George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

It was now nearly dinner-time, and we returned to our rooms to rest . . . . At twelve o'clock the kind old guest-master and the librarian came for us, and we went with them to the refectory of the dignitaries of the monastery, another enormous room, fifty or sixty feet high, and of marble, where about a dozen persons dined. The order is Benedictine, and there was no ceremony. As we approached the table, all stopped to ask silently a blessing, each for himself. We then sat down to a simple, good dinner of five or six courses, with a bottle of wine for each person. After it was over and we rose, all paused an instant to return thanks, the monks crossed themselves, and we bowed and courtesied all round.

The monks were pleasant at dinner, and intelligent. Keiblinger, the librarian, a young man of thirty-five, and professor in the Theological Institution connected with the monastery, seemed to have a good deal of acuteness and learning; but in general they did not appear to me like scholars.

There are eighty-four of them in all. Forty priests dine in a hall by themselves: the twelve who hold office dine where we were today; the rest are employed as priests, in parishes connected with the monastery. They have a gymnasium, where a considerable number of young men are instructed without pay, and forty-eight are supported entirely. About three hundred persons sleep and are nourished under their roof, and in the autumn their sixty guest-chambers are often filled. The whole establishment, therefore, belongs to that magnificent class of which few now remain in any country.

After dinner I went again to the library, and saw many rich and curious manuscripts, and books of the first age of printing. There was no want, either, of modern works nor of Protestant books; and yet the library was not like the library of a living, active, efficient institution, but seemed, like the monastery itself, to belong to another state of society.

We went, too, to see their pictures, which were little worth the trouble, and their collections in natural history, which were small; but their garden is fine, and, like the front of the monastery, commands grand views up and down the Danube, which spreads out beneath in all its beauty and power, and over to the other shore, where are the picturesque ruins of the old castle of Waideneck, churches, villages, and monasteries, scattered frequent through a fertile land, the castles of Lubereck and Schonbichl still proudly preserved, and a range of solemn mountains swelling up to the horizon and bounding the whole. But the monks of old always chose well the sites for their