But many of the hermitages were erected along the great highways of the country, and especially at bridges and fords,[104] apparently with the express view of their being serviceable to travellers. One of the hermit-saints set up as a pattern for their imitation was St. Julian, who, with his wife, devoted his property and life to showing hospitality to travellers; and the hermit who is always associated in the legends and pictures with St. Christopher, is represented as holding out his torch or lantern to light the giant ferryman, as he transports his passengers across the dangerous ford by which the hermitage was built. When hostelries, where the traveller could command entertainment for hire, were to be found only in the great towns, the religious houses were the chief resting-places of the traveller; not only the conventual establishments, but the country clergy also were expected to be given to hospitality.[105] But both monasteries and country parsonages often lay at a distance of miles of miry and intricate by-road off the highway. We must picture this state of the country and of society to ourselves, before we can appreciate the intentions of those who founded these hospitable establishments; we must try to imagine ourselves travellers, getting belated in a dreary part of the road, where it ran over a bleak wold, or dived through a dark forest, or approached an unknown ford, before we can appreciate the gratitude of those who suddenly caught the light from the hermit's window, or heard the faint tinkle of his chapel bell ringing for vespers. Such incidents occur frequently in the romances. Here is an example:--"Sir Launcelot rode all that day and all that night in a forest; and at the last, he was ware of an hermitage and a chapel that stood between two cliffs; and then he heard a little bell ring to mass, and thither he rode, and alighted, and tied his horse to the gate, and heard mass." Again: "Sir Gawayne rode till he came to an hermitage, and there he found the good man saying his even-song of our Lady. And there Sir Gawayne asked harbour for charity, and the good man granted it him gladly." We shall, perhaps, most outrage the popular idea of a hermit, when we assert that hermits sometimes lived in towns. The extract from "Piers Ploughman's Vision," already quoted, tells us of-- "Eremites that inhabit them In boroughs among brewers."