The school of St. Victor, in Paris, was founded by William of Champeaux, the teacher and rival of Abelard, at the commencement of the twelfth century. It is known to history as having been the abode of three distinguished scholars, Hugo, Richard, and Adam. Hugo and Richard of St. Victor were mystics, and Vaughan, in _Hours with the Mystics_, has set them before us. From this and other sources, we grow more and more amazed to find the immense influence of such a school. A century from its foundation showed St. Victor to be the parent of thirty abbeys and of more than eighty priories. Here in these cells, like bees in a hive, the busy monks were laying up the only honey of the Dark Ages—multiplying manuscripts, delving into remote philosophies, muddling their brains over abstruse questions, but now and then leaving behind them something to benefit mankind. Theology and dialectics were their great and indeed their only pursuits. Like the swirls of a sluggish stream beneath its banks, they occasionally caught and kept fresh some broken flower from the shore. Thus, one may, for example’s sake, put a certain pretty idea of Hugo of St. Victor into modern verse: “Hugo, St. Victor’s prior—a man Gentle and sweet, contemplative and wise, Makes mention in his fine and mystic plan Of three great steps by which our spirits rise: First, _Cogitation_—when we turned our eyes; Then, _Meditation_—when our minds began With hovering wing the kindled thought to scan; Last, _Contemplation_—which all doubt defies. Yea, and he saith that, in the greenest wood Of stubborn souls, this glory kindleth so That the pure flame against the sap will glow And be by nothing finally withstood— The smoke itself be parted to and fro, Until clear light shall shine in constant good.” Richard was the disciple and successor of this gentle-spirited Hugo. In 1114 the priory became an abbacy, and when Richard was prior in 1162, he had for abbot no very godly person, since under Ervisius all discipline was relaxed, and scandal and sensuality began to rule. But Richard stood out stoutly and with good judgment; and he lived to see the old harmony and glory return again. In his day and in that of Adam, which was contemporaneous with his, the school represented the dialectical and theologic, rather than the spiritual and mystical side of religion; and yet it did good work, as a peacemaker, for the truth. It gives us little enough, however, with which to fall in love. Massive it may be, and intricate in its curious ability respecting useless pieces of chop-logic, but the profound piety which belongs to every age and clime did not find much to comfort it at St. Victor. These men dug shafts and tunnels, they did not open foundations and sink wells down to living streams.