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New Zealand Tablet, Volume X, Issue 514, 16 February 1883, Page 23

It is strange how the achievements of those old monks whom a shallow age has stigmatized as ignorant and lazy will keep croppinir up in the most unexpected places. Not only is no history of painting complete which fails to take account of the work of cowled masters of the brush ; no record of the rise and progress of literature free from fault which does not chronicle how much we owe to the oldtime tome left us by cloistered clerk ; but a subject apparently so far removed from monastic studies as cbrystallography is found to hare been made so peculiarly their own that in a lecture delivered on the 4th of December, Mr. Buskin declared it would be impossible to do it justice without saying something about the Cistertian architecture Stones, h« declared, had always been interesting to him only as express! ing the minds of their builders ; and the main part of the lecture was occupied with a delightful sketch of the principles and methods of the Benedictine works, with their gospel and labour, and their agriculture and letters. Then followed an equally charming descrin. tion of the Monastery of Oluny, which was contrasted in Mr. Buskin's manner, with a picture of our modern rural economy — with a parson looking on at the restoration of his church, while the squire was busy with plans for agricultural machinery which would send people off to America. The lecture was rich, too, in those personal disgressions, which are Mr. Buskin's favorite vehicles for his best niecpn of humoxir. * CB