10 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



vasion had destroyed the Roman world. And it was their 

 glory that in a few short centuries they succeeded. But 

 whether as hermit or missionary or monk they abandoned 

 their homes and embraced this painful life, the result was in 

 every case the same, — agriculture and the arts first, and 

 civilization and Christianity last. It could not be other- 

 wise ; the necessities of the case compelled it. Solitaries 

 who shrunk from all contact with humanity were becoming 

 the unconscious instruments for the civilization and conver- 

 sion of savages and heathen. They penetrated valleys 

 choked with rocks, brambles and brushwood, the over- 

 growth of generations interlaced into a barrier not to be 

 penetrated by anything weaker than their untiring energy. 

 They are the sternest of ascetics and most isolated of her- 

 mits. But their rest is broken by penitents who come to 

 ask their blessing and who implore permission to live under 

 their authority. The solitary cell of the hermit becomes the 

 nucleus of a society, — the society a centre of many congre- 

 gations radiating from it. The little plot of herbs becomes 

 a garden ; the garden stretches out into fields of waving 

 grain ; the hills are clothed with vines, the valleys bowered 

 in fruit trees. Opening their doors to all, receiving under 

 their shelter and protection the oppressed, the weak, the 

 criminal, the slave, the sin-sick soul weary of this life and 

 despairing of another, the mourner and the comfortless, it 

 frequently happened that the inmates of these cloisters, those 

 attached to one community and under one jurisdiction, num- 

 bered thousands. Lecky tells us that in one city on the 

 Nile there were twenty thousand monks and ten thousand 

 nuns, — the religious tar outnumbering the other classes of 

 society. In England and Ireland these monastic commu- 

 nities assumed a peculiar form. Kings, followed by their 

 entire tribe, presented themselves at the baptismal font and 

 came under religious rule ; and frequently these kings were 

 chosen abbots, and as in their worldly life they had ruled 

 their subjects, so in their spiritual life they continued to be 

 their recognized head and leader. To such an extent was 

 this carried, that in England in the course of a single century 

 there resulted an alarming diminution of the military re- 



