The monastery; The abbot.

340 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
He left the -church, and Magdalen and Roland remained alone in that
great vaulted space, whose style of rich, yet chaste architecture, referred
its origin to the early part of the fourteenth century, the best period of
Gothic-building. But the niches were stripped of their images in the inside
as well as the outside of the church; and in the pell-meil havoc, the tombs
of warriors and of princes had been included in the demolition of the idolatrous shrines. Lances and swords of antique size, which had hung over
the tombs of mighty warriors of former days, lay now strewed among relics,
with which the devotion of pilgrims had graced those of their peculiar
saints; and the fragments of the knights and dames, which had once lain
recumbent, or kneeled in an attitude of devotion, where their mortal relics
were reposed, were mingled with those of the saints and angels of the
Gothic chisel, which the hand of violence had sent headlong from their
stations.
The most fatal symptom of the whole appeared to be, that, though this
violence had now been committed for many months, the Fathers had lost so
totally all heart and resolution, that they had not adventured even upon
clearing away the rubbish, or restoring the church to some decent degree
of order. This might have been done without much labour. But terror
had overpowered the scanty remains of a body once so powerful, and,
sensible they were only suffered to remain in this ancient seat by connivance
and from compassion, they did not venture upon taking any step which
might be construed into an assertion of their ancient rights, contenting
themselves with the secret and obscure exercise of their religious ceremonial,
in as unostentatious a manner as was possible.
Two or three of the more aged brethren had sunk under the pressure of
the times, and the ruins had been partly cleared away to permit their interment. One stone had been laid over Father Nicholas, which recorded of
him in special, that he had taken the vows during the incumbency of Abbot
Ingelram, the period to which his memory so frequently recurred. Another
flag-stone, yet more recently deposited, covered the body of Philip the
Sacristan, eminent for his aquatic excursion with the phantom of Avenel,
and a third, the most recent of all, bore the outline of a mitre, and the
words HFicjacet Eustatius Abbas; for no one dared to add a word of commendation in favour of his learning, and strenuous zeal for the Roman
Catholic faith.
Magdalen Graeme looked at and perused the brief records of these monuments successively, and paused over that of Father Eustace. " In a good
hour for thyself," she said, "but oh! in an evil hour for the Church, wert
thou called from us. Let thy spirit be with us, holy man - encourage thy
successor to tread in thy footsteps -give him thy bold and inventive capacity, thy zeal and thy discretion-even thy piety exceeds not his." As she
spoke, a side door, which closed a passage from the Abbot's house into the
church, was thrown open, that the Fathers might enter the choir, and conduct to the high altar the Superior whom they had elected.
In former times, this was one of the most splendid of the many pageants
which the hierarchy of Rome had devised to attract the veneration of the
faithful. The period during which the Abbacy remained vacant, was a
state of mourning, or, as their emblematical phrase expressed it, of widowhood; a melancholy term, which was changed into rejoicing and triumph
when a new Superior was chosen. When the folding doors were on such
solemn occasions thrown open, and the new Abbot appeared on the threshold
in full-blown dignity, with ring and mitre, and dalmatique and crosier, his
hoary standard-bearers and his juvenile dispensers of incense preceding
him, and the. venerable train of monks behind him, with all besides which
could announce the supreme authority to which he was now raised, his
appearance was a signal for the magnificent jubilate to rise from the organ