in consequence of which a warm correspondence took place between the dishonoured abbot and some neighbouring prior who had taken the runaway under his patronage. Some were dissatisfied because discipline was too lax; some rebelled because it was too strict; and some did just as they liked, because there was no discipline at all. The effect of all this vice, disorder, and misrule, upon society, could not fail to be pernicious. The influence of such men who, while they set themselves up as models of sanctity and obedience, thus violated their vows, fostered the practice of all sorts of evil among the people at large. Historians have, therefore, justly laid at the door of these institutions, thus grossly corrupted, the blame of much of that social depravity which darkened the middle ages. According to the strict interpretation of the rule of St. Benedict, the monks were by no means to accumulate secular wealth: but a more liberal construction was generally put on the terms of the institute, so that the monasteries grew richer in this world's goods than in spiritual fame. A correspondence on this point, which arose in the twelfth century between Bernard, of Clairvaux, and Peter the Venerable, of Clugni, has been preserved, from which we find that the monks of Clugni were charged with violating the rules of the order by holding estates. "What will you reply," it is asked, "respecting the secular possessions which you hold, just like secular persons? For towns, villages, peasants, slaves, and handmaids, and what is more, the revenue of tolls and taxes, and property of that description, you receive indifferently, and retain unlawfully; and when you are attacked, you are not scrupulous about the means of defence. Contrary to all monastic law, ecclesiastics conduct secular causes, and turn advocates--and thus in heart return to Egypt."[4] This is a specimen of the disputes which sometimes arose among the monastic orders; and it proves, what none can deny, that the monasteries, whether in violation of the Benedictine rules or not, grew rich. One cannot look over a few of the old monastic histories without finding numerous allusions to their wealthy endowments. Immense tracts of lands, numbers of villages, farms, gardens, slaves of both sexes, are found registered in the inventory of their possessions. In later days the wealth of monasteries became enormously great, so that, in the twelfth century, the territorial property of the church, of which the larger part was vested in monasteries, amounted to nearly one-half of all England, and, in some countries, to a still larger proportion.[5] Much of this property was freely bestowed by the wealthy, with a view to secure thereby the salvation of their souls: but the brotherhood are charged with not being very particular as to the means they employed for the aggrandizement of their order; and are said even to have prostituted "their knowledge of writing to the