XCVni. PROLEGOMENA. 



society having improved since the " Reformation," 

 there has really been a chang^e for the worse in 

 this respect of so appalling a nature, that it is 

 calculated only to make us throw down our pen 

 in disgust of human pretensions and the boasted 

 improvements of the age we live in. 



Go, physician and moralist, into the gardens 

 of ruined monasteries, and behold in the curious 

 plants which still grow there, as if wild, the 

 sources of your art, — and the traces of those monks 

 who revived j)liysic in Europe. Proceed to search 

 ont the remains of the hospitals they founded, 

 and examine the real history of their conduct in 

 administering therein the blessings of medicine 

 and of raiment to the poor. 



Then, leaving the records of history, take 

 a survey of new parish workhouses and gaols, and 

 learn the whole spirit of modern charity and 

 mendicity-societ -ism. At length mount to the 

 summit of those Alpine mountains, where, cased 

 in eternal snow, the Hospice of St. Bernard, 

 full of " idle dirty useless monks," offers to every 

 traveller a refuge and a guide, and administers 

 to human sufferings amidst the perils of undis- 

 solving frost,* — a specimen of what Catholic 

 institutions used to be throughout Christendom, 

 and then enquire candidly by what name the 



* The peculiar breed of Dogs kept at this Convent to con- 

 duct lost passengers through the snow to the House, has been 

 the admiration of Alpine travellers for many years. 



