yet scarcely one half of the stock was exhausted! 
    The monastery, however, only contains twelve Religieux.  The interior
    of the church is covered with such a profusion of gilt and rich
    ornaments, that when the sun shines full upon it, it is difficult to
    view it without being dazzled.”  Page 79.

    The old monastery of Moelk successfully stood a siege of three months,
    against the Hungarians, in the year 1619.  See Germ.  Austriaca,
    &c. p. 18.

[106] [The Abbe Strattman SURVIVED the above interview only about five
    years.  I hope and trust that the worthy Vice Principal is as well
    NOW, as he was about three years ago, when my excellent friend Mr.
    Lodge, the Librarian of the University of Cambridge, read to him an
    off-hand German version of the whole of this account of my visit to
    his Monastery.]

[107] This history has come down to us from well authenticated materials;
    however, in the course of its transmission, it may have been partially
    coloured with fables and absurdities.  The Founder of the Monastery was
    ALTMANN, Bishop of Passau; who died in the year 1091, about twenty
    years after the foundation of the building.  The two ancient
    biographies of the Founder, each by a Monk or Principal of the
    monastery, are introduced into the collection of Austrian historians
    by Pez; vol. i. col. 112-162.  Stengelius has a bird’s eye view
    of the monastery as it appeared in 1638, and before the principal
    suite of apartments was built.  But it is yet in an unfinished state;
    as the view of it from the copper-plate engraving, at page 248 ante,
    represents it with the intended additions and improvements. 
    These latter, in all probability, will never be carried into effect. 
    This monastery enjoyed, of old, great privileges and revenues.  It had
    twenty-two parish churches—­four towns—­several villages, &c. subject
    to its ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and these parishes, together with
    the monastery itself, were not under the visitation of the Diocesan
    (of Passau) but of the Pope himself.  Stengelius
    (Monasteriologia, sign.  C) speaks of the magnificent views seen
    from the summit of the monastery, on a clear day; observing, however,
    (even in his time) that it was without springs or wells, and that it
    received the rain water in leaden cisterns.  “Caeterum (adds he)
    am[oen]issimum et plane aspectu jucundissimum habet situm.”  Towards the
    middle of the seventeenth century, this monastery appears to have
    taken the noble form under which it is at present beheld.  It has not
    however escaped from more than one severe visitation by the
    Turks.