But no Christian, whatever might be his own peculiar creed, ever looked upon that blood-stained memorial of him without the profoundest veneration.

of Benedict have assuredly none greater to boast.

They boast, however, in Lanfranc, another primate, to whose far-seeing wisdom in the government of mankind may not obscurely be traced much of the vital spirit of those venerable institutions which are still the

If, in accomplishing that great work, Boniface relied more on human authority than is consistent with the practice, or rather with the theory, of our Protestant churches, his still extant letters will show that he rebuked, with indignant energy, the vices of the great on whom he was dependent. In placing the crown of Childeric on the head of Pepin, he may have been guilty of some worldly compliance with the usurper. Yet it is not to be forgotten that the Pope himself had favored the cause of the mayor of the Palace, by his Delphic response, "Melius esse illum vocari regem apud quem summa potestas consisteret.'

The guides of our own missionary enterprises will, probably, accuse Boniface of undue promptitude in admitting within the pale any one who chose to submit himself to the mere outward form of baptism. His facility is indisputable; but what Protestant will venture to condemn the measures which brought within the precincts of the Christian Church the native lands of Luther, of Grotius, and of Melancthon?

On a single occasion we find him wearing a garb at least resembling that of an inquisitor. Within his spiritual jurisdiction came a Frenchman, working miracles, and selling as relics the cuttings of his own hair, and the parings of his own nalls. This worthy had an associate in one Vincent, a Scotchman, a sort of premature Knox-a teacher, it is said, of heresies-but certainly a stout opponent of all the laws and canons of the Church. Moved by Boniface, the secular arm lodged them both in close prison; and, all things considered, one must doubt their claim to any better lodgings.

Peace be, however, to the faults of Boniface! whatever they may have been. Among the heroes of active piety, the world has few greater to revere; as the disciples

islands and in the North American continent. In his romance of Harold,' Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, solving with equal erudition and creative fancy, the great problem of his art, (the problem how to produce the greatest amount of dramatic effect at the least expense of historical truth,) has produced a living portrait of Lanfranc, the subtle Italian, who, armed with homilies for the devout, jests for the facetious, austerities for the superstitious, learning for the inquisitive, and obsequiousness for the great, renders the weakness and the strength of each in turn tributary to his own ambition, and ascends the throne of Canterbury, not merely by the aid of the meek old Abbot Herduin, but on the shoulders of the imperious William and the imperial Hildebrand. Our great master of historico-romantic portraiture would have destroyed the picturesque unity of his beautiful sketch, if by advancing further, he had taught us (and who could have taught us so powerfully?) how vast is the debt of gratitude which England owes to her great primates Lanfranc, Anselm, Langton, and Beckett, or rather to that benign Providence which raised them up in that barbarous age. Whatever may have been their personal motives, and whatever their demerits, they, and they alone, wrestled successfully with the despotism of the Conqueror and his descendants to the fourth generation; maintaining among us, even in those evil days, the balanced power, the control of public opinion, and the influence of moral, over physical, force which from their times passed as a birthright to the parliaments of Henry the Third and his successors; and which at this day remains the inheritance of England, and of all the free communities with which she has covered, and is still peopling the globe. The thunders and reproaches of Rome are sufficiently encountered, by such reverberated thunders and reproaches as they provoke. To those who deplore alike the necessity and the rancor of the conflict, it may yet be permitted to render a due and therefore a reverent homage to the ancient prelates of the Roman Church. Unchecked by the keen wisdom, the ecclesiastical policy, and the Roman sympathies of the Benedic

tine Lanfranc, the fierce Conqueror would have acquired and transmitted to his posterity on the English throne, a power absolute and arbitrary, beneath the withering influence of which every germ of the future liberties and greatness of England must have prematurely perished.

When, in the mind of William Rufus, the fear of death had prevailed over the thirst for the revenues of Canterbury, he placed the mitre of Lanfranc on the head of the Benedictine Anselm; anticipating, probably, a less effective assertion of the rights of the Church by the retired and gentle student, than had been made by his insinuating and worldly-wise predecessor. In the great controversy of investitures, however, Anselm showed that nothing is so inflexible as meekness, sustained and animated by the firm conviction of right. Yet, at the very moment of success, he turned aside from these agitations, to revolve the mysterious enigmas which it was at once the purpose and the delight of his existence to unravel. Those boundless realms of thought over which, in the solitude of his library, he enjoyed a princely but unenvied dominion, were in his eyes of incomparably higher value than either his primacy of the Church of England, or his triumph in maintaining the prerogatives of the church of Rome. In our days, indeed, his speculations are forgotten, and the very subjects of them have fallen into disesteem. Yet, except perhaps the writings of Erigena, those of Anselm on the " Will of God," on Truth," on Free-will," and on the "Divine Prescience," are not only the earliest in point of time, but, in the order of invention, are the earliest models of those scholastic works, which exhibit, in such intimate and curious union, the prostration and the aspirings of the mind of man-prostrating itself to the most absurd of human dogmas-aspiring to penetrate the loftiest and the most obscure of the Divine attributes.

Truth may have concealed herself from most of these inquirers, but their researches formed no unimportant part of the education which was gradually preparing the intellect of Europe for admission into her sanctuary. Among the followers of Anselm are to be reckoned not merely the Doctors-Venerable, Invincible, Irrefragable, Angelical, and Seraphic-but a far greater than they, even Des Cartes himself, who, as may be learned from Brucker, borrowed from the Benedictine philosopher his proof of the being of a God. Anselm taught that the abstract idea of Deity was the fontal principle of all

knowledge-that as God himself is the primeval source of all existence in the outer world, so the idea of God precedes and conducts us to all other ideas in the world within us—and that, until we have risen to that remotest spring of all our thoughts, we cannot conceive rightly of the correspondence of our own perceptions with the realities amidst which we exist.

If these speculations are not very intelligible, they are at least curious. They show that the metaphysicians who lived when Westminster Hall was rising from its foundations, and those who lived when the first stone of our Edinburgh University was laid, beat themselves very much in the same manner against the bars of their mental prison-house.

Philosophy may thrive in other places. than conventual cells. But there is a literature which scarcely flourishes elsewhere. The peculiar and spontaneous product of the monastery is mystic devotion. If the Benedictines had been cursed with barrenness in yielding this fruit, they would have resembled a Dutch garden, in which it was impossible to cultivate the tulip. But no such reproach clings to the sons and daughters of Benedict. It must, however, be admitted that our own land has been singularly destitute of fertility in this, the most delicate of all the plants cultivated in monastic seclusion. We produced schoolmen to satiety. Erigena, Hales, Duns Scotus, and Occam were our own. But we must pass over to Spain and Germany to find a type of Benedictine greatness, in that impalpable, though gorgeous world, which in later times was inhabited by Molinos and by Fénélon.

In those more fortunate regions, many are the half-inspired rhapsodists whom we encounter - chiefly ladies - and, what is worthy of notice, ladies who from their childhood had scarcely ever strayed beyond the convent garden. Nevertheless, the indestructible peculiarity of our national character, (whether it be shyness or dryness, high aims or low aims, the fear of irreverence for what is holy, or the fear of being laughed at for what is absurd,) that character which forbade the public utterance in these islands of the impassioned communings of the soul with its Maker and with itself, forbids us to make any report to our fellow-countrymen of the sublime "Canticles" of St. Gertrude or of St. Theresa. Lest, however, our hasty sketch of Benedictine intellectual greatness should be defective, without some specimen of their

super-terrestrial poetry, we venture to remind our readers of one passage, of which M. de Malan (one of Mabillon's biographers) has reminded us ourselves, in which the author of the 'De Imitatione Christi" (himself a Benedictine, if Mabillon may be trusted) has sung to his Eolian harp a more than earthly strain. It is, indeed, an excellent example of a style of which we have no model in our own language, except perhaps in occasional passages of Archbishop Leighton. "My son, let not the sayings of men move thee, however beautiful or ingenious they may be; for the kingdom of God consisteth not in words, but in power.

"Weigh well my words, for they kindle the heart, illuminate the mind, quicken compunction, and supply abundant springs of consolation.

"Read not the Word of God in order that thou mayest appear more learned or more wise.

"When thou shalt have read and known many things, then return to the one beginning and principle of all things.

"I am he that teacheth man knowledge, and to little children I impart an understanding more clear than man can teach.

"He to whom I speak shall quickly be wise, and in spirit shall profit largely.

"Woe be to them that search out many curious things, and take little thought how they may serve me.

"I am he who, in one instant, raise up the humble in mind to understand eternal truth better than if he had studied many years in the schools.

"I teach without noise of words, without confusion of opinions, without ambition of honor, without the shock of arguments.

"To some men I speak common things, to others things rare; to some I appear sweetly by signs; to some, with much light, I discover mysteries.

"The voice of books is, indeed, one; but it is a voice which instructs not all alike. I am he who teaches the truth concealed within the voice. I, the searcher of the heart, the discoverer of the thoughts, promoting holy actions, distributing to each one as I will."

If, as the Benedictines maintained, this sacred chant was really sung by a poet of their own fraternity about the beginning of the fourteenth century, it may be looked upon as a kind of threnody, designed to intimate the approaching obscuration of their order. For already might be observed, in a state of morbid activity among them, those

In the lapse of more than seven centuries, the state of society had undergone vast changes; but the institutes of Benedict had not been changed to meet them. The new exigencies of life demanded reformations in the religious state which Francis, Dominic, and Loyola successively established. They combined a more mature policy with a younger enthusiasm. Exhibiting ascetic self-mortifications, till then unknown among any of the monastic communities of the West, they also formed relations equally new with the laity in all their offices-domestic, political, military, and commercial. Having at the same time obtained possession of nearly all the pulpits of the Latin Church, the imagination, the interests, and the consciences of mankind fell so much under the control of these new fraternities, that their influence was felt throughout all the ramifications of society.

While the spiritual dominion of the earlier monasticism was continually narrowed by this formidable competition, the Benedictines were no less constantly becoming more and more entangled in the cares and enjoyments of the world. They established an ill-omened alliance with the Templars, with the Knights of Calatrava and Alcantara, and with five other orders of chivalry-an unhallowed companionship, which, by familiarizing the monks with the military and dissolute manners of these new brethren, gradually contaminated their own.

Wealth and temporal prosperity were no less prolific of evil in the order of St. Benedict than in other societies in which their enervating influence has been felt. But on the monks riches inflicted a peculiar disaster. For, riches tempted the chief sovereigns of Europe to usurp the patronage of the religious houses, and to transfer the government of them from abbots elected by the chapters, to abbots appointed by the king.

The grant of these conventual benefices | in commendam, was one of those abuses in the Church which yielded to no reform until the Church herself and her abuses were swept away together, by the torrent of the French revolution. It was, however, a practice in favor of which the most venerable antiquity might be alleged. From the earliest times churches had been placed under a kind of tutelage, between the death of the incumbent and the appointment of his successor. But it not rarely happened that when the period of this spiritual guardianship was over, the tutor had become too much.enamored of his ward, and possessed too much influence with the great, to acquiesce in a separation from her. In such cases the commendatory, aided by some ill-fed stipendiary curate, assumed all the privileges

and immunities of a sinecurist.

Yet it was not necessary to rely on any vulgar names in defense or in extenuation of this usage. The great Athanasius himself held a bishopric in commendam, in addition to his see of Alexandria. Neither were they vulgar names by whom it was condemned. Hildebrand, Innocent III, and the Fathers of Trent, rivalled each other in denunciations of the abuse; and were cordially seconded by Philippe Auguste, by St. Louis, and even by Francis I. Papal, synodal, and royal decrees, proved, however, too feeble to check an abuse so tempting to royal and sacerdotal cupidity. The French kings converted the splendid monastery of Fontverault into an appanage for a long succession of royal or noble ladies. The abbey of St. Germain des Prés also was given in commendam by Louis the Debonnaire, to a bishop of Poictiers; by Eudes to his brother Robert, a layman; and at length, by Louis XIII, to a widow of the Duke of Lorraine--which is much as though the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, had been given to the widow of the Elector Palatine.

During the progress of this decay, there was no lack of reformers, or of reforms of the Benedictine Order. But the corrupting proved too strong for the renovating power; and their decline proceeded without any real check until, in the year 1614, Dom Nicholas Benard became a member of the congregation of St. Maur.

Benard was one of those reformers to whom it is given to innovate, at once in the spirit of the institution which they desire to improve, and in the spirit of the age in which the improvement is to be made. His object was to bring back his order to the dutiful

ness, the industry, and the self-renunciation enjoined by Benedict. His remedial process consisted in conducting them, by exhortation and by his own example, to the culture of those studies which were held in highest esteem in France in the reigns of the 13th and of the 14th Louis. In those times no seeds of science or literature could be sown in that favored land without yielding an abundant increase. The reason of this redundant fertility of that particular era, no historian can explain, and no psychologist can conjecture. But, like the other promoters of learning in his age, Benard soon found himself followed and surrounded by a band of scholars, who joined with him in the successful culture of all historical, antiquarian, and critical knowledge. With their aid, he restored one of the chief households of the great Benedictine race to even more than their pristine glory.

During the 17th century one hundred and five writers in the congregation of St. Maur (then established at St. Germain des Près) divided among them this harvest of literary renown. A complete collection of their works would form a large and very valuable library; as may indeed be inferred from a bare enumeration of the books of the earlier and later fathers, which they republished. Among them are the best editions which the world has seen of the writings of St. Gregory the Great, of Lanfranc, Basil, Bernard, Anselm, Augustine, Cassiodorus, Ambrose, Hilary, Jerome, Athanasius, Gregory of Tours, Irenæus, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Tertullian, Justin, and Origen; to which must be added their edition of Josephus.

But it would be as easy to form an image of the Grecian camp from the catalogue of the ships, as to conceive aright of the Benedictines of St. Maur from an enumeration of their publications and the names of them. To exhibit some slight sketch of that great seminary as it existed in its days of splendor, it is necessary to confine our attention to the Achilles of their host--to him whom all the rest revered as their great example, and acknowledged by acclamation as their head.

The life of Mabillon has been written by Ruinart, his affectionate pupil; by Dom Filipe le Cerf, the historiographer of the congregation; and more recently by M. Chavin de Malan. To the last of those biographers we are largely indebted for much valuable information. But a companion at once more instructive and provoking, or a guide less worthy of confidence, never offered himself

It

the cathedral church of St. Remy. In that sublime edifice his imagination had long before been entranced by the anticipated delights of a life of devotional retirement. had been his single indulgence, while at college, to wander thither, that he might listen to the choral strains as they rose, and floated, and died away through the recesses of those long-drawn aisles; and there had he often proposed to himself the question, whether this world had anything to offer so peaceful and so pure as an habitual minis

Jean Mabillon was born at the village of St. Pierre Mont, in Champagne, on the 23d of November, 1632. His mother did not long survive his birth, but Ruinart congratulates himself on having seen Etienne, the father of Jean, at the age of 105, in the full enjoyment of all his mental and bodily powers. Jean himself was sent by his paternal uncle, the curé of a parish near Rheims, to a college in that city, which, on his return homewards from the council of Trent, the celebrated Cardinal of Lorraine had founded there for the education of clergymen. The habits of the place well became its origin. Except while addressing their teachers, the pupils passed in profound silence every hour of the day save that of noon; when they amused themselves in a garden, where, as we read, it was their custom, many hundred times a day, to salute a conspicuous image of the Virgin, with assurances of their veneration and their love.

Whatever may have been the effect of this discipline on the characters of his fellow students, it moulded the meek and quiet nature of Mabillon into the exact form which the authors of it regarded as the most perfect. He surrendered up his will to theirs; and, yielding his whole soul to the divine offices of his college chapel, became so familiar with them, that when, after an absence of more than fifty years, Ruinart knelt beside him there, he heard the then aged man repeat, from memory, with unerring exactness, every prayer, every ceremonial, and every sacred melody in which he had been accustomed to offer up the devotions of his youth.

In the year 1653, and (to use the chronology of the cloister and of Oxford) on the feast of the Decollation of St. John the Baptist, Mabillon was received as a postulant at the Benedictine monastery then attached to

To this inquiry his judgment, or his feelings, still returned the same answer; and, at the end of his novitiate, he gladly pronounced those irrevocable vows which were to exclude him forever from all delights less elevated than those of a devotional life. He had not, however, long to await the proof that the exclusive use of this ethereal dietary is unfriendly to the health both of these gross bodies of ours, and of the sluggish minds by which they are informed. The flesh revolted; and, to subdue the rebellion, ascetic rigors were required. Then (alas for the bathos!) that base and unfortunate viscus, the stomach, racked his head with insufferable pains. Compelled at length to fly for relief to a Benedictine convent at Nogent, he there soothed his aching brows by traversing, and mourning over, the ruins which the impious ravages of the Huguenots had brought upon the monastic buildings. Then passing, for relief, to another monastery at Corbie, he recovered his health; through the intercession of St. Adelhard, the patron saint of the place, as he piously believed; though a less perfect faith might have been tempted to ascribe the cure to the active employments in the open air in which the abbot of Corbie compelled him to engage.

With restored health, Mabillon was next transferred, by the commands of his superior, to the royal abbey of St. Denys; there to act as curator of the treasures which the profaneness of a later age has scattered to the winds. This was no light trust. Amidst countless monuments of the illustrious dead, and of the greatness of the French monarchy, the collection contained one of the arms in which the aged Simeon had raised the infant Jesus in the Temple; and the very hand which the sceptical Thomas had stretched out to touch the wounded side of his risen Lord!

It was just one year before the birth of