500 THE NIGHT. 



despair of the oppressed. She fed the hungry, 

 and she clothed the naked ; she took children to her 

 arms and signed them with the Cross ; she administered' 

 the sacraments to dying lips, and laid the cold body in 

 the peaceful grave. Her first word was to welcome, 

 and her last word to forgive. In the Dark Ages 

 the European States were almost entirely severed 

 from one another ; it was the Koman Church alone 

 which gave them- one sentiment in common, and 

 which united them within her fold. In those 

 days of violence and confusion, in those days of 

 desolation and despair, when a stranger was a thing 

 which, like a leper or a madman, any one might kill, 

 when every gentleman was a highway robber, when 

 the only kind of lawsuit was a duel, hundreds of 

 men dressed in gowns of coarse dark stuff, with cords 

 round their waists and bare feet, travelled with im- 

 punity from castle to castle, preaching a doctrine of 

 peace and good will, holding up an emblem of humility 

 and sorrow, receiving confessions, pronouncing penance 

 or absolutions, soothing the agonies of a wounded 

 conscience, awakening terror in the hardened mind. 

 Parish churches were built : the baron and his vas- 

 sals chanted together the Kyrie Eleison, and bowed 

 their heads together when the bell sounded and the 

 Host was raised. Here and there in the sombre 

 forest a band of those holy men encamped, and cut 

 down the trees and erected a building which was not 

 only a house of prayer, but also a kind of model farm. 

 The monks worked in the fields, and had their carpen- 

 ters' and their blacksmiths' shops. They copied out 

 books in a fair hand : they painted Madonnas for their 

 chapel : they composed music for their choir : they 

 illuminated missals : they studied Arabic and Greek : 





