qualification, and with some allowance for
needless repetitions, we cannot but regard his work as a most attractive
and eloquent contribution to ecclesiastical history.

About half of the first volume is devoted to a General Introduction,
explanatory of the origin and design of the work, but mainly intended to
paint the character of monastic institutions, to describe the happiness
of a religious life, and to examine the charges brought against the
monks. These topics are considered in ten chapters, filled with curious
details, and written with an eloquence and an earnestness which it is
difficult for the reader to resist. Following this we have a short and
brilliant sketch of the social and political condition of the Roman
Empire after the conversion of Constantine, exhibiting by a few masterly
touches its wide-spread corruption, the feebleness of its rulers, and
the utter degradation of the people. The next two books treat of the
Monastic Precursors in the East as well as in the West, and present a
series of brief biographical sketches of the most famous monks, from
St. Anthony, the father of Eastern monasticism, to St. Benedict,
the earliest legislator for the monasteries of the West. Among the
illustrious men who pass before us in this review, and all of whom are
skilfully delineated, are Basil of Caesarea and his friend Gregory
Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Athanasius, Martin of Tours,
and the numerous company of saints and doctors nurtured in the great
monastery of Lerins. And though an account of the saintly women who have
led lives of seclusion would scarcely seem to be included under the
title of Montalembert's work, he does not neglect to add sketches of the
most conspicuous of them,--Euphrosyne, Pelagia, Marcella, Furia, and
others. These preliminary sketches fill the last half of the first
volume.

The Fourth Book comprises an account of the Life and Rule of St.
Benedict, and properly opens the history which Montalembert proposes
to narrate. It presents a sufficiently minute sketch of the personal
history of Benedict and his immediate followers; but its chief merit is
in its very ample and satisfactory exposition of the Benedictine Rule.
The next book traces the history of monastic institutions in Italy and
Spain during the sixth and seventh centuries, and includes biographical
notices of Cassiodorus, the founder of the once famous monastery of
Viviers in Calabria, of St. Gregory the Great, of Le