Montalembert's entire life. He has put into it his Benedictine erudition, his passionate love for truth, the charming and dramatic power of his style in the narration of events, his inimitable talent for painting in words the portraits of those famous characters whom he wishes to present to the eye of the reader; and their traits remain ineffaceably stamped on the mind. Especially does the soul of the true Christian breathe on every page of the volumes. For more than forty years their author bent piously over those austere forms of the Benedictine monks of the early ages to ask them the secret of their lives, of their virtues, of their influence on their country and their age. He has studied them with that infallible instinct of faith which had disclosed to him a hidden treasure in those old monastic ruins, and in those dusty and unexplored monuments of their contemporary literature; the treasure, namely, of the influence of the church acting on the barbarians through the monks. This is the leading idea of the whole work. It would be a mistake to expect, under the title of Monks of the West, a history of mere asceticism, or a species of continuation of the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert. Writers no longer treat, as that work does, the lives of the saints. Readers are not satisfied with the simple account of the virtues practised or the number of miracles performed by the canonized children of the church. Modern men want to look into the depths of a saint's soul; to know what kind of a human heart throbbed in his bosom, and how far he participated in the thoughts and feelings of ordinary human nature. The circumstances in which he lived and studied, the opinions formed of him by his contemporaries, are weighed, and the traces left by his sanctity or genius on the manners and institu tions of his country are closely considered. The history of The Monks of the West is nothing else than a history of civilization through monastic causes. The third, fourth, and fifth volumes just published contain a complete, profound, exact, and beautiful account of the conversion of Great Britain to Catholicity. No work could be more interesting, not only to Englishmen, but to all who speak the English tongue. Hence, but a few months after the French edition of these bulky volumes, an English translation of them was given to the public, and is now well known and becoming justly wide-spread in the United States. Irish and Anglo-Saxons, Americans by birth or by adoption, Catholics and Protestants, there is not one of us who is not interested in a work which tells us from whom, and how, we have inherited our Christian faith. Even Germans will learn in the perusal of these volumes their religious origin; for it was from the British isles that the apostles of Germany went forth to their labors. The English language is the most universally spoken to-day; the sceptre of Britain rules an empire greater than that of Alexander or of any of the Cæsars. The latest statistics tell us that there are one hundred and seventy-four millions of British subjects or vassals. The two Indies, vast Australia, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean belong mostly to the Anglo-Saxon race, and feel its influence. But what are all those great conquests compared to these once British colonies, now called North America? Who can foresee the height to which may reach this vigorous graft, cut from the old oak, invigorated by the virgin soil of the new world, and which already spreads its shade over immense latitudes, and which promises to be the ever seen? Is it not therefore useful and interesting to study the religious origin of this extraordinary race? Is there an American in heart, or by birth, who is not bound to know the history of those to whom this privileged race owes its having received in so large a measure the three fundamental bases of all grandeur and stability in nations: the spirit of liberty, the family spirit, and the spirit of religion? largest and most powerful country the memory of the monastic cities of the Thebaid, he was the chief founder, though hardly twenty-nine years old, of a multitude of religious houses. More than thirty-seven in Ireland claim him as their founder. He was a poet of great renown, and a musician skilled in singing that national poetry of Erin, which so intimately harmonizes with Catholic faith. He lived in fraternal union with the other poets of his country, with those famous bards, whom he was afterward to protect and save from their enemies. Besides being a great traveller, like the most of the Irish saints and monks whose memory has been preserved by history, he had another passion for manuscripts. This passion had results which decided his destiny. Having shut himself up at night in a church, where he discovered the psalter of the Abbot Finnian, Columba found means to make a clandestine copy of it. Finnian complained of it as a theft. The case was brought to the chief monarch of Ireland, who decided against Columba. The copyist protested; anathematized the king, and raised against him in revolt the north and west of Hibernia. Columba's party conquered, and the recovered psalter, called the Psalter of Battles, became the national relic of the clan O'Donnell. This psalter still exists, to the great joy of the erudite patriots of Ireland. The history of the conversion of England by the monks answers all these questions. It comprises the apostleship of the Irish, and of the Roman and Anglo-Saxon elements during the sixth and seventh centuries. The Irish or Celtic portion of the history centres in St. Columba, whose majestic form towers above his age, illustrated by his virtues and influenced by his genius. The Roman element is represented by the monk Augustine, the first apostle of the Anglo-Saxons. Lastly, this race itself enters on the missionary career, and sends out as its first apostle a great man and a great saint, the monk Wilfrid, whose moral beauty of character rivals that of St. Columba. Shortly after these, as it were following in their shadow, walks the admirable and gentle Venerable Bede, the first English historian, the learned encyclopedist, alike the honor and glory of his countrymen, and of the learned of all nations. We cannot resist the pleasure of giving, though it be but very incomplete and pale, a sketch of the great monk of Clonard, the apostle of Caledonia, St. Columba.* Sprung from the noble race of O'Niall, which ruled Ireland during six centuries, educated at Clonard, in one of those immense monasteries which recalled The Catholic Publication Society will soon pubEish The Life of St. Columba, as given in the third volume of The Monks of the West. Nevertheless, as Christian blood had flowed for a comparative trifle, and through the fault of a monk, a synod was convened and Columba was excommunicated. He succeeded in having the sentence cancelled; but he was commanded to gain to God, by his preaching, as many souls as he had destroyed Christians in the battle of Cooldrewny. To this injunction his confessor added the hardest of penances for a soul so |