present-day life; wealth, position, comfort, and intellect are still placed by many of these Sisters at the feet of Christ. There was naturally great anxiety on the part of monasteries to do their best with the lands bestowed on them, and the monks and religious canons became almost proverbially the best farmers. Nor was the land cleared, the cattle tended, the sheep pastured, and the wood thinned simply with the idea of producing a good revenue to support themselves, to maintain their church and buildings, and, above all, to minister to the poor and needy; for it was keenly felt that there must be work for the hands as well as the head, and that in doing their very best in manual toil, as well as in worship in quire, they were giving glory to the Creator. “Idleness,” says St. Benedict in his rule, “is the enemy of the soul; therefore let the brothers devote certain hours to work with their hands, and at other times occupy themselves in sacred reading.” Then the great founder of the religious rule proceeded to lay down the hours, according to the seasons, during which such work was to be performed. Nor were his brethren, as he plainly told them, whatever had been their position, to be disconcerted if the necessity arose for getting in the harvest or doing agricultural labours with their own hands. The way in which the monks of England triumphed over nature, drained the swamps, and brought barren tracts of land into cultivation, was beyond all praise; thus they found abundant employment for their tenants and neighbours as well as for themselves, and materially increased the food supplies for the country at large. Visitors to the sites of ruined abbeys, such as the Yorkshire houses of Fountains, Riveaulx, or Byland, are apt hastily to praise the cunning of the monks in obtaining settlements in such pleasant and well-cultivated sites, forgetful that it was these very monks who turned comparatively barren and desolate lands into pasture, plantation, and tillage. The marvellous drainage works accomplished in the Holderness by the Cistercian monks of Meaux Abbey, or by the Gilbertine Canons of Watton Priory, whereby hundreds of acres were rendered capable of tillage, bear their fruits to the present day. It is difficult now to estimate the drudgery, toil, and skill required in days comparatively destitute of mechanical appliances to produce such results.