became silent, timid, obedient. The House was all his world; the things of the House were the only things of importance in the whole world. He was not cruelly treated; on the contrary, he was most kindly treated--well fed, well clothed, well cared for. He quickly understood, as children do, that these things, so irksome at first, were necessary; that all the elders, even the Abbot and the Prior, had gone through the same discipline. All the time the boy’s education in other things besides the Rule was going on. He was taught a great deal--grammar, for instance, logic, Latin, philosophy, writing and illuminating, music, singing, the history of the Order. The Benedictines always rejoiced in a liberal education. The schoolhouse was the west cloister. Here, the arches being glazed, desks were placed one behind the other, and the boys sat in this single file, with their books before them. There were rules of silence, rules of talking French only, rules how to sit, how to carry the hands, rules here and rules there, regulations everywhere. If they had all been enforced, imbecility must have followed. As Hugh did not become imbecile, the regulations were certainly interpreted in a kindly spirit. The Brethren, for instance, except the teachers, were not allowed to converse with the boys; but we may be very certain that they did converse with them, and that they were kind to them, because St. Benedict could never wish to drive out of human nature that best part of it which prompts man to be tender toward the young. What happened to Hugh was that he acquired, little by little, the habit of living according to Rule, that by continual iteration he gradually learned the whole of the Litanies and Psalms, and that he obtained, before he became a full monk, some knowledge of the various branches of learning in which he had been grounded at his desk in the west cloister. I pass over the ceremony of Profession. To give it in detail would take up too much space; to quote extracts might convey a false impression. Let it suffice that nothing was wanting to make the ceremony the most solemn occasion possible. It is true that children were brought to the Abbey quite young and without regard to vocation, but might not the practice be defended on the grounds (1) that nothing, from the mediæval point of view, could be better for a man than the Benedictine Rule, so that everyone, even though he might yearn for the outer world, ought to be grateful for this seclusion; and (2) that by the long years of preparation and education, the calling to Religion, which ought to be in every mind, was cultivated and developed? And really, when we consider how many of our own clergy are in the same way set apart from youth, without question as to their vocation, we need not throw stones at the mediæval Benedictines. [Illustration: THE ABBOT’S DINING HALL AT WESTMINSTER; NOW USED AS THE DINING ROOM OF THE SCHOOL.]