The London Charterhouse ; its Monks and its Martyrs. By
Dom Laurence Hendriks. (Kagan Paul, Trench, and Co.)—The author has not much that is new to tell us about the Charterhouse martyrs, but he corrects, in not a few important points, Mr. Fronde, who is the most commonly read authority on the subject. He has the great advantage of being a Charterhouse monk him- self. Few people—Mr. Froude does not seem to have been one of them when he wrote—have any accurate knowledge of the characteristics of a Carthusian " cell." A " cell" is, in fact, a small dwelling-house, for the essence of the rule is a solitary life, broken only on great occasions by a concession to ccenobitism. The picture of life in a Carthusian monastery is very interesting; nor need there be any hesitation in transferring it substantially to the time of Henry VIII. There has been no change to speak of. The interest of the volume centres, of course, in the tragedy which was perpetrated by Henry and Cromwell; but we have also much that is interesting about the English Carthusians of earlier and later times, together with a sketch, conceived in no unkindly spirit, of the modern Charterhouse. Dom Laurence Hendriks is, it may be supposed, not a critical historian.
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