I wish that I could quote the beautiful picture that Vaughan (_Hours with the Mystics_, Book V., chap. 1) has given of this fine enterprise. We should see Bernard and his monks chopping and binding fagots; planting vines and trees of goodly fruit; rearing their cloistral buildings, when the time arrived, out of the very materials about them, and so steadily transforming purgatory into paradise. There should we see the river bending its great shoulders to the wheels that drive fulling-mill and grist-mill; or toiling for them in their tannery, or filling their _caldarium_. We should see the monks at vintage or at harvest; pressing the clusters from yonder hill, or gathering the hay from yonder meadow. And everywhere throughout this busy, energetic life, we should behold the wasted figure of their chief—austere, sincere, severe. And we should feel that unaccountable personality—that intrinsic, magnetic, controlling quality which made this the man above all others to be the opposer of schismatics, the counsellor of kings, the establisher of popes, and the preacher of the Second Crusade. Clairvaux was his kingdom, and from Clairvaux he ruled the mediaeval world. His personal appearance was in keeping with this idea—it was the evident cause of an evident effect. He was taller than the middle height and exceedingly thin. His complexion was “clear, transparent, red-and-white;” and always he had some color in his wasted face. His beard was reddish, and—according to his ancestral derivation, called _Sorus_ or “yellow-haired”—his own hair was light and perhaps tawny. This beard grows whiter in the course of years, and these hollow cheeks glow with the enthusiasm of the orator as he speaks. Then he is at his best! He flings aside all feebleness; he disregards every consideration except the truth; he flashes and glitters as the tremendous squadrons of his brilliant logic, or still more brilliant exhortation, press down upon the listening soul. He had indeed a perfect confidence in himself, in his methods, and in his ultimate success. He was like a modern ocean steamer, iron-hulled, steam-driven, sharp-prowed, cutting through all storms without detention, and riding the wildest waves in his triumphant course to victory. There is in Bernard of Clairvaux a most singular combination of the dreamer and the man of affairs. Vaughan has too admirably condensed the story of these interruptions and occupations, for me to avoid quoting, at least this much, from his capital monograph: