The conventual library consisted of only half-a-dozen well-waxed and well-thumbed liturgies; but one of the priests told me that they boasted formerly of above a hundred volumes written on leather (gild razali), gazelle skins, probably vellum, which were destroyed by the Mamelukes during their last pillage of the convent.
The habitations of the monks, according to the original design of this very curious building, were contained in a long slip on the south side of the church, where their cells were lit by the small loopholes seen from the outside. Of these cells none now remain: they must have been famously hot, exposed as they were all day long to the rays of the southern sun; but probably the massive thickness of the walls and arched ceilings reduced the temperature. There was no court or open space within the convent; the only place where its inhabitants could have walked for exercise in the open air was upon the flat terrace of the roof, the deck of this ship of St Peter; for the White Monastery in some respects resembled a dismasted man-of-war, anchored in a sea of burning sand.
In modern times we are not surprised on finding a building erected at an immense expense, in which the architecture of the interior is totally different from that of the exterior. A Brummagem Gothic house is frequently furnished and ornamented within in what is called "_a chaste Greek style_," and _vice versâ_. A Grecian house--that is to say, a square white block, with square holes in it for windows, and a portico in front--is sometimes inhabited by an antiquarian, who fits it up with Gothic furniture, and a Gothic paper designed by a crafty paper-hanger in the newest style. But in ancient days it was very rare to see such a mixture. I am surprised that the architect of the enthusiastic empress did not go on with the interior of this building as he had begun the exterior. The great hall of Carnac would have afforded him a grand example of an aisle with a clerestory, and side windows, with stone mullions, which would have answered his purpose, in the Egyptian style. The only other instance of this kind, where two distinct styles of architecture were employed in the middle ages on the inside and outside of the same building, is in the church of St. Francesco, at Rimini, which was built by Sigismond Malatesta as a last resting-place for himself and his friends. He lies in a Gothic shrine within; and the bodies of the great men of his day repose in sarcophagi of classic forms outside; each of which stands in the recess of a Roman arch, in which style of architecture the exterior of the building is erected.