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under the lenient rule of the jolly Brother Girolamo,--an easy, wide-spread, loosely organized body, whose views of the purpose of human existence were decidedly Anacreontic. Fasts he abominated; night-prayers he found unfavorable to his constitution; but he was a judge of olives and good wine, and often threw out valuable hints in his pastoral visits on the cooking of maccaroni, for which he had himself elaborated a savory recipe; and the cellar and larder of the convent, during his pastorate, presented so many urgent solicitations to conventual repose, as to threaten an inconvenient increase in the number of brothers. The monks in his time lounged in all the sunny places of the convent like so many loose sacks of meal, enjoying to the full the dolce far niente which seems to be the universal rule of Southern climates. They ate and drank and slept and snored; they made pastoral visits through the surrounding community which were far from edifying; they gambled, and tippled, and sang most unspiritual songs; and keeping all the while their own private pass-key to Paradise tucked under their girdles, were about as jolly a set of sailors to Eternity as the world had to show. In fact, the climate of Southern Italy and its gorgeous scenery are more favorable to voluptuous ecstasy than to the severe and grave warfare of the true Christian soldier. The sunny plains of Capua demoralized the soldiers of Hannibal, and it was not without a reason that ancient poets made those lovely regions the abode of Sirens whose song maddened by its sweetness, and of a Circe who made men drunk with her sensual fascinations, till they became sunk to the form of brutes. Here, if anywhere, is the lotos-eater's paradise,--the purple skies, the enchanted shores, the soothing gales, the dreamy mists, which all conspire to melt the energy of the will, and to make existence either a half-doze of dreamy apathy or an awaking of mad delirium.
It was not from dreamy, voluptuous Southern Italy that the religious progress of the Ital