monasteries as he does of those of Thibet. The monks preserve the most jealous secrecy about their inner lives: their constitutions strictly forbid them to talk of internal matters to outsiders, and their secular servants are enjoined a like secrecy with regard to the little that falls under their observation. Roman Catholics who live under the very shadow of monasteries for many years are usually found, in spite of a most ardent curiosity, to be completely ignorant of the ways of conventual life.
In such circumstances there is, perhaps, occasion for an ex-monk to contribute his personal experiences. The writer, after spending twelve years in various monasteries of the Franciscan Order, found himself compelled in the early part of last year to secede from the Roman Catholic priesthood. During those years, besides a long familiarity with the tenor of monastic life, a large experience of Catholic educational, polemical, and administrative methods has been accumulated, and it may not be inopportune to set it forth in simple narrative.
The religious order to which I had the good or evil fortune to belong is a revival of the once famous Province of Grey Friars, the English section of the Order of Saint Francis. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, immediately after the foundation of the Order, Agnellus of Pisa successfully introduced it into England. The English province (each national section of the order is called a province) flourished
