"Even thus of old Our ancestors, within the still domain Of vast Cathedral or Conventual church, Their vigils kept; where tapers day and night On the dim altars burned continually, In token that the House was evermore Watching to God. Religious men were they: Nor would their reason tutored to aspire Above this transitory world, allow That there should pass a moment of the year When in their land the Almighty's service ceased." (_Wordsworth._) The history of Mellifont may be justly said to reflect the concurrent history of Ireland. It is so intimately connected and interwoven with that of our country, that they touch at many points, and we can collect matter for both as we travel back along the stream of time and observe the footprints on the sands, where saint, and king, chieftain, bishop, and holy monk, have left their impress and disappeared, to be succeeded later on by the baron and his armed retainers. How different the Ireland of to-day from the Ireland that Christian, the first Abbot of Mellifont, beheld when he and his companions settled down in the little valley, in the land of the O'Carroll! How many changes have passed over it since, leaving it the poorest country in Europe, though one of the richest in natural resources! But these considerations appertain to the politician; they do not lie within the scope of the present writer. Next to building their church and monastery, the first care of the monks on their immediate arrival at Mellifont, was to prepare the soil for tillage; for, judging from the nature of the surroundings, it must have been overrun with dense brushwood, unbroken, save at distant intervals, by patches of green sward. Most houses of the Order in Ireland had to contend with similar conditions at their foundation; of Dunbrody, Co. Wexford, we are expressly told, that the monk sent by the Abbot of Buildewas to examine the site of the future monastery, found on it only _a solitary oak surrounded by a swamp_. But these old monks were adepts in the reclamation of waste lands, and soon the hills rang with the instruments of husbandry. Pleasant gardens and fertile meadows rewarded their toil, and their example gave a stimulus to agriculture, which, till then, was neglected by a pastoral people. At the same time, they manufactured bricks in the locality, and employed them in their buildings. Then rumour on her many wings flew far and near, and spread the fame of the new-comers to that remote valley, and soon the monastery was crowded with visitors intent on seeing the strangers and observing closely their manner of life. The sight pleased them. The ways of these monks accorded with the traditions handed down of the inhabitants of the ancient monasteries, before the depredations of the Danes, and the hearts of a highly imaginative race, with quick spiritual instincts, were attracted towards St. Bernard's children.