Montgomery says, “The readers of those days were rather gluttons than epicures in their taste for literature,” canonizing all books because they were books, as children eulogize their toys without noticing the quality. “To say all that could be said on any theme, whether in verse or prose, was the fashion of the times; and as few read but those who were devoted to reading by an irresistible passion or professional necessity, and few wrote but those who were equally impelled by an inveterate instinct, great books were the natural produce of the latter, who knew not how to make little ones; and great books only could appease the voracity of the former. Great books, therefore, were both the fruits and the proofs of the ignorance of the age. They were mostly composed in the gloom and torpor of the cloister, and it almost required a human life to read the works of an author of this description, because it was nearly as easy to compound as to digest such crudities.” These labors of the learned could not of course interest the common people, as they could neither understand nor buy them. These were books without meaning,--with so little logic and connection that the more one read, the deeper he got into the maze or tangled mass of words. “And the lucubrations through a thousand years, of many a noble, many a lovely mind, which only wanted better direction how to unfold its energies or display its graces to benefit or delight mankind, were but passing meteors, that made visible the darkness out of which they rose, and into which they sank again to be hid forever.” Nevertheless, we owe it to the monks to say that there were many good and learned men among them, and for much that is valuable in our libraries we can not thank them enough. We can never consult a concordance of the Bible without calling to mind that they first conceived the idea of such a work, and numbers of them, jointly laboring long and incessantly, nobly laid its foundations, on which others who came after raised the structure and reaped the glory. It will be readily inferred from what has been said that books in those times were scarce and costly. Only the rich could afford to have them, and they had but very few. The monasteries and universities had libraries, and occasionally one was found in the castles of the nobility. The Cathedral of Nôtre Dame, in Strasbourg, was famed for its splendid collection of five hundred volumes. The Countess of Anjou bought a book of Homilies, paying for it two hundred sheep, five quarters of wheat, and the same quantity of rye and millet. Henry V., King of England, borrowed a book from the Countess of Westmoreland; and not having returned it at his death, the Countess petitioned the Privy Council that it might be restored to her by an order under the privy seal, which was done with all formality.