These volumes form the first instalment of a work in which one of the great lights of the Romish Church in our day proposes to recount the glories of Western Monasticism, and to narrate the lives of some of the remarkable men who successively passed from the cloister to the Papal throne, or in positions scarcely less conspicuous permanently affected the history of the Church.  His original design, however, does not appear to have extended beyond writing the life of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, which he intended to make in some measure a complement to his life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary.  But he judged rightly, that, in order to exhibit the character and influence of that remarkable man under all their various aspects, it was needful at the outset to retrace the early history of monastic institutions in the West, and to show how far they tended to prepare the way for such a man.  Only a part of this preliminary task has been accomplished as yet; but enough has been done to show in what spirit the historian has approached his subject, how thoroughly he has explored the original sources of information, and what will probably be the real worth of his labors.  For such a work Montalembert possesses adequate and in some respects peculiar qualifications.  His learning, eloquence, and candor will be conceded by every one who is familiar with his previous writings or with his public life; and at the same time he unites a passionate love of liberty, everywhere apparent in his book, with a zeal for the Church, worthy of any of the monks whom he commemorates.  While his narrative is always animated and picturesque, and often rises into passages of fervid eloquence, he has conducted his researches with the unwearied perseverance of a mere antiquary, and has exhausted every source of information.  “Every word which I have written,” he says, “has been drawn from original and contemporary sources; and if I have quoted facts or expressions from second-hand authors, it has never been without attentively verifying the original or completing the text.  A single date, quotation, or note, apparently insignificant, has often cost me hours and sometimes days of labor.  I have never contented myself with being approximately right, nor resigned myself to doubt until every chance of arriving at certainty was exhausted.”  To the spirit and temper in which the book is written no well-founded exception can be taken; but considerable abatement must be made from the author’s estimate of the services rendered by the monks to Christian civilization, and no Protestant will accept his views as to the permanent worth of monastic institutions.  With this qualification, and with some allowance for needless repetitions, we cannot but regard his work as a most attractive and eloquent contribution to ecclesiastical history.