PRINCE TURNS MONK.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 270, 7 November 1908, Page 4

PRINCE TURNS MONK.

RENOUNCES HIS COEEEIiS Of UOI.D A grunt sensation lias Ueva created in cennin Continental circles by tilt 1 announcement that Prince Curl zu Lowcustom, a Herman nobleman, hud taken the vows ui a monk at a Dominican monastery. Who is tliis l'riiice who lias kit the work! to devote, the remainder of His days to the service of his Master '! lie is probably without cxecpLioii me most exalted person among the seleet nobility of the Herman Ealherlaiid. 1 would not lie far out of the way to say that lie occupies a position among tnem 1 .somewhat similar lo that occupied by the Duke of Norfolk in England. When In; was in tue world he wus known as l'rimx Carl Heinnch zu Low-ciisteiu-AVcilliciiii lloeucfort. Ho was a Duke and an Excellency, a serenity, and a, '' high-tan," before whom men bowed in .the gravest respect. .lie was born seventy-loin- years ago in the magnificent palace at llaid, in Bohemia, within easy walking distance of the place where the famous Bohemian reformer, John Huss, lirst saw the ligut. His youth and adolescence were spent in tile usual way until the change came [which made him a religious man and turned his thoughts to the Church. \ His father was a 'proud, worldly, grand seigneur, a soldier and a diplomat-, immersed in affairs of Stale and burdened with the care of his tremendous possessions, scattered alt over Europe, so he oppressed his son's plan of entering the Church, and married Ihim to Princess Adcnieid zu Isenburg. His wife did not live long, hut long enough to turn her husband's thoug'ats away from the Church and to interest liini'hi the world,

Two years after he became a widower he again married, this time a woman of quite another character. She was Princess Sophie von und zu U'ichtenstcin. a nun at heart, a woman of intense pielv. who should have lived in the day of Catherine of Sienna rather than amidst the turbulent worldliness of this century. They retired from the world, and shut themselves up in one or another of their numerous castles. Of the six children who were the fruit of this union..one is a poor Sister of charity of St. t'rancisca of Aachen, another is a Benedictine '.mil at Hyde in the Isle of Wight, a third is a mm in a lonelv convent among the mount-

ains of 'Bohemia, and the fourth is the prior of a Hungarian convent, of the strictest rule. I'or more than twenty years the man who has now taken flic vows of the Dominican has not seen any of these four children. Ho used to write to them on saints' days and comfort them with the thought that llicy would our day meet in paradise. in ISti'l his sainted wife passed away. n ud f,nm Unit time until he made lus ulli ,l resolve to cuter "a monastery lie was never seen to smile. V bavoti. a count, a pvbee. a duke of Hie Holy iloinan Umpire, a duke and prince of Austria, a prince of Ucvm.iny, his breast loaded with orders including the much coveted Hidden Kle'ece : will}, the right to sit in the Parliaments of; sK'kim'doins : with 1 .()O<).MKI in -gold mi securities: with hundreds of thousands of acres of the fairest land in Europe ; with the richest mines of copper, coal,] iron • with vast forest in a dozen conn- j tries': with six superb castles and | other residences innumerable '• -win j hosts of friends avid hundreds of retain- | ~,-s ready to do his bidding-U.is "».'» , has found it his dulj lo leave all this, | to sweep it all aside as though it were dross, and lo give the rest of his worn life lo Clod. . . ! It j. said that lite Dominican Oidei ( has vastly .profiled by the arrival amoii" the .brothers of llloil' new recruit. K,. this a- it may. Brother Kaymnml himself will 'have no special treatment aiven to him. no favor to which the i humblest .brother is n«t equally entitled IHs cell is no larger than theirs, his habit of no liner texture, his simple diet no more varied or plenteous, the duties and ollires lie imposes on llinwlf no less vigorous. ,