1883, ] 75 (Crane. 
“Likewise we read this example of the joys of Heaven. <A certain de- 
vout monk prayed God to reveal to him some of the sweetness of the 
heavenly joys. One day while at prayer he heard a little bird singing 
sweetly near by. Arising from his prayers he wished to catch the bird 
which flew away before him to a wood near the monastery, and alighted 
onatree. The monk followed it and stood under the tree listening to the 
bird which presently flew away, and the monk returned to the monastery 
thinking he had stood beneath the tree an hour or two. When he reached 
the monastery he found the door had been built up, and another opened 
in a different part of the monastery. He approached and knocked, and the 
porter asked whence he came, who he was, and what he wanted. He re- 
plied : I left the monastery a little while ago, and now I have returned, 
and it has been changed. The porter went in and told the abbot, who 
came to the door and asked the monk who he was and whence he came. 
He responded: I am a brother of this monastery, and TI went a short time 
ago to the wood, and returned, and T know no one, and no one knows me, 
Then the abbot and the seniors asked him the name of the abbot who ruled 
the monastery when he went out, and searching the chronicles they found 
he had been absent from the monastery three hundred and forty years. It 
was a great thing that in all that time on account of the sweet song of that 
bird or angel, he had felt neither cold nor heat, neither had hungered nor 
thirsted. What then shall it be when we enter heaven and hear the nine 
choirs of angels singing?’’* In concluding this very inadequate account 
of Herolt’s collection, we cannot do better than cite a few words from 
Cruel’s appreciation (p. 481). “ The work was very copious, and exerted 
from the large number of its exempla, a peculiar attraction. What, how- 
ever, above all, made it popular and distinguished it from earlier collee- 
tions was the practical direction of its contents, whereby the author held 
himself free from all doctrinary generalities, and kept in sight the con- 
crete truth in order to bring before the bar the prevailing faults and vices 
of his day, and to examine from an ecclesiastical standpoint the most vari- 
ous relations of civil life. The editors of the earliest edition (1476) had 
this especially in view, when they remarked in their concluding words : 
‘Huic (autori) applaudi, hune eflerri laudibus, hune praedicatum iri mire- 
tur nemo, cum certissime constet, inter modernos sermonistas eum in vulgi 
Scientia tenere principatum.’ In order to become acquainted with this 
practical popular side one needs only to glance over a list of the subjects 
he treated. Superiors and dependents, masters and servants, manufac- 
*See Von der Hagen’s Gesammtabent, xc: Magnum Spec. Hxemp., Coelestis 
gloria, Hxemp. xiv; ep. Ralston’s Russian Folk Tales, p. 810; Cox, Aryan. Myth. 
i, 413; Baring Gould’s Curious Myths, 1872, pp. 92, 112. The following are some of 
the most popular exemplain the sermons; as this work must be rare in this 
country, we mention where corresponding stories may be found in more accessi- 
ble collections: Gesta Rom. 80, 125, 143, 171, 215, 249; Pauli, 19, 84, 222, 388 898, 462; 
Kirehhoft 1, 866; 1, 2,50; La Fontaine vi, 4; Etienne de Bourbon, 48, 258, 298. In 
the xxi Sermo de sanctis may be found on interesting version of the legends of 
the wood of the cross, see Meyer, op. cit. p. 28, 
