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There are few finer things in Europe than the monastery_called by this name. It stands on the very edge of France, close to the borders of Savoy, among the mountains which form the lowest and most western line of the great chain of the Alps. It is distant about sixteen English miles from Grenoble, the chief town of the department of the Isere, and about twelve from Les Echelles, in Savoy, a small town on the great road from France to Italy by Mount Cenis and Turin.

Les Echelles stands in a plain quite surrounded by high mountains, on a river called the Guiers Vif. It is like the situation of Beddgelert, in Caernarvonshire, except that the mountains are nearly twice as high as those in Wales. When you set out from Les Echelles to go to the Grand Chartreuse, you cross the Guiers Vif, and enter France immediately; for this little river here divides the two countries of France and Savoy. You then go along in the plain, for about three or four miles, toward the mountains which surround it, and which rise so high and so steep, and so without any apparent opening, that you cannot fancy where the road will carry you. At last, when you are come close under them, you find that an enormous notch, as it were, has been cut down into them from top to bottom, just wide enough to leave room for a roaring mountain torrent which comes hurrying down, and presently falls into the Guiers Vif. This torrent is called the Guiers Mort, or the Dead Guiers; as the name of the other

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means the Quick," or the Living Guiers. Up the banks of this Dead Guiers you are now to make your way, in the deep notch above mentioned; so deep that in winter the sun can hardly be seen over the tops of the cliffs, and so narrow that there is only room for the chafing torrent, and a narrow road, or rather track, cut through the wood along its side. The trees all the way are magnificent, chiefly pines and beech, and the timber grows to an enormous size. You go in this sort of scenery for about seven or eight miles, ascending all the way, and in some places the track is very steep, and is cut in zigzags to ease it; for you are going up towards the source of the Dead Guiers; and sometimes the ground falls, or rather rises to you, so rapidly that the stream comes down in a succession of waterfalls, and, as you have to follow the course of the stream, your track is steep in proportion. At last, when you have thus got up to a great height, you find an opening in the mountains on your left hand, where another little torrent comes down into the Guiers; and this is not such a mere notch as the glen up which you have been toiling, but it is wide enough to have some pasture in it, and the green open fields look quite cheerful amidst the dark masses of wood which form a ring round them. You turn up this opening and ascend some way further, and then, just at the head of this little valley, under high walls of cliff which rise up abruptly out of the pines and stop all further progress, you see the monastery of the GRANDE CHARTREUSE.

It is a very large pile of buildings, like one of our colleges, inclosing a great oblong square or cloister, the length of which is 672 French feet, or nearly 714 English. At each corner the roof runs up very high to a point, like the two wings of the Tuileries, at Paris. Your guide takes you to a large out-building, where you leave your horses, and where you are met by one of the lay-brothers, who conducts you to the monastery, and shows you into the stranger's room. Here you may dine, if you require it; but no meat is allowed to be eaten at the Chartreuse, either by the monks them

selves or by others. The lay-brother then returns to take you round the building. The cells of the fathers

are ranged along the sides of the great cloister, with little mottoes from Scripture, or from some religious book, painted outside on the doors. Each cell includes two rooms and a sort of closet for books, besides a lumber or wood-room on the ground floor, opening into a little garden, enclosed within four stone walls, but when you look beyond the walls, or rather up into the sky, you see the magnificent boundary-wall of cliff, crowned with pines on its summit, and a cross affixed on the highest peak of all. By each cell door is a small hole in the wall, at which the father's provisions are given in to him; for they only dine in the hall on Sundays and holydays, and even then they do not speak to one another; for the rule of the Carthusians, as they are called, is one of the strictest of all the monastic orders, and they may not speak either to one another or to strangers without the leave of their superior,

Before the first French revolution the monks had a very considerable property in the forests which surround their monastery. But at the revolution they were deprived both of their forests and of their monastery; the former was sold to different individuals, but the latter never could find a purchaser;-its remote situation rendering it unfit for any other purpose than that for which it had been originally designed. Accordingly, when the Bourbons came back in 1814, the monks returned to the Grand Chartreuse, and took the possession of the meadows immediately around it, with the liberty of getting their fuel from the adjoining forests. In 1830 there were about one hundred and fifty persons belonging to the monastery, including the fathers and the lay-brothers. They visit the sick, and perform spiritual duties in the small chapels and churches scattered over the surrounding mountains. For eight months in the year the snow lies all around the monastery, and of course the climate is too cold either for corn or fruit; but in the summer months, when strangers commonly visit it, the bright green of

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