48 



Malmesbury Abbey in its Best Days. 



written at these monasteries, retain the black, in many cases really 

 almost as fresh as the day they were written. 1 



The monks, having no secular parochial work, had leisure for the 

 cultivation of art and science of various kinds. They studied and 

 wrote about, not only a higher class of subjects, but domestic econo- 

 my, home and common every-day matters; in short, whatever 

 helped to assist working people in the improvement of their business. 

 Brewing they brought to perfection. In all matters relating to the 

 Church we may well believe they were proficients. They were bell- 

 founders, and clock- makers ; and as to architecture, I need hardly say, 

 under the shadow of the old abbey, that it is to them we are indebted 

 not only for those unrivalled Churches of which there are so many 

 ruins, piteous to behold, but for many of our Cathedrals which still 

 exist. Canterbury, Eochester, Durham, Lincoln, and Gloucester 

 Cathedrals were built by Norman monks, sent over by William. 

 They not only designed and superintended, but it is recorded that 

 some of them actually worked at the building. It is particularly 

 mentioned in the History of Winchester, of Romsey, and of Selby 

 in Yorkshire, that the abbots put on mason's dresses and worked 

 like common men. So far from being, in their best days, only idle 

 and lazy eaters of fat swans, the annals of the monasteries, not 

 only in England, but in France and all over Europe, show beyond 

 possibility of contradiction, that under the simple monastic gown or 

 frock, living under the orderly discipline of a regulated religious 

 institution, — more particularly the Benedictine, — were to be found 

 the chief workers, not only in architecture, but in painting (es« 

 pecially miniature), mosaic, sculpture, carving in ivory, the setting 

 of precious stones, and many other varieties of ornamental art; 

 whilst at the same time others under the same homely exterior 

 were workers in the commoner departments of iron and wood. In 

 fact the teaching of these arts and trades formed an essential part 

 of monastic education. 



I am not saying these things without the means of proving them. 



1 Here were exhibited some manuscripts on vellum, six hundred, and nine 

 hundred years old : in which the ink is admirably preserved. 



