So much has been done in our time to dispel the vulgar illusion that the Scriptures were unknown and uncared for in the Dark Ages, that I need not here enter into any proof of what is now, or at least ought to be, an uncontroverted fact. Mr. Maitland’s “Essays” have convincingly proved that if the monks read nothing else they at least read the Bible. But what he has not shown with equal power, is the love, the enthusiasm with which, to use the expression of the biographer of Rabanus, they “fed themselves on the Divine Scriptures.” Like the Jews of old, they meditated on them, “sitting in the house or walking on a journey;” they were written “on the entry and on the doorposts.”[108] At the tables of bishops and abbots, of nobles and of kings, the Scriptures were daily read aloud: the little child learnt from them his first lesson, and the old man died with their accent on his lips. What need had they of the fables of the poets, when the beauties of the inspired writers were graven on their memories, familiar as household words? How could they care to listen to what Ovid had to tell them of the Golden Age, they to whom the glowing imagery of the Prophet had painted the kingdom of the Son of Jesse, where the wolf was to dwell with the lamb, and the kid with the leopard, and a little child should lead them? And what great wonder was it if the degrading tales of heathen deities, even when sung by the Muse of Virgil, should fall somewhat flat and profitless on their ears, accustomed as they were to the sublime marvels of God’s dealings with His ancient people, and the history of the Incarnate Word?