heir Guido invented the scale of music;
their Sylvester, the organ. They boasted to have produced Anselm,
Ildefonsus, and the Venerable Bede."

[Sidenote: Civilization of Europe by the monks.]

[Sidenote: Their later intellectual influence.]

We too often date the Christianization of a community from the
conversion of its sovereign, but it is not in the nature of things that
that should change the hearts of men. Of what avail is it if a barbarian
chieftain drives a horde of his savages through the waters of a river by
way of extemporaneous or speedy baptism? Such outward forms are of
little moment. It was mainly by the monasteries that to the peasant
class of Europe was pointed out the way of civilization. The devotions
and charities; the austerities of the brethren; their abstemious meal;
their meagre clothing, the cheapest of the country in which they lived;
their shaven heads, or the cowl which shut out the sight of sinful
objects; the long staff in their hands; their naked feet and legs; their
passing forth on their journeys by twos, each a watch on his brother;
the prohibitions against eating outside of the wall of the monastery,
which had its own mill, its own bakehouse, and whatever was needed in an
abstemious domestic economy; their silent hospitality to the wayfarer,
who was refreshed in a separate apartment; the lands around their
buildings turned from a wilderness into a garden, and, above all, labour
exalted and ennobled by their holy hands, and celibacy, for ever, in the
eye of the vulgar, a proof of separation from the world and a sacrifice
to heaven--these were the things that arrested the attention of the
barbarians of Europe, and led them on to civilization. In our own
material age, the advocates of the monastery have plaintively asked,
Where now shall we find an asylum for the sinner who is sick of the
world--for the man of contemplation in his old age, or for the statesman
who is tired of affairs? It was through the leisure procured by their
wealth that the monasteries produced so many cultivators of letters,
and transmitted to us the literary relics of the old times. It was a
fortunate day when the monk turned from the weaving of mats to the
copying of manuscripts--a fortunate day when he began to compose those
noble hymns and strains of music which will live for ever. From the
"Dies Irae" there rings forth grand poetry even in monkish Latin. The
perpetual movements of the monastic orders gave life