, who, looking at the committee of monks somewhat sternly,
said: "You present to me Samson; I do not know him; had it been your
prior, whom I do know, I should have accepted him; however, I will now
do as you wish. But have a care of yourselves. By the true eyes of God,
if you manage badly, I will be upon you."
In Walter Scott's novel, "The Abbot," there is an interesting contrast
drawn between the ceremonies attending an abbot's installation, when the
monasteries were in their glory, and the pitiable scenes in the days of
their decline, when Mary Stuart was a prisoner in Lochleven. In the
monastery of Kennaquhair, which had been despoiled by the fury of the
times, a few monks were left to mourn the mutilated statues and weep
over the fragments of richly-carved Gothic pillars. Having secretly
elected an abbot, they assembled in fear and trembling to invest him
with the honors of his office. "In former times," says Scott, "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. When the
folding doors on such solemn occasions were 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
juvenile dispensers of incense preceding him, and the venerable train of
monks behind him, his appearance was the signal for the magnificent
jubilate to rise from the organ and the music-loft and to be joined by
the corresponding bursts of 'Alleluiah' from the whole assembled
congregation.
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