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 saP 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 Niccolo Acciaiuoli. 
234 
