It was not long before the young community became rich. Such was the ordinary, the almost invariable, course of matters. Property was held on very unstable conditions even by the great and powerful. The most secure of all tenures was that by which the Church held what was once her own. And in a state of things when men were persuaded both that it was very doubtful whether they would be able to keep possession of their property, especially whether they would be able to secure such possessions to those who were to come after them, and that the surest way to escape that retribution in the next world which they fully believed to have been incurred by their deeds in this world was to give what they possessed to some monastic institution, it is not difficult to understand how and why monasteries grew rich. And it is equally intelligible that the result should have followed which did, as we know, follow almost invariably. As the monasteries became rich the monks became corrupt--first comfortable, then luxurious, then licentious. The Benedictines escaped this doom more frequently than the other orders. Even after their great convents had become wealthy and powerful landlords they were often very good landlords, and the condition of their lands and of their tenants and vassals contrasted favorably with that of the lands and dependants of their lay neighbors. The superiority of the Benedictines in this respect was doubtless due to their studious and literary habits and proclivities. It is constantly urged that the cause of learning and of literature owes a great debt of gratitude to the monks, but it should be said that this debt is due almost exclusively to the sons of St. Benedict. But something more than this may be said for the community founded by Duchess Uta, the beautiful ruins of whose dwelling now complete the picturesque charm of this most exquisite valley. By a rare exception history has in truth nothing to say against them. Their record is quite clear. All remaining testimony declares that from their first establishment to the day of their dissolution the Allerheiligen monks lived studious and blameless lives. Possibly, the profound seclusion of their valley, literally shut in from the outer world by vast masses of thick roadless forests, may have contributed to this result, though similar circumstances do not in all cases seem to have ensured a similar consequence. Good fortune probably did much in the matter. A happy succession of three or four good and able abbots would give the place a good name and beget a good tradition in the community; and this in such cases is half the battle. "Such and such goings-on may do elsewhere, but they won't suit Allerheiligen"--such a sentiment, once made common, would do much for the continuance of a good and healthy tradition.