pt away, their possessions secularised, and
their communities broken up. But with them disappeared two things which
were of great price: a large and liberal provision for the poor, and a
comprehensive scheme of Education. The monastery gate was never shut
against the suffering and the needy. The monks were indulgent landlords
and kind neighbours; the sick benefited by their medical skill; the
indigent could always look to them for eleemosynary aid; the houseless
wanderer was never sent empty away. Those great centres of friendly
helpfulness and charity were planted all over the land. No doubt the
gift of indiscriminate alms to every applicant would tend to abuse and
lazy beggary; but a scheme of sympathetic and well directed aid
thoughtfully administered would not. _Abusus non tollit usum._ The
scandals of the monasteries did not justify the robbery of the destitute
for the benefit of the secular supplanters of the monks. The
Kirk-sessions of the Reformed Kirk did their best to take the place of
the former guardians and kindly benefactors of the poor, but their funds
were scanty; the old wealth had fallen into tenacious hands; and schism
and sectarianism finally necessitated the transfer of the care of the
poor from the Church to the State.

Could the ancient system have been reformed and not destroyed, the
poverty of the country would have been less grievous than it is to-day;
the Church's relation to the poor more intimate; and the method of
relief pleasanter to the recipients than that which makes them familiar
with the grim charity of the Poor's House, the Inspector, and the
Parochial Board.

The monasteries were the seats of a general system of higher education.
The burghs had their own independent seminaries; the "song schools" were
more closely connected with the churches in town and in country; but the
highest grade of education was found in the monasteries. Before the
foundation of any of the universities they supplied the place both of
secondary school and university, and trained the youth, especially of
the higher ranks, until prepared to go out into the world, as they
constantly did, speaking the "lingua-franca" of all scholars, and
carrying Scottish energy, genius, and scholarship into the halls and
cloisters of many a college and many a monastery, from Coimbra to
Cracow, from Salerno to Upsala. These schools all perished with the
downfall of the monasteries; and consequently we cannot, to this day,
cope