The conception that anything in this life could of itself be of any great moment to us, was considered as much a puerility unworthy of a man of the world, as a disloyalty to God.

Experience of life, and meditation on life, seemed to teach nothing but the same lesson, seemed to preach a sermon _de contemptu mundi_.

The view the eager monk began with, the sated monarch ended with.

But matters did not end here.

There was something more to come, by which this view was altogether transmuted, and which made the wilderness and the waste place at once blossom as the rose.