The denizens of the Cloister at that time consisted of two great classes, who, indeed, enjoyed alike all the advantages of the state, but differed in their functions and employments. One was busied with the cares of Martha, the other was admitted to the privilege of Mary. The former were employed chiefly in domestic duties, and various trades, and were entrusted with the charge of the granges or outlying farms. These were the Lay Brothers. Frequently their ranks were augmented by the noble and the learned, who, unnoticed and unknown till their holy death, guided the plough, delved the soil, or tended the sheep and oxen in the glades of the forest. The other class resided in the monastery and devoted their time to the chanting of the Divine Office, alternating with study in the Cloister and manual labour in the fields and gardens. These were the choir monks. Their dress was white. By vigorous toil and strict economy, these good old monks wrested a competency from their farms, and freely shared their substance with the needy and the stranger. They exhibited to an astonished world a practical refutation of its corrupt maxims and habits. Thus by their very lives, they preached most efficaciously; for by their contempt of worldly honours and pleasures they gave proof abundant of the faith that enlightened them to recognise the sublimity of the Gospel truths; of the hope that sustained them to courageously endure temporal privations for the sake of future rewards; and of the charity that prompted them to liken themselves to Jesus Christ, their Master, who, being rich, became poor for their sakes. Some may be inclined to consider all this as the effect of monkish extravagance, weak-mindedness, and folly; but modern investigation, instituted and carried to a successful issue by honest Protestant writers, has brushed aside such calumnies as hackneyed catch-words, and has proved that beneath the monk's cowl, there were found hearts as warm and minds as broad as in any state or grade of society. It must also be remembered, that for centuries the monks were the teachers who moulded and fashioned the youth of the upper and middle classes.