"Art thou the King?" Then, bowing down his

head,

King Robert crossed both hands upon his breast,

And meekly answered him: "Thou knowest best!
My sins as scarlet are; let me go hence,

And in some cloister's school of penitence,
Across those stones, that pave the way to heaven,
Walk barefoot, till my guilty soul be shriven!"
The Angel smiled, and from his radiant face
A holy light illumined all the place,

And through the open window, loud and clear,
They heard the monks chant in the chapel near,
Above the stir and tumult of the street:
"He has put down the mighty from their seat,
And has exalted them of low degree!"
And through the chant a second melody
Rose like the throbbing of a single string:
"I am an Angel, and thou art the King!"

King Robert, who was standing near the throne,
Lifted his eyes, and lo! he was alone!

But all appareled as in days of old,

With ermined mantle and with cloth of gold;

And when his courtiers came, they found him there Kneeling upon the floor, absorbed in silent prayer.

- HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

THE MONKS IN THE MIDDLE AGES

To the clergy, secular and regular, we are indebted for agriculture, as well as for our colleges and hospitals. The tillage of uncultivated lands, the construction of roads, the enlargement of towns and villages, the institution of post-houses and inns, arts, trades, and manufactures, commerce internal and external, laws, civil and political, in a word, everything we originally received from the Church. Our ancestors were barbarians, whom Christianity was obliged to teach even the art of raising the necessaries of life.

Almost all grants made to monasteries in the early ages of the Church consisted of wastes which the monks brought into cultivation with their own hands. Trackless forests, impassable morasses, extensive heaths, were the sources of that wealth with which we have so vehemently reproached the clergy.

Thus our fields, now so flourishing, are partly indebted for their harvest and their flocks to the industry and frugality of the monks.

Moreover, example, which is frequently of so little avail in morality, because the passions destroy the good effects of it, has a powerful influence over the material part of life. The sight of several thousands of monks cultivating the earth gradually undermined those barbarous prejudices which looked with contempt

upon the art of agriculture. The peasant learned in the convent to turn up the glebe and to fertilize the soil. The baron began to seek in his field treasures less precarious than what he procured by arms. The monks, therefore, were in reality the founders of agriculture both as husbandmen themselves, and as the first instructors of our husbandmen.

Even in our own days this useful spirit had not forsaken them. The best-cultivated fields, the richest peasants, and those the best fed and the least annoyed, the finest teams, the fattest flocks, and the best-regulated farms, were found in the possession of the abbeys. This, in our opinion, could not be a just subject of reproach to the clergy.

But if the clergy brought the wilds of Europe under cultivation, it was they, too, that multiplied our hamlets and enlarged and embellished our towns. The places which first emerged from barbarism were those that were subject to ecclesiastical princes. Europe owes half of its monuments and useful foundations to the munificence of cardinals, abbots, and bishops.

The clergy found the soil uncultivated; they covered it with luxuriant harvests. Having acquired opulence by their industry, they expended their revenues in the erection of public buildings.

COUNT CHATEAUBRIAND.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old

no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

All His glory and beauty come from within, and there He delights to dwell; His visits there are frequent, His conversations sweet, His comforts refreshing, and His peace passing all understanding.

THOMAS À KEMPIS.