ght them into close contact with nature.
Even the animals became their friends. Numerous stories have been
related of their wonderful power over wild beasts and their
conversations with the birds. "It is wonderful," says Bede, "that he who
faithfully and loyally obeys the Creator of the universe, should, in his
turn, see all the creatures obedient to his orders and his wishes." They
lived, so we are told, in the most intimate relations with the animal
creation. Squirrels leaped to their hands or hid in the folds of their
cowls. Stags came out of the forests in Ireland and offered themselves
to some monks who were ploughing, to replace the oxen carried off by the
hunters. Wild animals stopped in their pursuit of game at the command of
St. Laumer. Birds ceased singing at the request of some monks until
they had chanted their evening prayer, and at their word the feathered
songsters resumed their music. A swan was the daily companion of St.
Hugh of Lincoln, and manifested its miraculous knowledge of his
approaching death by the most profound melancholy. While all the details
of such stories are not to be accepted as literally true, no doubt some
of this poetry of monastic history rests upon interesting and
charming facts.

A fuller discussion of the permanent contributions which the monk made
to civilization is reserved for the last chapter. I have somewhat
anticipated a closer scrutiny of his achievements in order to present a
clearer view of his life and labors. His religious duties were, perhaps,
wearisome enough. We might tire of his monotonous chanting and incessant
vigils, but it is gratifying to know that he also engaged in practical
and useful employments. The convent became the house of industry as well
as the temple of prayer. The forest glades echoed to the stroke of the
axe as well as to hymns of praise. Yes, as Carlyle writes of the twelfth
century, "these years were no chimerical vacuity and dreamland peopled
with mere vaporous phantasms, but a green solid place, that grew corn
and several other things. The sun shone on it, the vicissitudes of
seasons and human fortunes. Cloth was woven and worn; ditches were dug,
furrowed fields ploughed and houses built."

_The Spread of the Benedictine Rule_

It is generally held that Benedict had no presentiment of the vast
historical importance of his system; and that he aspired to nothing
beyond the salvation of his own soul and those of his brethren.

But the r