aid, "A large appetite is gluttony in the Greeks, but in the Gauls it
is nature." Again, the Egyptians and the Syrians, in their hot climate,
did not need active employment in the same way as the western nations
do, in order to keep their minds and their bodies healthful. They could
spend their hours and their days in calmly thinking of spiritual things,
or of nothing at all, in a way which the more active mind of Europeans
cannot bear. And again, many rules as to dress, which are suitable for
one sort of climate, are quite unfit for a different sort.

Now the earlier rules for monks had been drawn up either in the east or
after eastern patterns. And although, when they were brought into the
west, people for a time obeyed them as well as they could, it was found
that they would not obey them any longer when the first heat of zeal for
monkery had passed away. Hence it followed, that, throughout the
monasteries of the west, there was a general neglect of the rules by
which they professed to be governed; and it was high time that there
should be some reformation.

A reformer arose in the sixth century. This was Benedict, who was born
near Nursia, in Italy, in the year 480. At the age of twelve he was sent
to school at Rome, under the care of a nurse, as seems to have been
usual in those days. He worked hard at his studies, but the bad
behaviour of the other boys and young men at Rome so shocked him, that,
when he had been there two years, he resolved to bear it no longer. He
therefore suddenly ran away from the city, and, after his nurse had gone
a considerable distance with him, he left her, and made his way into a
rough and lonely country near Subiaco, where he took up his abode in a
cave. Here he was found out by a monk of a neighbouring house, named
Romanus, who used daily to save part of his own allowance of food, and
to carry it to his young friend. The cave opened from the face of a
lofty rock, and the way that Romanus took of conveying the food to
Benedict was by letting it down at the end of a string from the top of
the rock.

Benedict had lived in this manner for three years when he was discovered
by some shepherds, who at first took him for some wild animal; but they
soon found that he was something very different. He taught them and
others to whom they made his abode known, and his character came to be
so much respected in the neighbourhood that he was chosen abbot of a
monastery. He warned the monks that the