world, to dig, or beg, or starve. We are not defending the principle of monasticism; it may be that, with the altered circumstances of the church and nation, the day of usefulness of the monasteries had passed. But we cannot restrain an expression of indignation at the shameless, reckless manner of the suppression. The commissioners suggested, and Bishop Latimer entreated in vain, that two or three monasteries should be left in every shire for religious, and learned, and charitable uses; they were all shared among the king and his courtiers. The magnificent churches were pulled down; the libraries, of inestimable value, were destroyed; the alms which the monks gave to the poor, the hospitals which they maintained for the old and impotent, the infirmaries for the sick, the schools for the people--all went in the wreck; and the tithes of parishes which were in the hands of the monasteries, were swallowed up indiscriminately--they were not men to strain at such gnats while they were swallowing camels--some three thousand parishes, including those of the most populous and important towns, were left impoverished to this day. No wonder that the fountains of religious endowment in England have been dried up ever since;--and the course of modern legislation is not calculated to set them again a-flowing. CHAPTER VI. THE CONVENT. Having thus given a sketch of the history of the various monastic orders in England, we proceed to give some account of the constitution of a convent, taking that of a Benedictine monastery as a type, from which the other orders departed only in minor particulars. The _convent_ is the name especially appropriate to the body of individuals who composed a religious community. These were the body of cloister monks, lay and clerical; the professed brethren, who were also lay and clerical; the clerks; the novices; and the servants and artificers. The servants and artificers were of course taken from the lower ranks of society; all the rest were originally of the most various degrees of rank and social position. We constantly meet with instances of noble men and women, knights and ladies, minstrels and merchants, quitting their secular occupations at various periods of their life, and taking the religious habit; some of them continuing simply professed brethren, others rising to high offices in their order. Scions of noble houses were not infrequently entered at an early age as novices, either devoted to the religious life by the piety of their parents, or, with more worldly motives, thus provided with a calling and a maintenance; and sometimes considerable interest was used to procure the admittance of novices into the great monasteries. Again, the children of the poor were received into the monastic schools, and such as showed peculiar aptitude were sometimes at length admitted as monks,[55] and were eligible, and were often chosen, to the highest ecclesiastical dignities.