Manual labour was strongly recommended by Benedict, and, from the first establishment of his order, the monks engaged themselves in tilling the soil. It is difficult to form an idea of the deplorable state of agriculture in Europe, for some centuries after the invasion of the barbarians upon the south. The change which has since been wrought in the appearance of towns, in the state of trade, and in the general character of political and social institutions, is scarcely greater than the change which has been produced in the aspect of nature. Many an immense tract of country now smiling with cornfields, meadows, gardens, and vineyards, was, in the middle ages, a miserable morass, or a straggling forest, haunted by the wolf, and unvisited by man. In the first attempts to transform the desert into "a fruitful field," we find the monks most active. In the early charters granted to monasteries, frequent mention is made of extensive districts, uncultivated and barren, made over to them as their property, which, by their labour, they turned to profitable account. Wild and inaccessible forests were cleared for the site of a new convent; and the monkish historian, as he recorded the fact, exclaimed, "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel! In the place where dragons lay shall there be reeds and rushes." Some of the most pleasing parts of the monastic annals are those in which an account is given of the change produced in the face of the country, by the enclosure of land around the monastery. There is some interest felt in looking on the following picture:--"The place," says the biographer of Eligius, in describing an abbey which he built, "the place is so fertile and so pleasant, that when any person walks there among the orchards of fruit, and the gardens of flowers, he is ready to burst forth into the exclamation, 'How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel! like shady woods, like cedars near the waters, and as gardens by the river'--of such, Solomon says, 'the habitations of the just are blessed.' .... It is surrounded by an enclosure, not of stone, but consisting of a foss and bridge, about a mile and a quarter in circuit; on one side guarded by a beautiful river, from which there rises a lofty hill, crowned with wood, and rocks towering to a great height. The inner space is filled with fruit-bearing trees of various kinds, where the mind is cheered, and may fancy itself surrounded by the delightful scenes of Paradise."[1]