ordinary mode of argument upon this
subject is, that, because the intelligence of man has been able to
produce certain varieties in domesticated animals, therefore physical
causes have produced all the diversity existing among wild ones. Surely,
the sounder logic would be to infer that, because our finite
intelligence may cause the original pattern to vary by some slight
shades of difference, therefore a superior intelligence must have
established all the boundless diversity of which our boasted varieties
are but the faintest echo. It is the most intelligent farmer who has the
greatest success in improving his breeds; and if the animals he has so
fostered are left to themselves without that intelligent care, they
return to their normal condition. So with plants....'--_Ed. Con_.

[5] In Latin, _Sublaqueum_, or _Sublacum_, in the States of the Church,
over thirty English miles (Butler says 'near forty,' Montalombert,
'fifty miles') east of Rome, on the Teverone. Butler describes the place
as 'a barren, hideous chain of rocks, with a river and lake in the
valley.'

[6] _Monasterium Cassinense._ It was destroyed, indeed, by the Lombards,
as early as 583, as Benedict is said to have predicted it would be, but
was rebuilt in 731, consecrated in 748, again destroyed by the Saracens
in 857, rebuilt about 950, and more completely, after many other
calamities, in 1649, consecrated for the third time by Benedict XIII in
1727, enriched and increased under the patronage of the emperors and
popes, in modern times despoiled of ts enormous income (which at the end
of the sixteenth century was reckoned at 500,000 ducats), and has stood
through all vicissitudes to this day. In the times of its splendor, when
the abbot was first baron of the kingdom of Naples, and commanded over
four hundred towns and villages, it numbered several hundred monks but
in 1843 only twenty. It has a considerable library. Montalembert (Monks
of the West, ii. 19) calls Monte Cassino 'the most powerful and
celebrated monastery in the Catholic universe; celebrated especially
because there Benedict wrote his rule and formed the type which was to
serve as a model to innumerable communities submitted to that sovereign
code.' He also quotes the poetic description from Dante's _Paradiso_.
Dom Luigi Tosti published at Naples, in 1842, a full history of this
convent, in three volumes.

[7] Gregor. Dial. ii. 37.

[8] Butler, in his Lives of Saints, compares Benedict e