r and the lazy
the alphabet of prosperity and happiness. Agriculture was at its lowest
ebb. Marshes covered once fertile fields, and the men who should have
tilled the land spurned the plough as degrading, or were too indolent to
undertake the tasks of the farm. The monks left their cells and their
prayers to dig ditches and plough fields. The effect was magical. Men
once more turned back to a noble but despised industry. Peace and plenty
supplanted war and poverty. "The Benedictines," says Guizot, "have been
the great clearers of land in Europe. A colony, a little swarm of monks,
settled in places nearly uncultivated, often in the midst of a pagan
population--in Germany, for example, or in Brittany; there, at once
missionaries and laborers, they accomplish their double service, through
peril and fatigue."

It is to be regretted that history throws a shadow across this pleasing
scene. When labor came to be recognized as honorable and useful, along
came the begging friars, creating, both by precept and example, a
prejudice against labor and wealth. Rags and laziness came to be
associated with holiness, and a beggar monk was held up as an ideal and
sacred personage. "The spirit that makes men devote themselves in vast
numbers," says Lecky, "to a monotonous life of asceticism and poverty is
so essentially opposed to the spirit that creates the energy and
enthusiasm of industry, that their continued coexistence may be regarded
as impossible." But such a fatal mistake could not long captivate the
mind, or cause men to forget Benedict and his industrial ideal. The
blessings of wealth rightly administered, and the dignity of labor
without which wealth is impossible, came to be recognized as necessary
factors in the true progress of man.

_The Monks and Secular Learning_

For many centuries, as has been previously shown, the monks were the
schoolmasters of Europe. They also preserved the manuscripts of the
classics, produced numerous theological works, transmitted many pious
traditions, and wrote some interesting and some worthless chronicles.
They laid the foundations of several great universities, including those
of Paris, Oxford and Cambridge. For these, and other valuable services,
the monks merit the praise of posterity. It is, however, too much to
affirm, as Montalembert does, that "without the monks, we should have
been as ignorant of our history as children." It is altogether
improbable that the human mind would