Lerins—that is, especially Saint Honorat—was the refuge of the intellect, the science, the literature, of a civilised world going to pieces into utter wreckage. As Guizot well said:— “For culture of mind, one thing is requisite, and that is quiet. When the social condition of the world is in convulsion, and all about is barbarity and misery, then study suffers, is neglected and declines. Taste for truth, the sentiment for what is beautiful, are plants as delicate as they are noble. For their cultivation a sweet atmosphere is necessary; they bow their heads and are blighted by storm. Study, literature, intellectual activity, could not battle against general discouragement, universal disaster; they must have a holdfast somewhere, attach themselves to popular convictions, or perish. The Christian religion furnished them with the means of living. By allying themselves to that, philosophy and literature were saved from the ruin that menaced them. One may say, without exaggeration, that the human mind, proscribed, storm-tossed, found its only possible refuge in churches and monasteries. It clung as a suppliant to the altars, and pleaded to be allowed to live under their shelter, and at their service, till better times should arrive, when they would expand in the open air.” Lerins suffered repeatedly and frightfully from the Saracens. Again and again was it ravaged. In 725, Porcarius, the abbot, and five hundred monks, were butchered by the Moors. [Illustration: LA NAPOULE] The interesting fortress, with its cloister and quadrangle in the centre, was erected by the monks as a place of refuge from the Moors and Algerine pirates. But worse times were in store, when the Crown came to look on the great abbeys as fiefs, to be given _in commendam_ to laymen, to bastards, to favourites, to harlots, who might enjoy the revenues and ignore the duties. Naturally enough, in such a condition of affairs, Lerins declined. It became a place to which younger sons were relegated, vicious monks were banished; it was resolved into a bastille for evildoers, and sank to so low an ebb that, as a scandal, the abbey was suppressed the year before the Revolution came, and swept all monastic institutions away.