If we would read this history aright it is necessary that we should look at it as far as possible, as it was originally published. If the old binding has been torn off, and the volume hedged in by a crowd of modern literature, we must try to put these aside and consider the book as it was first issued; in other words, to drop metaphor altogether, in considering a building like Canterbury Cathedral, we must forget the busy little country town, with its crowded streets and noisy railway stations, though, from one point of view, the contrast that they present is agreeable and valuable, and try to conceive the church as it once stood, the centre of a harmonious group of monastic buildings. The founder of the monastic system in the West was the famous Benedict of Nursia, who had adapted the strict code of St. Basil, mitigating its severity, and making it more in accordance with the climate, manners, and general circumstances of Western peoples. His code was described by Gregory the Great as "excellent in its discretion, lucid in its expression"--_discretione praecipuam sermone luculentam_. He founded the monasteries of Montecassino and Subiaco in the beginning of the sixth century. In the ninth and tenth centuries--the worst period of the Dark Ages--corruption and laxity pervaded society in general, and the Benedictine monasteries especially. At the end of this deplorable epoch many efforts were made in the direction of reform. Gregory the Great himself was a member of the Benedictine brotherhood; so also was Augustine, who founded the great monastery of Christ Church. The venerable Bede relates that "when Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, assumed the episcopal throne in that royal city, he recovered therein, by the king's assistance, a church which, as he was told, had been constructed by the original labour of Roman believers. This church he consecrated in the name of the Saviour, our God and Lord Jesus Christ, and there he established an habitation for himself and all his successors." This was the Basilica-Church, mentioned in an earlier part of this work, an imitation of the original Basilica of St. Peter at Rome. Augustine's monastery was handsomely endowed. A large stretch of country was given to the monks, and they were the first who brought the soil into cultivation, and built churches and preached in them. "The monks," says Bede, "were the principal of those who came to the work of preaching." In the city itself there were thirty-two "mansurae" or mansions, held by the clergy, rendering 35_s._ a year, and a mill worth 5_s._ per annum. Augustine's monastery lived and prospered--though, as we shall see, it did not escape the general corruption of the eighth and ninth centuries--until the time of the Norman invasion. In 1067 a fire destroyed the Saxon cathedral and the greater part of the monastic buildings. But the year 1070 marks an epoch in the history of the monastery, for it was then that William the