it could be put to than at

present. Henry George and his doctrines have never received the approbation of the farmer, who has during many years seen Crown lands the property of the State managed by officials, and he does not think they are so pliable as the ordinary English gentleman with regard to reduction of rent or repairs and renewals of farm buildings. Allotments may be said to interest him but little; overvaluing himself, he undervalues his labourers and hardly considers they are to be trusted with three acres and a cow. The paltry subscriptions of agriculturists last year show how hopeless the farmer considers any attempt to fight the railway interest. He is inclined to view technical education with limited approval; it attracts him partly because it is the most fashionable remedy, but mainly because there appears to be some prospect of squeezing subsidies out of the national purse. A doubt, however, still exists in his mind as to the permanent good that any such education will be to him, and as to the money obtained being used by individuals for their own rather than for the public good. These are the reasons the tiller of the soil gives for the light in which he views all such proposals; in the abstract his objections may be in some measure sound, inasmuch as they are based on a view taken entirely from a personal and not from a national standpoint, and he ignores the fact that any benefit to the community at large would be an indirect advantage to himself.

He does not see how these measures would improve his lot, and they have certainly so far never had sufficient attraction to make him take an actual interest in them.

If the agricultural electors who are to pronounce their opinion through their vote are to be enlisted, they must be offered some material advantage, not however, let us hope, such as the Land League promised the Irish tenants, but a material benefit, that without robbing one class will add to the comfort and well-being of the other.

The Irish electors, who are mostly of the farming class, have demonstrated that the agricultural mind is quite open to grasp at any proposed improvement in the farmer's position; but we in England have no particular desire to see such changes in land tenure as fixtures of rent or tenant right. These may have been an absolute necessity in Ireland to prevent a general revolution, and to save a population from the horror of famine. They are, however, forms of legislation that bring in their train the probability of holdings being mortgaged by both landowner and tenant. If, therefore, we wish to avoid such quagmires we must try to discover what caused the Irish land difficulties.

I think it is generally conceded that over-mortgaging was in a great measure responsible for them.

Over-mortgaging will paralyse any industry, and is more par

ticularly injurious where the interest has to be paid to those who spend it in another part of the country; is it not possible, therefore, that if the mortgaging of purely agricultural land was limited, such paralysis of agriculture might be avoided?

The landowner, even if he had no other income but his agricultural rents, would never find himself in the position of being unable to help the needy because he had nothing to spare. He would meet his tenants, not with that suspicion that has too often characterised the relations of landlord and tenant in the United Kingdom, but with a feeling of contentment in his own solvency, and a readiness to meet the necessities of his tenants. It is easy to understand that if the tenant is unable to get any repairs attended to, or reductions of rent allowed in very bad seasons, because all the money he pays as rent is transferred to mortgages, he ceases to regard his landlord as the actual owner, and his esteem for him in consequence greatly diminishes.

The position of landowner has always carried with it respect and privileges, and where these survive in England the owner has either been free from the curse of over-mortgaging, or else he has derived income from other sources and has been able to meet his tenants in the liberal spirit that is characteristic of the English gentleman. On the other hand, proprietors of purely agricultural land burdened by heavy debt have, owing to the shrinkage in values, been forced to neglect necessary repairs, in which case the tenants have left their farms, the land has been neglected, and great expenditure will have to be incurred before it can be brought back into a high state of cultivation.

Thus, owing to the landlords' embarrassment, a serious loss of capital has occurred.

The evil effects of over-mortgaging land have been mitigated by the existence of incomes other than agricultural, but in land legislation we must consider the owner of agricultural land per se, as mines will some day in the not very far distant future become exhausted, and other sources from which owners of land in England have got increased incomes will become dried up; as this takes place there will be a continually decreasing margin for agricultural repairs and renewals, unless the power of mortgaging the land is limited.

It may be objected that limiting mortgage is an interference with the rights of property, but the State has power to tax its land and all the improvements thereon; and has consequently the prior claim to the land, inasmuch as the payment of taxation takes precedence of all other debts. Surely, therefore, while respecting the claims of those who by the industry of themselves or their ancestors have acquired the right to call a portion of the land their own, and have enhanced its value by creating the existing state of things, we may without infringing on those rights limit the debt they incur on the