situated, but a large unattractive edifice, not unlike a factory.  The hermitage is placed in a loftier and wilder region of the forest.  It comprehends between 20 and 30 distinct residences, each including for its single hermit an inclosed piece of ground and three very small apartments.  There are days of indulgence when the hermit may quit his cell, and when old age arrives, he descends from the mountain and takes his abode among the monks.

My companion had, in the year 1831, fallen in with the monk, the subject of these two sonnets, who showed him his abode among the hermits.  It is from him that I received the following particulars.  He was then about 40 years of age, but his appearance was that of an older man.  He had been a painter by profession, but on taking orders changed his name from Santi to Raffaello, perhaps with an unconscious reference as well to the great Sanzio d’Urbino as to the archangel.  He assured my friend that he had been 13 years in the hermitage and had never known melancholy or ennui.  In the little recess for study and prayer, there was a small collection of books.  ‘I read only,’ said he, ’books of asceticism and mystical theology.’  On being asked the names of the most famous mystics, he enumerated Scaramelli, San Giovanni della Croce, St. Dionysius the Areopayite (supposing the work which bears his name to be really his), and with peculiar emphasis Ricardo di San Vittori.  The works of Saint Theresa are also in high repute among ascetics.  These names may interest some of my readers.

We heard that Raffaello was then living in the convent; my friend sought in vain to renew his acquaintance with him.  It was probably a day of seclusion.  The reader will perceive that these sonnets were supposed to be written when he was a young man.

308. Monk-visitors of Camaldoli.

    ‘What aim had they the pair of Monks?’ (XVII. l. 1.)

In justice to the Benedictines of Camaldoli, by whom strangers are so hospitably entertained, I feel obliged to notice, that I saw among them no other figures at all resembling, in size and complexion, the two monks described in this Sonnet.  What was their office, or the motive which brought them to this place of mortification, which they could not have approached without being carried in this or some other way, a feeling of delicacy prevented me from inquiring.  An account has before been given of the hermitage they were about to enter.  It was visited by us towards the end of the month of May; yet snow was lying thick under the pine-trees, within a few yards of the gate.

309. *_At Vallombrosa_. [XVIII.]