The multiplying of manuscripts and the collecting of books, whether sacred or profane, during these times of ignorance, were owing no doubt to the taste for learning which was cherished by a few, who had influence sufficient to engage others in the manual departments of literary occupation. Such men as Bede, Alcuin, and Raban Maurus, were enthusiastic lovers of books, and would do everything in their power to imbue others with the same feeling. They are distinguished names, shining out as stars of peculiar brilliancy during that season of gloom; but there were other men, whose names are preserved only in the obscure records of monasteries, long since dissolved, who seem to have been most diligent students. An amusing instance of a love for reading, occurs in the records of the abbey of St. Benignus, in the eleventh century. "The abbot Halinard," says the writer, "was so fond of reading that, even on a journey, he often carried a little book in his hand, and refreshed his mind by perusing it on horseback."[11] An abbot riding on horseback, with a book in his hand, would certainly be no fitting type of the generality of ecclesiastics at that time; all the more honour, then, to him and others like-minded, for their strong literary predilections. They were persons who finely exemplified "the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties," and we, in the present day, may derive, from their simple histories, a stimulus to renewed ardour and perseverance in the cultivation of the mind: for if they, with all their disadvantages, thus laboured to furnish themselves with knowledge, how much more ought we, in these times, to do so, when the means of literary acquisition are so widely diffused.