The Benedictines rendered a great social service in reclaiming deserted regions and in clearing forests.  “The monasteries,” says Maitland, “were, in those days of misrule and turbulence, beyond all price, not only as places where (it may be imperfectly, but better than elsewhere) God was worshipped,... but as central points whence agriculture was to spread over bleak hills and barren downs and marshy plains, and deal its bread to millions perishing with hunger and its pestilential train.”  Roman taxation and barbarian invasions had ruined the farmers, who left their lands and fled to swell the numbers of the homeless.  The monk repeopled these abandoned but once fertile fields, and carried civilization still deeper into the forests.  Many a monastery with its surrounding buildings became the nucleus of a modern city.  The more awful the darkness of the forest solitudes, the more the monks loved it.  They cut down trees in the heart of the wilderness, and transformed a soil bristling with woods and thickets into rich pastures and ploughed fields.  They stimulated the peasantry to labor, and taught them many useful lessons in agriculture.  Thus, they became an industrial, as well as a spiritual, agency for good.

The habits of the monks brought them into close contact with nature.  Even the animals became their friends.  Numerous stories have been related of their wonderful power over wild beasts and their conversations with the birds.  “It is wonderful,” says Bede, “that he who faithfully and loyally obeys the Creator of the universe, should, in his turn, see all the creatures obedient to his orders and his wishes.”  They lived, so we are told, in the most intimate relations with the animal creation.  Squirrels leaped to their hands or hid in the folds of their cowls.  Stags came out of the forests in Ireland and offered themselves to some monks who were ploughing, to replace the oxen carried off by the hunters.  Wild animals stopped in their pursuit of game at the command of St. Laumer.  Birds ceased singing at the request of some monks until they had chanted their evening prayer, and at their word the feathered songsters resumed their music.  A swan was the daily companion of St. Hugh of Lincoln, and manifested its miraculous knowledge of his approaching death by the most profound melancholy.  While all the details of such stories are not to be accepted as literally true, no doubt some of this poetry of monastic history rests upon interesting and charming facts.

A fuller discussion of the permanent contributions which the monk made to civilization is reserved for the last chapter.  I have somewhat anticipated a closer scrutiny of his achievements in order to present a clearer view of his life and labors.  His religious duties were, perhaps, wearisome enough.  We might tire of his monotonous chanting and incessant vigils, but it is gratifying to know that he also engaged in practical and useful employments.  The convent