in the imperial army--whoever had
become discontented with his worldly affairs, or saw in those dark times
no inducements in a home and family of his own, found in the monastery
a sure retreat. The number of these religious houses eventually became
very great. They were usually placed on the most charming and
advantageous sites, their solidity and splendour illustrating the
necessity of erecting durable habitations for societies that were
immortal. It often fell out that the Church laid claim to the services
of some distinguished monk. It was significantly observed that the road
to ecclesiastical elevation lay through the monastery porch, and often
ambition contentedly wore for a season the cowl, that it might seize
more surely the mitre.

[Sidenote: Difference of the Eastern and Western monk.]

[Sidenote: Legends of Western saints.]

Though the monastic system of the East included labour, it was greatly
inferior to that of the West in that particular. The Oriental monk, at
first making selfishness his rule of life, and his own salvation the
grand object, though all the world else should perish, in his maturer
period occupied his intellectual powers in refined disputations of
theology. Too often he exhibited his physical strength in the furious
riots he occasioned in the streets of the great cities. He was a fanatic
and insubordinate. On the other hand, the Occidental monk showed far
less disposition for engaging in the discussion of things above reason,
and expended his strength in useful and honourable labour. Beneath his
hand the wilderness became a garden. To a considerable extent this
difference was due to physiological peculiarity, and yet it must not be
concealed that the circumstances of life in the two cases were not
without their effects. The old countries of the East, with their
worn-out civilization and worn-out soil, offered no inducements
comparable with the barbarous but young and fertile West, where to the
ecclesiastic the most lovely and inviting lands were open. Both,
however, coincided in this, that they regarded the affairs of life as
presenting perpetual interpositions of a providential or rather
supernatural kind--angels and devils being in continual conflict for the
soul of every man, who might become the happy prize of the one or the
miserable prey of the other. These spiritual powers were perpetually
controlling the course of nature and giving rise to prodigies. The
measure of holiness in a s