BENEDICT TIDE. 81 



MARCH 21. ST.BE"NrEDicT,patr.ofmonks, A.D.543. 

 St. Serapion the Sindonite. 

 St. Serapion, abbot of Arsinoe. 

 St. Endeus, abbot. 



Obs. St. Benedict the founder of the Benedictine Orders was 

 born in Norica in Umbria in 480. He began his studies at Rome, 

 but being disgusted with the world, he resolved to leave it, and 

 went into solitude in the mountains of Sublacum when scarcely 

 fourteen years old, where meeting with a monk of some neighbour- 

 ing community he received from liim the religious habit. He was a 

 man of notorious austerity and piety. It was on Mount Cassino that 

 he founded the first monks, and obliged them to those rules which 

 have since become so popular. For if we regard all the Reforma- 

 tions of this order as Benedictines, we may consider them as com- 

 posing almost one half of the religious communities of the west, 

 prior to the foundation of the JMendicant Orders. He expired 

 calmly while in prayer, in the sixty third year of his age, in 543. 

 The Rule of St. Benedict is perhaps one of the best of any of the 

 rules of the religious orders of monks : it comprises bodily and men- 

 tal exercises, temperance, and devotion. 



Bulbous Fumitory Fuinaria bulbosa flowers. 



This Fumitory begins now to she>v its pink flowers ; it is not an 

 ornamental plant, nor much cultivated. The Hollow Fumitory 

 Fumaria cava is another plant of the same sort, and flowering some- 

 what later, its root being hollow ; it is figured in Curtis' Botanical 

 Magazine. The common Fumitory is sometimes in flower as early 

 as this day, and continues through April. 



The Great Dog Star Sirius Canis major is seen now soon after 

 dark in the south west. 



The Pleiades are also an evening constellation, and set in the 

 west soon after dark. 



The weather at this time being often showery has some of the 

 brightest intervals of clear sky which we enjoy all the year, in 

 which the southern and western skies of an evening are very 

 beautiful. 



