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I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE 481
and open-hearted liberal leaders in other countries. Thus, irrespectively of all immediate contest or progress, I saw in the steady course of the historical reading by which I prepared myself to write The Stones of Venice, that, alike in the world and the Church, the hearts of men were led astray by the same dreams and desires; and whether in seeking for Divine perfection, or earthly pleasure, were alike disobeying the laws of God when they withdrew from their direct and familiar duties, and ceased, whether in ascetic or self-indulgent lives, to honour and love their neighbour as themselves.1
While these convictions prevented me from being ever led into acceptance of Catholic teaching by my reverence for the Catholic art of the great ages,-and the less, because the Catholic art of these small ages can say but little for itself,-I grew also daily more sure that the peace of God rested on all the dutiful and kindly hearts of the laborious poor; and that the only constant form of pure religion was in useful work, faithful love, and stintless charity.
8. In which pure religion neither St. Bruno himself nor any of his true disciples failed: and I perceive it finally notable of them, that, poor by resolute choice of a life of hardship, without any sentimental or fallacious glorifying of “Holy poverty” as if God had never promised full garners for a blessing; and always choosing men of high intellectual power for the heads of their community, they have had more directly wholesome influence on the outer world than any other order of monks so narrow in number, and restricted in habitation. For while the Franciscan and Cistercian monks became everywhere a constant element in European society, the Carthusians, in their active sincerity, remained, in groups of not more than from twelve to twenty monks in any single monastery, the tenants of a few wild valleys of the north-western Alps; the subsequent overflowing of their brotherhood into the Certosas of
1 [Leviticus xix. 18.]
XXXV. 2 H
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
