taking, and contribute to the plaintive sweetness of the choral strains with which the voyagers celebrate the close of their journey before the upraised cross.*

Then scenes follow each other in quick succession; scenes that, after the wont of dreamland's visions, compress the labours and events of years, generations, centuries, into hours, minutes, seconds.

Whilst the forest still resounds with the axes that lay its trees upon the ground, there rises from the soil a timbered. church, whose roof is thatched with rushes. Dwellings spring up around it; and ere the colonists have reaped their first crop of grain, a town has been called into existence by the incessant industry of workers, who do and suffer for the love of God all that the backwoodsmen of this nineteenth century achieve and endure in American fastnesses for the sake of worldly gain. Each succeeding year witnesses a large extension of the settlement, and fresh arrivals of devotees, who are received into the community as soon as the abbot has satisfied himself that they have left the world because they are not of it, and desire nothing on this side of the grave but hard fare, hard toil, and the means of spiritual edification. No wonder that the work prospers; for what agents can be more fit for such an enterprise than men who prefer solitude to any kind of social recreation, and have learnt to delight in every privation that tends to deaden the sensual appetites by which Satan lures sinners to destruction? And whilst these pioneers of monasticism are thankful for the physical rigours of a lot that exacts from them continuous bodily exertion in return for the bare means of sustenance, they deem themselves no less fortunate with respect to all those details of conventual discipline, against

* Oswald of Northumbria has the reputation of having erected the first cross that ever stood in this country. The first cross and altar,' says Foxe. on the authority of Bede and the Polychron.,' 'within this realm, was first set up in the north parts of Hevenfield, upon the occasion of Oswald, king of Northumland, fighting against Cadwalla, where he, in the same place, set up the sign of the Cross, kneeling and praying there for victory.' Crosses became general

throughout the country in the Anglo-Saxon period. A cross,' says the Count de Montalembert of this period, 'raised in the middle of a field, was enough to satisfy the devotion of the thane, his ploughman, and shepherds. They gathered round it for public and daily prayer.'

which unregenerate natures would rebel as vexatious insults to personal dignity, and unendurable encroachments on personal freedom. Instead of fretting at the restraints of its minute provisions for their daily conduct, they derive a delightful sense of spiritual security from a system which assigns a special duty to each of their wakeful hours, and allows them no periods of leisure, when, through want of occupation, they might become an easy prey to diabolical influences.

Nor

Spent in the painful discharge of duties, to many of which we attach notions of servility and degradation, the daily life of these laborious zealots presents us with spectacles that are apt to rouse a momentary sense of amusement, when they are put in sharp contrast against the ways and styles of ecclesiastical persons in more civilised and luxurious times. All our conceptions of the dignity and sacredness of the priestly office, and all our conventional notions of the clerical character, are so rudely disturbed by what is known of the humble industry of these earlier monks, that trivial minds are less disposed to admiration than merriment, when for the first time they are told how in the remoter periods of our ecclesiastical history bishops were habitual wielders of the woodman's axe and the ditcher's spade, whilst their clergy felt no shame in following the plough-tail, and performing the work of artisans or farm-servants. can it be denied that some of the stories of monastic humility and diligence possess a grotesqueness which palliates, though it may not justify, the mirth which they stir in flippant minds. Even students, averse to jocosity, find it difficult to refrain from smiling at the thought of St. David-that prolific parent and wise ruler of monastic settlements-guiding the ploughshare, which his disciples draw through the clayey glebe. But inquirers, less ready to discern what is ludicrous in human action than eager to ascertain the sentiment which inspires it, dismiss their inclination to laugh over this strange spectacle of saintly zeal and clerical submissiveness, when they reflect how the scene,―to those who accept the legend as veritable history, -exemplifies the piety and fine devotion of the men who, having a righteous aim in view, were restrained by no vain care for their dignity from adopting the means by which it could be most readily achieved, and who were nothing loth to

work like beasts of the field in the service of a Divine Master, who for their sakes had lowered Himself to the nature and condition of a man.

Thus it is with our dreamer's monks, whose axes are continually lowering the monarchs of the forest, whose spades are incessantly widening the tracts of cultivated ground, whose hammers are heard, far and near, from early dawn to late evening, and whose industry is covering the adjacent country with peaceful homesteads and churches, whilst it rebuilds and enlarges the central town.

The scenes follow each other more rapidly, and each new scene is a panorama of changes and improvements.

Three centuries of time have barely passed since the first settlers came down the river on their heavily-laden raft; and the wooden church-the earliest architectural achievement of the pioneers-has been replaced by a stone cathedral, whose massive tower, visible from the distant hills, summons worshippers by sound of bell, and mingles its clamorous music with the terrifying uproar of the thunderstorm.* In accordance with the larger proportions of the new cathedral, the spaces, that in old time encircled the wooden church, have broadened into ample courts and picturesque thoroughfares. Ecclesiastical reform has also effected material changes in the monastery, investing its occupants with a strictly ecclesiastical character,

* Noticing this superstitious use of church-bells, in connexion with the many accidents that occurred from lightning to religious buildings in days when artificial lightning-conductors were unknown, Thomas Fuller, in The Church History of Britain,' observes,-' Only we will add, that such frequent firing of abbey-churches by lightning confuteth the proud motto, commonly written on the bells of their steeples, wherein each bell entitled itself to a sixfold efficacy:

drawing a broad line between the religious residents of the abbey, and the laity dwelling in the outer town, assigning separate residences to the two sexes of religious persons, and establishing scores of petty regulations, which tend to the aggrandisement of the clerical element of the community, whilst they manifestly weaken that sentiment of close, familiar fellowship, which used to knit all the inhabitants of the place into one compact family. In fact, the settlement of less than threescore religious persons has grown into a populous town, with an abbot for its ruler, residences for its clergy, a grand cathedral for its monastic celebrations, a parochial system for the instruction of its laity, a college for its nuns, and buoyant trades for the support of its increasing populace.

The life of the monastery has become less trying to monks of slender frame and delicate constitution than it was in the earlier years of its existence; but this change arises from the fact that the brethren are less frequently called upon to endure the rigours of a variable climate without adequate defence against the severity of winterly seasons, and is in no way due to any relaxation of the rules of their order. For though they have attained the fulness of such opulence and power as the age permits to the most fortunate of religious societies, success has produced in them no disposition to luxurious repose. From the abbot to the youngest novitiate they are zealous for the welfare of their house, the good of their fellow-creatures, and the glory of God, to whom they must one day render account of the use which they make of the talents committed to their stewardship. Loyal to his order, with a sentiment that combines the loyalty of the soldier with the devotion of the saint, each member of the sacerdotal college throws the plenitude of his energies into the performance of the work specially allotted to him, whether his peculiar task be the care of any portion of the society's earthly estate, the pursuit of literary labour, the relief of indigence, the instruction of students, the primary training of children, or the cure of souls. And whilst they thus discharge their various functions to the best of their imperfect knowledge and defective powers, they are in perfect harmony with the spirit and aspirations of their time. In the celibacy which they have recently adopted as a rule of their lives, and

in various minor arrangements which contribute more to the worldly influence than the spiritual efficacy of the monastic classes, shrewd observers can indeed see the first signs of the division which is destined to become a wide gulf of severance between monasticism and national interests. The contentions that have arisen betwixt themselves and the secular clergy also forebode innumerable humiliations and embarrassments in future days. But at present the monks are in perfect unison with every section of the laity, with the nobles, from whom their novices are mostly drawn, no less than with the populace, who venerate them for their ascetic austerities and never-failing munificence. Whithersoever they journey, the needy and ignorant welcome them with blessings; and of the attachment and confidence cherished for them by the wealthy, there is evidence in the alacrity with which their schools are frequented by the children of thanes and princes;-children whose parents have in many cases sent them to the monastery and nunnery * from remote parts of the kingdom, not more for the sake of learning than for security from the incursions of the ruthless Danes.

Yet another vision in this dream of many visions.

The time has come when the Saxons must bite the dust or fly before the conquering Normans, and endure the anguish and shame which their Pagan ancestors inflicted on the Christian Celts. The decisive battle has been fought, and the victors are pushing forward the grim work of pacification with the headsman's axe and the hangman's cord; with proclamations

* Competent historians of the religious life of Old England concur in testifying to the importance of the services which the nuns rendered to society as teachers of children- services that began with the first establishment of conventual houses, and were continued till the destruction of the monastic system. But I am acquainted with no authority who is a more tender and vivid witness than Ailred of Rievesby to this particular usefulness of the religious women of remote times. There are some nuns,' says Ailred, who turn their cell into a school. She sits at the window, the child stands in the cloister; she looks earnestly at each of them, and while watching their play, now she is angry, now she laughs, now she threatens, now she soothes, now spares, now kisses; now calls the weeping child to be beaten, and then strokes her face, and catching her round the neck caresses her, calling her "her little daughter and darling." This exquisite picture may be regarded as an illustration of conventual life during several centuries before, and many generations after, its execution by the pen of an abbot of the twelfth century.