ustrate my
meaning.

The monk and clergyman, whether celibate or not, worked on the heathen
generally in one of three capacities: As tribune of the people; as hermit
or solitary prophet; as colonizer; and in all three worked as well as
frail human beings are wont to do, in this most piecemeal world.

Let us look first at the Hermits. All know what an important part they
play in old romances and ballads. All are not aware that they played as
important a part in actual history. Scattered through all wildernesses
from the cliffs of the Hebrides to the Sclavonian marches, they put forth
a power, uniformly, it must be said, for good.

Every one knows how they appear in the old romances.--How some Sir
Bertrand or other, wearied with the burden of his sins, stumbles on one
of these Einsiedler, 'settlers alone,' and talks with him; and goes on a
wiser and a better man. How he crawls, perhaps, out of some wild
scuffle, 'all-to bebled,' and reeling to his saddlebow; and 'ever he went
through a waste land, and rocks rough and strait, so that it him seemed
he must surely starve; and anon he heard a little bell, whereat he
marvelled; and betwixt the water and the wood he was aware of a chapel,
and an hermitage; and there a holy man said mass, for he was a priest,
and a great leech, and cunning withal. And Sir Bertrand went in to him
and told him all his case--how he fought Sir Marculf for love of the fair
Ellinore, and how the king bade part them, and how Marculf did him open
shame at the wineboard, and how he went about to have slain him privily,
but could not; and then how he went and wasted Marculf's lands, house
with byre, kine with corn, till a strong woman smote him over the head
with a quern-stone, and all-to broke his brain-pan;' and so forth--the
usual story of mad passion, drink, pride, revenge.

'And there the holy man a-read him right godly doctrine, and shrived him,
and gave him an oath upon the blessed Gospels, that fight he should not,
save in his liege lord's quarrel, for a year and a day. And there he
abode till he was well healed, he and his horse.'

Must not that wild fighting Bertrand have gone away from that place a
wiser and a better man? Is it a matter to be regretted, or otherwise,
that such men as the hermit were to be found in that forest, to mend
Bertrand's head and his morals, at the same time? Is it a matter to be
regretted, or otherwise, that after twenty or thirty years more of
fighting an