The monastic institution was never entirely good or entirely bad. In periods of general degradation there were beautiful exceptions in monasteries ruled by pure and powerful abbots. From the beginning various monasteries soon departed from their discipline by sheltering iniquity and laziness, while other establishments faithfully observed the rules. But during the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries there was a widespread decline in the spirit of devotion and a shameful relaxation of monastic discipline. Malmesbury, King Alfred, Alcuin, in England, and many continental writers, sorrowfully testified against the monks because of their vices, their revelings, their vain and gorgeous ornaments of dress and their waning zeal for virtue. The priests hunted and fought, prayed, preached, swore and drank as they pleased. "We cannot wonder," says an anonymous historian, "that they should commit the more reasonable offence of taking wives." Disorders were common everywhere; the monastic vows were sadly neglected. Political and religious ideals were lost sight of amid the prevailing confusion and wild commotion of those dark days. "It is true," says Carlyle, "all things have two faces, a light one and a dark. It is true in three centuries much imperfection accumulates; many an ideal, monastic or otherwise, shooting forth into practice as it can, grows to a strange reality; and we have to ask with amazement, Is this your ideal? For alas the ideal has to grow into the real, and to seek out its bed and board there, often in a sorry way."