FOOTNOTES:

'After minutely examining every page of the manuscripts in question, as well as others, which were undoubtedly written in the monastery of St. Alban's, and comparing them with others executed in various parts of England and on the Continent, I can come to no other conclusion than that during the latter half of the 13th century, and perhaps a little earlier, there prevailed among the scribes in the Scriptorium of St. Alban's, a peculiar character of writing which is not recognizable in any other religious house in England during that period; but which is traceable in some foreign manuscripts, and even in private deeds executed in England in the neighbourhood of St. Alban's during the 12th and 13th centuries. These facts lead me to the inference, thatthe schoolmaster who taught the art of writing to Matthew Paris and the other members and scholars of the establishment at St. Alban's was a foreigner; that his pupils not only imitated their instructor in the formation of his letters, but also in his exceptional orthography.'

What questions suggest themselves as we accept the conclusion arrived at! Who was he, this 'foreigner,' who had come from across the sea to bring in his outlandish novelties into the great scriptorium? Was he some 'Frenchman' imported from sunny Champagne, where Thibaut, the mawkish singer was making verses which his people loved to listen to? Did he teach the young novices French as well as writing? Did he touch the lute himself on Feast-days, and charm them with some new lyric of Gasse Bruslé, or delight them with one of Rutebeuf's merry ditties? France was all alive with song at this time, and princes were rivals now for poetic fame. It may be that this 'foreigner' brought in a taste for light literature as well as for a new fashion in penmanship, and made known to his pupils such alluring novelties as the 'Roman d'Alexandre, soon to be eclipsed by the 'Roman de la Rose.'

The scriptorium at St. Alban's was founded by Abbot Paul, a kinsman of Archbishop Lanfrance, when the great Abbey had already existed for three centuries. Paul became Abbot eleven years after the Conquest, and he showed himself an able and earnest administrator. From this time learning and a love of books became a tradition of the house. Abbot after abbot continued to add to the collection of MSS., and to increase the value of the library. But St. Alban's had never had a great historian of its own. Strange and shameful fact! East and west and north and south, all over the land, there were great writers holding up their proud heads. Out in the desolate wilds there at Peterborough, they had been actually keeping up a chronicle for centuries—aye, and written in the vernacular too. The lonely monastery of Ely, among the swamps, had its historian. Malmesbury boasted her learned William; and Worcester, which St. Wulstan had raised from the dust, as it were, only the other day, had already her Florence. In the great houses of the Northern Province there had been no lack of writers to whom the past was an open book. Even Westminster had long ago had herchronographer, and far away in furthest Wales, Geoffrey, the Monmouth man, was making men open their eyes very wide indeed with tales—idle tales they might be, but they were well worth the reading—and there was talk too of another young Welshman, Giraldus, who was on the way towards outdoing the other by-and-bye. What are we coming to? Holy St. Alban, shalt thou and thy house be put to shame?—that be far from us!

Thus it came to pass that about a century after the foundation of the scriptorium, and when the library had grown to an imposing size, Abbot Simon bestirred himself, and a new officewas created in the Abbey, to wit, that of Historiographer. In our time we should have given this functionary a grander title, and called him Professor of History; but in the 12th century, they called him what he was, a writer of history, and from this time, in fact, the writing of history, after a certain authorized method, began, and what had been called, and deserves to be called, the St. Alban's School of History took its rise.

It is evident that before the 13th century had well begun, an historical compendium of great value had already been drawn up, which must have been compiled by careful students with a command of books such as during this age was rare.

'The compilation,' says Dr. Luard, 'whenever and by whomsoever it was written must be regarded as a very curious and remarkable one. The very large number of sources consulted, the miscellaneous character of many of the extracts, the mixture of history and legend, the giving fixed years to stories which even writers like Geoffrey of Monmouth had left undated, the care at one time and the carelessness at another, the slavishness with which one authority is followed, and the recklessness with which another is altered, the frequent confusion of dates, their ignorance and want of care, the blunders displayed in many instances from the compiler not understanding the author whom he is copying, as is especially the case in the extracts from the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle;" all these characteristics may well earn for the author the title that Lappenberg has given to him, though under the name of "Matthew of Westminster," namely, that of the "Verwirrer der Geschichte." At the same time there is no doubt that he had access to some materials which we no longer possess: and my object has been to trace all his statements, where possible, to their source, and to distinguish any additions that the compiler has made when they are merely rhetorical amplifications of his own, or when they are really from some source not now extant.'—Pref. to vol. i., p. xxxiii.

After all that can be said, the work surprises us by the erudition it displays. Nor is that surprise lessened when we have gone through the masterly analysis of its contents, which Dr. Luard has given us in the Preface to his first vol. Such as it was, it became the great text-book on which Roger of Wendover founded his own labours when he incorporated it into the chronicle which he left behind him. Roger of Wendover did good work, and laboriously epitomized, supplemented and improved, but he was a mere literary monk after all; a student, a bookworm, simple, conscientious, and truthful; a trustworthy reporter, 'a picker-up of learning's crumbs,' a monkish historiographer, in short; but by no means a historian of large views and of original mind. Roger of Wendover died in 1236, and Matthew Paris succeeded to his office and work.

From what has been said, the reader may be presumed to have gained something like an answer to our first question:Whatwas Brother Matthew? Briefly, he was a representative monk of the most powerful monastery in England during the 13th century, when that monastery was at its best, and doing the work which in after times the Universities and great schools of the country took out of the hands of the religious houses; work, too, which since those days has been done by the printing-press, and by many other institutions better fitted to deal with the requirements of an immensely larger population, and to be the instruments of diffusing culture and refinement through the nation after it had outgrown the older machinery.

When we come to look into the personal history of Brother Matthew, the details of his biography need not detain us long. Sir Henry Taylor's famous line is only half true, after all;

'The world knows 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 highabove 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 anovice. 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 Breauté'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 Trumpington was Abbot at this time, a vigorous and resolute personage, who ruled the convent with a firm hand. Like all really able men, he was ably seconded, for he knew how to choose his subordinates. At first the monks had repented of their choice, and there were quarrels and litigation and appeals to the Pope, and many serious 'unpleasantnesses;' but as time went on, Abbot William had won the allegiance of all the convent, and they were proud of him. He was a man of books, among his other virtues, and had an eye for bookish men; and when he deposed Roger de Wendover from being Prior of Belvoir with a somewhat high hand, and brought him back to St. Alban's, he doubtless did so because he knew that at Belvoir he was a square man in a round hole, while in the scriptorium of the Abbey he would be in his right place. Certainly the event proved that the Abbot was right, and it was to this judicious removal of a student and man of letters to his proper home that we owe so much of our knowledge of those interesting minutiæ of English history which the writer has revealed. It was under the eye of Robert de Wendover that Matthew Paris grew up, rendering him every year more and more substantial assistance in the library and in the scriptorium.

But the young man was not only a bookworm and a copyist, he soon got to be looked upon as a prodigy. He was a universal genius; he could do whatever he set his hand to, and better than any one else. He could draw, and paint, and illuminate, and work in metals. Some said he could even construct maps; he was versed in everything, and noticed everything from 'the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall;' he was an expert in heraldry; he could tell you about whales, and camels, and buffaloes, and elephants—he could even draw an elephant—illustrate his history, in fact, with the elephant's portrait, the first elephant, he says, that had ever been seen in our northern climes. It was centuries before men haddreamt of what the science of geology would one day reveal. Then, too, he had vast capacity for work, and was a courtly person, and he had the gift of tongues, and had been a great traveller; he had early been sent by the convent to study at the University of Paris, and wherever he went, he was the man to make friends. When the Benedictines in Norway had convinced themselves that there was sore need of a reform of their rule and discipline, they applied to Pope Innocent IV. to send them a Visitor furnished with the necessary authority for carrying out so delicate and difficult a mission, and they made choice of Matthew Paris as the fittest possible person for such a work. Reluctantly Brother Matthew was compelled to undertake the task; he started on his northern voyage in 1248, and was absent about a year. In Norway he soon grew into high favour with King Hacon, who peradventure would have kept him at his side if he could. This seems to have been the most important episode in his otherwise uneventful life. But the advantages and opportunities which were at the command of any ambitious and studious young monk at St. Alban's were in themselves extraordinary. We have said that building was always going on. It was going on on a very large scale indeed in Abbot William's time. That means that there were the plans and sections and working drawings to be copied for the architect, and measurements and calculations by the thousand to be made—a school of architecture, in short: and besides that, what Roger de Wendover was in the scriptorium, that Walter of Colchester,pictor et sculptor incomparabilis, was in the painting room. Walter was a sculptor; indeed he wrought at his marvellous pulpit which the Abbot set up in the middle of the church: and he carved the story of St. Alban upon the great beam over the high altar, and did many another thing of which we have only too brief descriptions. Then, too, there was Richard, the monk who decorated the grand new guests' halldeliciose, as we are told, and who painted pictures and carried out other works of embellishment at a pace which none could have kept up, but that he had his father to help him with his brush, and another artist, John of Wallingford, to carry out his great designs, and many more skilled limners whose names have gone down into silence.

When Abbot William's reign came to an end, the monks were unanimous in choosing John of Hertford as his successor, and the new Abbot lost no time in showing favour to Matthew Paris. Next year Roger de Wendover died, and who could there be so worthy to succeed him as historiographer as the versatile and accomplished brother, who by this time was the boast of the great house? And historiographer accordingly Matthew became—mutatismutandis, a sort of 13th-century editor of the 'Times;' his business was to gather from all points of the compass, if not the latest news, yet the best and most trustworthy reports upon whatever was worth recording. He had his correspondents all over Europe, and that he sifted the evidence as it came to him we know.

Wherever there was any great event that deserved a place in the Abbey Chronicle, some splendid pageant to describe, some battle, or treaty, or pestilence, or flood, or famine, straightway tidings came to the vigilant historiographer; and there was a comparison of the evidence brought in, and some testing of witnesses, and finally the narrative was drawn up and incorporated into Matthew's history. Again and again it happened that a great personage who, while himselfmakinghistory, was anxious that his own part in a transaction should be represented favourably, would try and get the right side of the famous chronicler, and would furnish him with private information. Even the King himself thought it no scorn to communicate facts and documents to Brother Matthew. Once when Henry saw him in a crowd on a memorable occasion, he picked him out, and bade him take his seat by his side, and see to it that he made a true and faithful report of what was going on; and it is evident that the royal favour which he enjoyed through life must have extended to furnishing him with many a story and many a detail which none but the King could have supplied. The minute account of the attempt to assassinate Henry in 1238; the curious State paper giving a narrative of the dispute between the King and his nobles in 1242; the strange scene at the tomb of William Marshall in 1245, and scores of other incidents in the career of Bishop Grossteste and Richard of Cornwall, were evidently 'inspired,' and can only have come from eye-witnesses of the events recorded. Nevertheless Matthew, though he was willing enough to receive information, and to utilise facts and documents, was by no means the man to reproduce them exactly in the form in which they came to him. More than once he ventured to remonstrate with the King, and very much oftener than once he expresses his opinion of him in no measured terms. Some of the severest censures he had marked for omission, and some expressions he modified considerably, for we have the good fortune to possess his chronicle both in an earlier and in a later form; but even though the fuller and more outspoken record had perished, we should still have had enough proof to make it clear that we have in Matthew Paris an instance of a born historian, one who never consented to be a mere advocate, taking a side and seeingonly half the truth of anything; but a man gifted with the judicial faculty, that precious gift without which a man may be anything you please—a rhetorician, a special pleader, a picturesque writer, a laborious collector of facts; but an historian never. And yet Matthew Paris was a magnificent hater, with a fund of indignant scorn and righteous anger which never fails him upon occasion. Friend of King and nobles as he was, he will not spare his words of wrathful censure upon the tyrant, or upon any that he held deserving of rebuke for cruelty, oppression and avarice. When he has to lay the lash on such as had proved themselves enemies to his much-loved Abbey, or who had wronged and defrauded it, he is well-nigh as fierce as Dante. He singles them out—the doomed wretches—and holds them, as it were, over the fire of hell before he drops them down into the burning flame.

Did Ralph Cheinduit, that blustering, burly knight, cry aloud 'A fig for St. Alban and his monks! Since they excommunicated me—look you! I have only increased in girth, behold me fat and jolly, in faith almost too big for my saddle. A fig for them all!' Did he say so, the impious wretch? Be it known that from that very day Sir Knight began to shrink and waste and pine, and if he had not repented and been absolved in time, he had gone down to the bottomless pit with never a hope of deliverance.

Did not Sir Adam Fitz William show the evil spirit that was in him when he sided against us time and again? And now, look to his awful end! Gorged with meat and drink one night, he sprawled upon his bed,indigestus, as you may say, and he never woke more. Aye! and he died intestate too. And as though that was not bad enough, his wife too died, straightway, like another Sapphira slain by the shock of the tidings. And then there was Alan de Beccles, too, always notorious for setting himself against us and our house, he too perished as the other did, for he loved choice dainties overmuch, and he dined late and he ate as none should eat, and when he could eat no more, suddenly his speech failed him and his veins burst, smitten with an apoplexy. And many another, whom it would take too long to name, following his evil course, and being prosecutors of Holy Alban's Church, perished for ever by God's vengeance.

It is no longer the fashion now to denounce the Pope and his myrmidons, but if the rage of Exeter Hall should ever recur, and the orators of the old platform should revive a taste for anti-papal agitation, they might find in Matthew Paris as rich a repertory of testimonials against Roman aggression and greed as the most rabid Irish Protestant could desire. 'O thouPope,' he bursts out once, 'thou the father of all the fathers in Christ, how it is that thou sufferest the realms of Christendom to be fouled by such creatures as are thine?' The 'creatures' were the papal legates and nuncios and all their belongings, who were plundering England without shame. 'Harpies they were and blood-suckers,' says Matthew, 'mere plunderers, skinning the sheep, not shearing them only.' Then there were the King's Justiciars—'Justice'—nay, with that they had nothing to do. Why tell of their unrighteous deeds? he asks. 'Better forbear from vainly writing about thewrongers, and return to the story of the wronged.'

Of course the friars come in for their share of strong words—chiefly because the Pope made use of them so vilely, and not less because they set themselves above their betters—us, to wit—monks of the old houses.

'They started with such fair professions, they were going to be so very poor, and so very unworldly, and were going to supplement our work and interfere with nobody, and give us all a helping hand. Look at them now!' says Matthew; 'they march through the streets in pompous array with banners flaunting in the sun and waxen tapers, and rich burghers in holiday garments joining in the long train, and if they have no land they have money, good store, and as for their churches, they are eclipsing us all. Their invasion of our territory is a dreadful scandal, and they sneer at us and at all other religious men and women and they flout the parish priests and call them humdrums, and schism is at work horribly, and the people are running away from the old guides, and there is no end to them. Actually in the year of grace 1257,' he says, 'a new order of these fellows turned up in London. Friars of the sack, forsooth, because they were clothed in sackcloth! Of course they came armed with a papal licence as usual. What did these fellows come for? Was it to make confusion worse confounded? Alas! Alas! If we had only been as we were in the golden age, these friars would never have had a chance—not they! We too are not as the monks of old were; they lived the guileless life—austere, hard, self-denying, saintly! What are we in comparison with them?'Did not we find the bones of our brethren there, hard by the High Altar, when we were beautifying the same? O ye degenerate sons of this degenerate age! Two centuries ago and our monks were men of faith and prayer. In the year of grace one thousand two hundred and fifty-one, we found more than thirty of them buried together, and their bones were lying there, white and sweet, redolent with the odor of sanctity every one; each man had been buried as he died, in his monastic habit, and his shoes upon his feet too. Aye, andsuchshoes—shoes made for wear and not for wantonness. The soles of these shoes were sound and strong, they might have served the purpose for poor men's naked feet even now, after centuries oflying in the grave. Blush ye! ye with your buckles, and your pointed toes and your fiddle faddle. These shoes upon the holy feet that we dug up were as round at the toe as at the heel, and the latchets were all of one piece with the uppers. No rosettes in those days, if you please! They fastened their shoes with a thong, and they wound that thong around their blessed ankles, and they cared not in those holy days whether their shoes werea pair. Left foot and right foot each was as the other: and we, when we gazed at the holy relics—we bowed our heads at the edifying sight, and we were dumbfounded, even to awe, as we swung our censers over the sacred graves of the ages past!'

'Did not we find the bones of our brethren there, hard by the High Altar, when we were beautifying the same? O ye degenerate sons of this degenerate age! Two centuries ago and our monks were men of faith and prayer. In the year of grace one thousand two hundred and fifty-one, we found more than thirty of them buried together, and their bones were lying there, white and sweet, redolent with the odor of sanctity every one; each man had been buried as he died, in his monastic habit, and his shoes upon his feet too. Aye, andsuchshoes—shoes made for wear and not for wantonness. The soles of these shoes were sound and strong, they might have served the purpose for poor men's naked feet even now, after centuries oflying in the grave. Blush ye! ye with your buckles, and your pointed toes and your fiddle faddle. These shoes upon the holy feet that we dug up were as round at the toe as at the heel, and the latchets were all of one piece with the uppers. No rosettes in those days, if you please! They fastened their shoes with a thong, and they wound that thong around their blessed ankles, and they cared not in those holy days whether their shoes werea pair. Left foot and right foot each was as the other: and we, when we gazed at the holy relics—we bowed our heads at the edifying sight, and we were dumbfounded, even to awe, as we swung our censers over the sacred graves of the ages past!'

The anecdotes and out-of-the-way pieces of information in the 'Chronica Majora,' which may be said to represent theparagraphsof modern journalism, are countless. Brother Matthew enlivens his history with these cross-lights at every page, and what gives to these scraps an added charm is that Matthew himself seems to be always with us when he prattles on. Not even Herodotus has succeeded more entirely in impressing his quaint personality upon his narrative. It is always something which he has seen, or heard from some living man who saw it with his own eyes.

'There was my friend John of Basingstoke, had studied at Paris, and a wonder of learning he was, but he told me himself that his best teacher by far was the young lady Constantina, daughter of an archbishop she. Archbishop of Athens, too—archbishops may marry out there! Before she was twenty she knew all that men may know; she was worth two universities of Paris any day; she foretold the coming of plagues and storms, and eclipses—and—more wonderful still—the coming of earthquakes too: and John of Basingstoke was her scholar, and whatever he knew that was deep and rare, he learnt it of the lady Constantina, the Archbishop's daughter.'

Matthew is very great when he has to tell of omens and portents:

'We were scurvily treated by Pope Innocent III.,' he says, 'in the days of Abbot John. Spite of all our privileges and indulgences, the Pope would have him come to Rome every third year; a sore burden and harm to us all. Forthwith evil omens came. Thrice in three years was our tower struck by lightning. After that wrong of his Holiness it was no wonder that the impression of the papal seal in wax, which we had taken good care to fix on the top of the steeple, availed not to keep off the thunderbolt—small good you see in that kind of thing.'

Besides the miscellaneous paragraphs, there are periodical reports of the weather, and the storms, and the droughts, and the harvests. Moreover, there are what answer to our policereports, and details of criminal proceedings against Jew and Gentile, and births and deaths and marriages, and now and then brief notes upon the state of the markets, and sometimes hints and reflections upon the desirability of certain reforms in Church and State; and all this not in the spirit of modern journalism, which at its best too often bears the marks of haste, and betrays the literary soldier of fortune paid for his work at so much a column, but genuine, hearty, throbbing with a certain passionate loyalty to a tradition, or an idea which you may say is exploded, grotesque, or fanciful, but which in the 13th century honest men and devout ones lived by and lived for, and were trying in their own way to carry out into action.

But now that we have got this precious 'Chronicle,' not to mention other works in the composition of which Brother Matthew had at least a large share—though our space forbids us dwelling upon them or their contents, and we must refer our readers to Dr. Luard's elaborate prefaces if they would desire to know all about them—another question suggests itself, which sooner or later will become a pressing question—What are we going to do with such a national work of which this country has great reason to be proud?

The days are gone by when a man was supposed to be educated in proportion as he was familiar with the literature of Greece and Rome and ignorant of everything else. Already at Oxford candidates for the highest honours in the final schools think it no shame to read their Plato or their Aristotle in English translations, and in half the time that was needed under the old plan they get a mastery of their Thucydides or Herodotus, devoting themselves to the subject-matter after they have proved at 'Moderations' that they have a respectable acquaintance with the language of the authors.

May the day be far off when Homer and Æschylus shall cease to be read in the original! The great writers of Hellas and Italy were poets or orators, great teachers or great thinkers; but they were something more. They were perfect instrumentalities too. Their thoughts, their lessons, their aspirations, their regrets, you may interpret and transfer into the speech and the idioms of the moderns; but the music of their language, the subtleties of melody and rhythm, and harmony and tone, can no more be translated than a symphony for the strings can be adequately represented upon the organ. You may persuade yourself that you have got the substance; you have missed the perfection of the form. Yet who but a narrow pedant will insist that the study of any literature, ancient or modern, is valuable chiefly for familiarizing us with the language, not forenriching our minds with the subject matter? Do we desire to understand the past and so to be better able to estimate the importance of great movements that are going on in the present or, by the help of the experience of bygone ages, to forecast the future? Then it behoves us to see that our induction shall be made from as wide a view as may be, and to avail ourselves of any light that may be gained. But it is mere waste of time to be for ever staring at the lamp which may be pretty to look at in itself, but is then most precious when it serves as a means to an end. If we are ever to construct a Science of History, the old methods must give place to something which may approximate to philosophic enquiry. When we come to think of it, how very small an area of time or space is covered by the historians of Greece and Rome: how small an area and how superficially dealt with! Even Thucydides hardly ventures to lift the veil which separates the civilization of his own age from that of an earlier period; he lifts it for a moment, then drops the curtain and passes on. It is true indeed that Herodotus introduces us to a world that is not Hellenic, and brings us into some sort of relation with men whose habits and art and religion had a character of their own; but then these nations were not as we, and not as men even of our race could ever become. We never seem to bein touchwith Egypt or Assyria, and when he prattles on about these nations it is less as a historian than as an observant traveller that Herodotus delights and allures. Xenophon's passing notices of the manners and education, of thefeudalismand the social life of the Medes, are too brief to be anything but tantalizing; but the neglect of Xenophon by professed students is not creditable, however significant. Perhaps of all the Greek writers Polybius was the man who had the truest conception of the historian's vocation; perhaps, too, it was just because he was so much before his age that his voluminous and ambitious work has come down to us little more than a fragment. Because he was something better than a compiler of annals, they who read history only to be amused found him dull, and the moderns have not yet reversed the verdict which was passed upon him. Who ever heard of a candidate for honours taking Polybius into the schools?

It is from the Latin historians that we might have expected so much and from whom we get so little. What do they tell us of ancient Spain—the Spain that Sertorius pretended he was going to regenerate, and whose civilization, literature, and national life he did so much to extinguish? If it were not for what Aristotle has told us in thePolitics, what should we know of that mighty commercial Republic which monopolized thecarrying trade of the old world? It never seems to have occurred to Livy that the political organization of Carthage could be worth his notice. His business was to glorify Rome, and to tell how Rome grew to greatness—grew by war and conquest and pillage, and the ferocious might of her relentless soldiery. The 'Germania' of Tacitus stands alone—unique in ancient literature; but what would we not give for such a monograph upon the Britain which Cæsar attempted to conquer, or the Gaul which he plundered and devastated? The great captain's famous missive might be inscribed as the motto of his 'Commentaries.' Veni! vidi! vici! sums up in brief the substance of what they contain. It was always Rome's way! Rome swept a sponge that was soaked in blood over all the past of the nations she subdued. She came to obliterate, never to preserve. Her chroniclers disdained to ask how these or those doughty antagonists had grown formidable, how their national life had developed; whether their progress had been arrested by the conquerors or whether they had become weak and enervated by social deterioration or moral corruption. Enough that they wereBarbarians.

The science of history can be but little advanced by writers such as these, who pass from battlefield to battlefield—

'Crimson-footed, like the stork,Through great ruts of slaughter,'

and to whom the silent growth of institutions and the evolution of ethical sentiments and the development of the arts of peace were matters which never presented themselves as worthy of their attention. You may call this history if you will, in truth it is little better than Empiricism. The world is a larger world than Rome or Athens dreamt of, and students of history are beginning to realize that not quite the last thing they have to do is 'to look athome.' Such a work as the 'Chronica Majora' of Matthew Paris is a national heritage which it is shameful to allow much longer to be known only by the curious and erudite. Now that there is no excuse for our neglect, is it too much to hope that the day may not be far distant when the name of this great Englishman may become as familiar to schoolboys as that of Sallust or Livy, of Cornelius Nepos or Cæsar—his name as familiar, and his writings better known and more loved?

FOOTNOTES:[1]Lord Langdale resigned three weeks before his death.[2]The proposal to print and publish theCalendarshad been approved by authority of the new Record Commissioners as early as January 1840.Seepreface to Mr. Lemons' 'Calendar' (Domestic, 1547-1580), p. viii.[3]In Luard's sixth volume there are two facsimiles of certain coloured drawings of the more precious gems at St. Alban's, with careful descriptions of them, these and the illustrations being most probablyexecuted by Mathew Paris himself.

[1]Lord Langdale resigned three weeks before his death.

[2]The proposal to print and publish theCalendarshad been approved by authority of the new Record Commissioners as early as January 1840.Seepreface to Mr. Lemons' 'Calendar' (Domestic, 1547-1580), p. viii.

[3]In Luard's sixth volume there are two facsimiles of certain coloured drawings of the more precious gems at St. Alban's, with careful descriptions of them, these and the illustrations being most probablyexecuted by Mathew Paris himself.

Most travellers in France will have met occasionally in Paris and in the provincial towns a school of boys walking two and two, and followed by a serious-looking superintendent of very solemn deportment. The boys are in no marked respect different from other boys, but they are orderly and well conducted. They are probably on their way to a church; and if you watch them, you will see them march in with much propriety. The superintendent is evidently not an ordinary schoolmaster; you would suppose that he is an ecclesiastic of some kind. He wears a loose black cloak, a hat with a low crown and a portentous brim, and bands such as were much worn by English clergymen till late years, and which, when strongly developed, were supposed to indicate a sympathy with Calvanistic theology. Nevertheless, the solemn-featured young man is not an ecclesiastic, neither is he a Protestant minister. He is one of the Frères Chrétiens, or Christian Brothers; and the boys whom he has under his charge are pupils in one of the Écoles Chrétiennes, or Christian Schools.

We will venture to assume, that some of our readers are not well acquainted with the story and the principles of the remarkable institution known as the Schools of the Christian Brothers, or with the life of their remarkable founder. We propose in this article to supply some information upon the subject, not only because we think that such information will be interesting in itself, but also because we believe that from the story of the work and principles of the French schools of the Christian Brothers, we may proceed without difficulty, and almost by necessary consequence, to some useful considerations with respect to English schools as now established and conducted amongst ourselves.

Jean Baptiste de la Salle was born in Rheims, April 30,1651. The house in which he was born is still standing, and is regarded with reverence. He came of a noble family, which was originally of Bearn. His grandfather settled at Rheims, of which he became an honoured citizen, but was apparently in no way himself remarkable. His second son, Louis, was the father of a child, who received the name of Jean Baptiste on the same day as that upon which he was born.

This child, whose career we purpose briefly to follow as that of the founder of the Christian Brothers, exhibited early signs of a devotional spirit; he learned to recite the Breviary from his grandfather, and continued to do so even before being bound to the practice by his ordination vows; and he soon made it clear to himself and to others that his vocation was that of the priestly office. His conduct as a student in the University of Rheims, which he entered at eight years old, was marked by diligence in study and gentle docility.

Before he had reached the age of sixteen he was made a canon of the cathedral; such were the strange ecclesiastical possibilities of those times. An aged relative resigned in his favour, and died the following year. The preferment, however, did not spoil him; he looked upon it as a call to duty. He was diligent in attendance upon the offices of the Church, diligent in private prayer, diligent in study—in every way a remarkable boy-canon!

In October 1670 he entered the seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris, where, amongst other fellow-students, was Fénelon, subsequently the great Archbishop of Cambrai. Little is recorded of his seminary life, except that it was gentle, modest, blameless. In 1672 he lost his father, and in the same year returned to Rheims to take charge of his younger brothers and sisters. The responsible position in which he was thus placed seems to have shaken for a time his persuasion that he had a true vocation for the priesthood; but after consultation with a friend who knew him well, his doubts vanished, and on the eve of Trinity Sunday in this same year he was admitted to the subdiaconate.

Then follow six years of quiet home work and retirement. During this time he attended the theological course of the University, provided for the education of his brothers and sisters, and gave himself very earnestly to prayer and good works. In the year 1678, on Easter Eve, he was ordained Priest.

During all this time De la Salle's attention does not seem to have been turned to that which ultimately became the great work of his life. As not unfrequently happens, the real bentwas given to his energies by what might be described as accidental circumstances. The friend whom he consulted when in doubt concerning holy orders was one Canon Roland. This good man had interested himself much about an orphanage for girls at Rheims, which had fallen under bad management, and urgently needed reform. Canon Roland was taken ill just before De la Salle's ordination, and, dying not long after, left the young priest his executor, commending to his special care the orphanage just mentioned. De la Salle could not refuse the charge; it was not much to his taste, but it was the bequest of his friend; it was the leading of God; and he girded himself to the task. He applied through the Archbishop to the King for letters patent recognizing the institution, and thus put it upon a lasting foundation; he bore the expense of the whole transaction; then he supplemented the funds out of his own means; and having thus satisfied his obligations to his deceased friend, he returned to his quiet devotional life. The thought that this orphanage for girls would constitute a valuable training school for schoolmistresses seems already to have crossed his mind.

Now comes the turning-point of De la Salle's life, and it comes in a curious way. There was a certain rich, fashionable, and extravagant married lady living in Rouen, who, like the rich man in the parable, was clothed in fine linen and fared sumptuously every day, while Lazarus lay at the gate. One day a poor beggar, who had been harshly repulsed from the door, touched the heart of a servant by his manifest misery, and was received into the stables, where he died the same night. The dead man must needs be buried; so the servant went to the mistress, confessed his fault, received some violent language and notice of dismissal, but at the same time procured a sheet to serve as a shroud for the corpse. At dinner-time the lady perceived the very sheet, which she had given for the burial, folded up and lying in her own chair; some mysterious hand had brought back the ungracious present, as though the deceased beggar would not receive a favour in death from one who had been so cruel to him in life.

This strange and apparently not very important occurrence changed the whole course of the lady's life. She gave up all her old habits of magnificence and extravagance, lived the life of a devotee, and soon succeeded in separating from herself all her old companions and friends, who, in fact, deemed her mad. After her husband's death she became still more strict in her habits, and devoted to the service of the poor a large part of her fortune.

Amongst other charities which she assisted was the female orphanage, of which we have already spoken as having been cared for by Canon Roland, and after his death by M. de la Salle. She conceived the idea of establishing something of the same kind for boys in her native town of Rheims, and she consulted Canon Roland on the subject. Ultimately she engaged a devout layman, named Adrien Nyel, who had experience of poor schools in Rouen, promised him maintenance for himself and a young assistant, gave him a letter of introduction to her relative M. de la Salle, and sent him to Rheims to open a school there for poor boys.

This school, which was commenced in 1679, was the germ of the great system ofÉcoles Chrétiennes. Its success led a pious lady in Rheims to wish to establish another of the same kind in a different part of the town. She consulted M. de la Salle, who had become patron of the first school, on the subject; and thus he became, without any special wish or intention of his own, drawn into the work of the education of poor boys. His own account of the matter is worth quoting:—

'It was,' he wrote, 'by the chance meeting with M. Nyel, and by hearing of the proposal made by that lady [to whom reference has been made], that I was led to begin to interest myself about boys' schools. I had no thought of it before. It was not that the subject had not been suggested to me. Many of M. Roland's friends had tried to interest me about it, but it took no hold of my mind, and I had not the least intention of occupying myself with it. If I had ever thought that the care which out of pure charity I was taking of schoolmasters would have brought me to feel it a duty to live with them, I should have given it up at once; for as I naturally felt myself very much above those whom I was obliged to employ as schoolmasters, especially at first, the bare idea of being obliged to live with such persons would have been insupportable to me. In fact, it was a great trouble to me when first I took them into my house, and the dislike of it lasted for two years. It was apparently for this reason that God, who orders all things with wisdom and gentleness, and who does not force the inclinations of men, when He willed to employ me entirely in the care of schools, wrought imperceptibly and during a long space of time, so that one engagement led to another in an unforeseen way.'

This passage somewhat anticipates events; but it is convenient for the condensed character of this narrative that it should be so. We will therefore briefly fill up the gap left by M. de la Salle's own statement by saying, that he found the work of directing schools for the poor increase upon his hands in a wonderful manner. The success of those which he visited and superintended led to the establishment of others. Soon themasters themselves formed a small body which required superintendence and guidance. He took a house in which he placed them; the home of course needed rules for its orderly and efficient working; these M. de la Salle supplied. But still all was not quite as it should be. Cathedral duties took up much of the Canon's time; these duties were of primary obligation, and left comparatively little of the day to be given to the superintendence of schoolmasters. But more than this, the difference of station and comfort and habits between a well-endowed Canon of a Cathedral, enjoying in addition a private fortune of his own, and poor schoolmasters taken from the humblest ranks, and living in the most humble manner, was quite immeasurable. It was comparatively easy to have the whole company to dine with him, and so to meet them half way down the social hill; but this was not enough. M. de la Salle began gradually to realize the fact, that his great undertaking of supplying schools and schoolmasters for the gratuitous education of the poor, could only be crowned with complete success on the condition of his own adoption of poverty in all its thoroughness. Accordingly he determined to resign his canonry and spend his fortune upon the poor. Not altogether so easy a thing as might at first sight appear. Great opposition was made by his friends: the Archbishop was unwilling to accept his resignation: nothing but persevering determination on the part of De la Salle could have carried the business through; but he was full of perseverance and full of determination, and in 1683 he at last succeeded in divesting himself of his Cathedral preferment. The sale of his property, and spending the money upon the poor, was an easier matter, especially as the year 1684 was one of dearth; in the course of that year and the following he managed to get rid of all.

This parting with his money, instead of spending it upon his great work, may well seem to be a conduct of doubtful wisdom; especially as at a later period much difficulty was encountered for want of funds. But it is hard, and perhaps not justifiable, to find fault with a man, who adopts the course of selling all that he has and giving to the poor, after using devoutly such a prayer as the following:—

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