As marriage or the cloister was the alternative submitted to most ladies in the days of old, so young men of noble families had small choice but between the church and chivalry. Some, indeed, commenced with arms, won knightly honors, cared nothing for them when they had obtained the prize, and took up the clerical profession, or entered monasteries. There are many distinguished examples. There was first St. Mochua or Cluanus, who, after serving in arms with great distinction, entered a monastery and took to building churches and establishing cities. Of the former he built no less than thirty; and he passed as many years in one church as he had built of churches themselves. He was the founder of one hundred and twenty cells. He is to be looked upon with respect. Old warriors in our own days are often moved by the same impulse which governed Mochua; and when we see retired admirals taking the chair at meetings where Dr. Cumming is about to exhibit; or infirm major-generals supporting, with unabated mental energy, their so-called Puseyite pastors, we only look upon men who, acting conscientiously, are worthy of respect, and are such Mochuas as modern times and circumstances will admit of. We have another example in Adelard, the cousin of Charlemagne. He was a gay and gallant chevalier at his imperial cousin’s court, and there was no stouter wielder of a sword in all the army; but Alard, or Adelard, grew weary of camp and court alike. He fled from some very pretty temptations in the one, as well as great perils in the other. The young prince, he was only twenty, took the monastic habit at Corbie, where he was employed as a gardener, and spoiled cartloads of vegetables before he got his hand and his thoughts to his new profession. He was occasionally busy too in the kitchen, but not to the visible gratification of the monks. Charlemagne often insisted on his appearing at court, where at last he held one or two high offices; and, when he left, wrote a book for the guidance of courtiers generally, by which the latter as little profited, say wicked wits, as other nobility, for whom a nation has long prayed that grace, wisdom, and understanding might be their portion. St. Adelard, for the imperial knight was canonized, lived to be the chief authority in the monastery where he had commenced as cook and gardener, and St. Gerard composed an office in his honor, in gratitude for having been cured of a violent headache through the saint’s interposition. This seems to me one of the oddest ways of showing gratitude for a small service that I ever heard of.