ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 



have not changed in these five hundred years. With- 

 out the world goes on, the fashion of its order changes, 

 but in the life of these monks the lapse of ages has 

 worked little alteration. Every day brings back the 

 same round of services, every night they rise at stated 

 hours from their beds of sackcloth to repeat the same 

 nocturnal offices. One generation is laid in the Campo 

 Santo, and another takes its place without a break in 

 the monotony of their existence. Only their ranks 

 are sadly thinned, and the few who remain appear 

 conscious that their days are numbered. There is 

 a melancholy pride in their voices as they guide the 

 stranger through the deserted courts, and pause to 

 compare their past greatness with their present 

 condition. 



" Once we were a hundred and more, now we are 

 only twenty. Chi sa? Who knows how long we 

 shall be suffered to remain here at all ? Who can 

 tell how soon another decree may not drive us out to 

 wander homeless exiles over the face of the earth, and 

 turn our beloved convent into a barrack or factory ? 

 God knows ! these are evil days ! blessed be His 

 will ! " 



And so, meanwhile, they linger on, isolated frag- 

 ments of a system that belongs to the past, but worthy 

 of our reverence as the last relics of an age which could 

 produce foundations as vast and splendid as this Cer- 

 tosa and men as noble as Niccol6 Acciaiuoli. 



234 



