CHARTREUSE, or more usually, to distinguish it from other establishments of the order, La Grande Chartreuse, a famous Carthusian monastery of France, in the department of Isère, situated about 14 miles north of Grenoble, at a height of 4268 feet above the level of the sea, in one of the upper valleys of a group of calcareous mountains, near the sources of the Guiers Mort and the Guiers Vif, two tributaries of the Rhone. The settlement was originally founded in 1084, and derived its name from a small village a short distance to the south-east, which w as formerly known simply as Chartreuse or Cartusia, but is now distinguished as Saint Pierre de Chartreuse. The first convent on the present site was not erected till 1137, and most of the present edifice is of a later date than 1676. It stands in a large meadow, which slopes to the south-west, and is watered by a tiny tributary of the Guiers Mort; on the north a fine forest rises up to the Col of La Ruchère, while on the west the valley is shut in by well-wooded heights, and on the east is overshadowed by the white ridges of Grandsom, which rise upwards of 2500 feet above the convent roof. All access to the spot was formerly by difficult and defensible pathways; and before the construction of the modern roads, it was very seldom that alien visitors disturbed the monks in their retreat. One of the principal approaches is by the valley of the Guiers Mort, which the traveller enters at St-Laurent-duPont, a village of about 1800 inhabitants, with a deaf-mute institution supported by the Carthusians. Passing up the left bank of the stream he next reaches the picturesque hamlet of Fourvoirie (Latin forata via), so named from the road which was driven up the pass at the suggestion of Le Roux, the thirty-third general of the ...