A monk has no need of great possessions, nor has she of a monk's blessing. But his blessing she shall have, if she will only leave him alone." THE FIRST SAXON HERMIT (A.D. 708). Fuller, in his "Church History," says: "St. Guthlake, a Benedictine monk in 708, was the first Saxon that professed a hermitical life in England, to which purpose he chose a fenny place in Lincolnshire called Crowland--that is, the 'raw or crude land'; so raw, indeed, that before him no man could digest to live therein. Yea, the devils are said to claim this place as their peculiar, and to call it their own land. Could those infernal fiends, tortured with immaterial fire, take any pleasure or make any ease to themselves by paddling here in puddles and dabbling in the moist dirty marshes? However, Guthlake took the boldness to 'enter common' with them, and erect his cell in Crowland. But if his prodigious life may be believed, ducks and mallards do not now flock thither faster in September than herds of devils came about him, all whom he is said victoriously to have vanquished. After the example of Moses and Elias, he fasted forty days and nights, till, finding this project destructive to nature, he was forced in his own defence to take some necessary but very sparing refection. He died in his own cell; and Pega, his sister, an anchoritess, led a solitary life not far from him." ST. GUTHLAC, HERMIT OF CROYLAND (A.D. 708). This St. Guthlac, according to his biographer, after he had been two years living in a monastery, began to long for the wilderness and a hermitage. Being directed to a fen of immense size in the east of England, he met a man named Tatwaine, who told him of an island which many had attempted to inhabit, but no man could do it on account of manifold horrors and fears and the loneliness of the wide wilderness, so that no man could endure it and fled from it. The holy man at once selected and went through the wild fens till he came to a spot called Croyland. It was a place of accursed spirits; but he was strengthened with heavenly support, and vowed that he would serve God on that island all the days of his life. He used neither woollen nor linen garments, but was clothed in skins; and he tasted nothing but barley bread and water. He was sorely tempted by the devil; but at last the ravens, the beasts, and the fishes came to obey him. Once a venerable brother named Wilfred visited him, and they held many discourses on the spiritual life, when suddenly two swallows came flying in, and, behold, they raised up their song rejoicing. And often they sat fearlessly on the shoulders of the holy man Guthlac, and then lifted up their song, and afterwards they sat on his bosom and on his arms and his knees. When Wilfred had long beheld with wonder the birds so submissively sitting with him, he asked the reason, and Guthlac answered him thus: "Hast thou never learned, brother Wilfred, in Holy Writ, that he who hath