ws nothing of its greatest men'

really means that the world knows less about them than it would like to
know. And yet the world knows almost as much about them as is good for
it. The leading facts of a man's career are all that concern most of
us--the main lines--not the details. Of Matthew Paris we know enough,
because he has himself given us so faithful a picture of his times, and
so charming an insight into the daily life which he led.

Unnecessary doubt has been suggested as to his parentage, and whether
his extraction was or was not from a stock that could boast of gentle
blood. For our part we incline strongly to the belief, that Brother
Matthew was called Paris because that was his name, and had been his
father's name before him. A family of that name held lands in
Bedfordshire in Henry III.'s time; others of the same stock were settled
in Lincolnshire earlier still; and the Cambridgeshire family (one of
whom was among the visitors of the monasteries under Henry VIII.)
boasted of a long line of ancestors, and retained their estates in the
Eastern Counties till late in the 17th century. Young Matthew probably
received his education in the school at St. Alban's, and soon showed a
decided taste for learning and the student's life, and that in the 13th
century meant an inclination for the life of the cloister. Many a
precocious lad is even now taught from his childhood to look forward to
the glories of a College Fellowship, and the career which such an
academic success may open to him; and in the 13th century a schoolboy's
ambition was directed to the goal of admission to a great
monastery--that step on the ladder which whosoever could reach, there
was no knowing how high he might climb--how high above the common sons
of earth or, if he preferred it, how high towards the heaven that is
above the earth.

Matthew was probably born about the year 1200, and in January 1217 he
became a monk at St. Alban's, _i. e._, he became a _novice_. At this
time a lad could commence his noviciate at 15; but the age was
subsequently advanced to 19, the younger limit having been found, as a
rule, too early even for the preliminary discipline required. On the day
after the lad was admitted, a frightful scene took place in the
monastery. A band of Fawkes de Breaute's cut-throats had stormed the
town of St. Alban's, burst into the Abbey, and slaughtered at the door
of the church one Robert Mai, a servant of the Abbot. William de
Trumpi