It was not till 1217 that the Monastery of Culross, of which only some fragments remain, was founded by Malcolm, Earl of Fife. At the Reformation the Abbey lands passed chiefly into the hands of the Colvilles of Culross, and this family, with the Erskines, the Cochranes, the Prestons, and the Bruces, have since successively had "the guidin' o't" in the burgh and the surrounding district. So far from the ecclesiastical eminence of Culross terminating with St. Serf, it has continued almost down to our own day; for the town, and the district back from it--at Carnock, and eastward along the hill-skirts to Hill of Beath and beyond--have witnessed the keenest struggles between Conformity and Schism--have been special scenes of the labours of Bishop Blackadder and Bishop Leighton the "Saintly;" of John Row, and of John Blackadder the Covenanter, who held his Conventicles under the wakeful and vengeful eye of Dalzell of Binns--him with the "vowed beard," whose hill-top for "glowering owre" Fife is on the opposite side of the Firth; and in later times, of Boston, of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, of Gillespie, and of other founders of the "Relief Church." Culrossians might adopt the Bruce motto, "Fuimus," to describe their industrial as well as their religious past. More than once the burgh has been a spot favoured by trade, as well as by history. The celebrated Sir George Bruce, of Carnock, made its fortunes, as well as his own, by coal-mining and salt-making in the days of James I. of England. Remains, in the shape of a heap of stones, uncovered at low water, are seen of the "Moat"--an "unfellowed and unmatchable work; a darke, light, pleasant, profitable hell," as John Taylor, the "Water Poet" described it in the early years of the seventeenth century--constructed to work the minerals lying under the bed of the sea. But Culross's prosperity did not come to an end with them. Throughout Scotland its "girdles"--iron plates for baking the oaten bread of the "Land o' Cakes"--were also "unfellowed and unmatchable" for many a day. The first of note among the ancestors of the Earl of Rosebery was of the honest guild of the girdlesmiths of the burgh. A "Cu'ross girdle" will soon only be found in an archæological museum; their glory is departing, their use will soon be forgotten. [Illustration: DUNFERMLINE.]