The monk represented the librarian of the Middle Ages. He was not by profession a librarian, and yet the valuable service he rendered to literature entitles him to the name. He was at once chorister, master of ceremonies, transcriber, illuminator, and collector. Professedly the monk was a religious ascetic. He retired from the world to devote himself to religion, to a life of self-denial. His language was the Latin; the books or manuscripts that surrounded him were works of the Fathers, books of devotion, service-books, and the classics. These were just in keeping with his life and thoughts. A congenial occupation was thus opened to him. The hours of the cloister were made shorter as the monk duplicated and reduplicated some dainty missal, or some commentary of Augustine, or painted a miniature of the Virgin or of the apostles. However much we may differ in opinion as to the service rendered to religion by the monasteries of the Middle Ages, as librarians we have a fellow-feeling with these toiling monks, and are grateful to them for the service they have rendered the libraries of to-day by their preservation of works that otherwise would have been destroyed. There is nothing in the book-making arts of to-day to compare with the artistic skill displayed in the illuminations and miniature-painting which enrich and beautify the manuscripts of those times. The monastic libraries were small, and the readers few. Books were loaned from monastery to monastery. They were distributed once a year, at the Lenten season. As each borrower returned his book he was catechised as to its contents, if the examination was satisfactory he was allowed another book for the coming year; if not, he must take his old book again. One not a member of the order of St. Benedict, or an _attaché_ of Cluny or Canterbury, could procure the coveted treasure, sometimes, by pledging to return with the manuscript borrowed a full transcription. Library economy in these ages was very simple. Catalogues were little more than inventories, and no discordant notes were chanted, in duets or solos, over systems of classification. The absolute or fixed system of shelving was in vogue, the books being held in their places by chains. The survival of this feature exists in the attachments of the modern city directory. But, not to linger longer in cloisters or abbeys, we come to the age of printing and to the foundation of the modern libraries of Europe; the treasures in the monastic libraries contributing to form their vast collections.