September xxix.
This day Mr. Paget and I by the direction of his Excellency went to see a glass house, newly erected in the hills adjoining to this place, at the distance of about three hours. Our way thither lay thro a delicious vale, which conveys a small river, is graced with green meadows on each side, and above these with rising hills, adorned with a variety of trees, but particularly pines and firs. I here observed the several curiosities of that art and manufacture, which, tho frequent in England, I had never before seen. Returning home we stept a little to the left hand, to visit a convent of Cistercian monks, by the name of St. Cross, founded in the year 1131, by St. Leopold, Marquess of Austria. During the late siege of Vienna it was burnt by the Tartars (the common fate of all this country for thirty or forty Holland miles round Vienna) but soon after rebuilt by its own abbot, Clement Scheffer, in a more stately and splendid manner. Here reside an abbot, a prior, and about sixty monks, all royally maintained by noble revenues belonging to the monastery. They are neatly and gentilely dressed, lodged in pleasant chambers, have their public appartments alike magnificent, a fine garden, and prospects beautified with vistos and avenues cut in the adjoining woods. The abbot was then absent, but the prior and librarian treated us at supper, where we were served with seven or eight dishes, the best old wines, and conversation far from monkish. The librarian particularly was pleased to ridicule the custom of signing all the doors of this country with C. M. B. which the people fondly esteem a charm against fire and thievery; but he, as he said, instead of Cuspar Malcheir Bulkasar, was wont to interpret these letters Cax Mundus Beelzebub. At the same time I could not but be highly offended at a certain jocular freedom, with which he treated the Holy Scripture, saying with a profane mirth, when he delivered to us a glass of wine, Transeat a me calix iste; and when he had tossed off his own, Consummatum est. In truth we here saw not any token of popish zeal or superstition, as is usual in other places, no crucifixes, or images of the Trinity, Virgin, and the like; but instead of these, the whole Imperial family excellently well painted, and these in rooms, which for grandeur exceeded any, that the Emperor is master of in his palaces about Vienna. Here they favoured us with a lodging after a gentile and candid entertainment, and dismissed us in the like manner by eight a clock the next morning. Their library was mean, but the case very neat; tho the library had been much larger before the destruction by the Tartars. However I saw here a good Latin Ms. of the New Testament, without the Epistles of St. Peter, James, or John; and the Apocalypse placed immediately after St. John’s Gospel.