What questions suggest themselves as we accept the conclusion arrived at! Who was he, this 'foreigner,' who had come from across the sea to bring in his outlandish novelties into the great scriptorium? Was he some 'Frenchman' imported from sunny Champagne, where Thibaut, the mawkish singer was making verses which his people loved to listen to? Did he teach the young novices French as well as writing? Did he touch the lute himself on Feast-days, and charm them with some new lyric of Gasse Brusle, or delight them with one of Rutebeuf's merry ditties? France was all alive with song at this time, and princes were rivals now for poetic fame. It may be that this 'foreigner' brought in a taste for light literature as well as for a new fashion in penmanship, and made known to his pupils such alluring novelties as the 'Roman d'Alexandre, soon to be eclipsed by the 'Roman de la Rose.' The scriptorium at St. Alban's was founded by Abbot Paul, a kinsman of Archbishop Lanfrance, when the great Abbey had already existed for three centuries. Paul became Abbot eleven years after the Conquest, and he showed himself an able and earnest administrator. From this time learning and a love of books became a tradition of the house. Abbot after abbot continued to add to the collection of MSS., and to increase the value of the library. But St. Alban's had never had a great historian of its own. Strange and shameful fact! East and west and north and south, all over the land, there were great writers holding up their proud heads. Out in the desolate wilds there at Peterborough, they had been actually keeping up a chronicle for centuries--aye, and written in the vernacular too. The lonely monastery of Ely, among the swamps, had its historian. Malmesbury boasted her learned William; and Worcester, which St. Wulstan had raised from the dust, as it were, only the other day, had already her Florence. In the great houses of the Northern Province there had been no lack of writers to whom the past was an open book. Even Westminster had long ago had her _chronographer_, and far away in furthest Wales, Geoffrey, the Monmouth man, was making men open their eyes very wide indeed with tales--idle tales they might be, but they were well worth the reading--and there was talk too of another young Welshman, Giraldus, who was on the way towards outdoing the other by-and-bye. What are we coming to? Holy St. Alban, shalt thou and thy house be put to shame?--that be far from us!