fish of the Nile.
A more ample latitude of sea and river fish was gradually allowed
or assumed; but the use of flesh was long confined to the sick
or travellers; and when it gradually prevailed in the less rigid
monasteries of Europe, a singular distinction was introduced; as if
birds, whether wild or domestic, had been less profane than the grosser
animals of the field. Water was the pure and innocent beverage of the
primitive monks; and the founder of the Benedictines regrets the daily
portion of half a pint of wine, which had been extorted from him by the
intemperance of the age. Such an allowance might be easily supplied by
the vineyards of Italy; and his victorious disciples, who passed the
Alps, the Rhine, and the Baltic, required, in the place of wine, an
adequate compensation of strong beer or cider.

The candidate who aspired to the virtue of evangelical poverty, abjured,
at his first entrance into a regular community, the idea, and even
the name, of all separate or exclusive possessions. The brethren were
supported by their manual labor; and the duty of labor was strenuously
recommended as a penance, as an exercise, and as the most laudable means
of securing their daily subsistence. The garden and fields, which the
industry of the monks had often rescued from the forest or the morass,
were diligently cultivated by their hands. They performed, without
reluctance, the menial offices of slaves and domestics; and the several
trades that were necessary to provide their habits, their utensils,
and their lodging, were exercised within the precincts of the great
monasteries. The monastic studies have tended, for the most part,
to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition. Yet
the curiosity or zeal of some learned solitaries has cultivated the
ecclesiastical, and even the profane, sciences; and posterity must
gratefully acknowledge, that the monuments of Greek and Roman literature
have been preserved and multiplied by their indefatigable pens. But the
more humble industry of the monks, especially in Egypt, was contented
with the silent, sedentary occupation of making wooden sandals, or
of twisting the leaves of the palm-tree into mats and baskets. The
superfluous stock, which was not consumed in domestic use, supplied, by
trade, the wants of the community: the boats of Tabenne, and the other
monasteries of Thebais, descended the Nile as far as Alexandria; and,
in a Christian market, the sanctity of the