"What a lively, living, really religious interest is given to one of these sacred groups when we know the locality, or the community for which it was executed; and how it becomes enriched as a production of mind when it speaks to the mind through a thousand associations, will be felt, I think, after reading the legends which follow." The Benedictine order stands first in point of time and in interest, not as regards art only, but as the great civilising order of the world. The Benedictines were the early missionaries of the north of Europe; they, banished the impure and inhuman rites of heathenism, by conveying, regardless of peril, the light of the gospel into the wilds of Britain, Gaul, Saxony, and Belgium. They gave security to the oppressed, rescued from the spoiler, and were a refuge to the poor in times of tyranny and barbarism. They were the sole depositaries of learning and of the arts; collected and transcribed books--particularly the Scriptures--which were charitably bestowed or deposited as precious gifts. We owe to them not only the diffusion of the Scriptures, but the preservation of classical literature. To them we owe the recovery of the works of Pliny, Sallust, and Cicero. "They were the fathers of Gothic architecture; they were the earliest illuminators and limners; and, to crown their deservings under this head, the inventor of the gamut, and the first who instituted a school of music, was a Benedictine monk, Guido d'Arezzo." They were the great civilisers, by bringing science to bear upon agriculture; the authors of experimental farming and gardening; the cultivators of new fruits and herbs. They cleared and cultivated; science and the plough went with them wherever they planted the cross. We cannot forbear quoting the words of Sir James Stephen:-- "The greatness of the Benedictines did not, however, consist either in their agricultural skill, their prodigies of architecture, or their priceless libraries, but in their parentage of countless men and women illustrious for active piety, for wisdom in the government of mankind, for profound learning, and for that contemplative spirit which discovers, within the soul itself, things beyond the limits of the perceptible creation."