Mr. Perry has given us a picture which enables us to realize, with tolerable accuracy, the religious life of our ancestors in the days of Coeur-de-Lion and Lackland. Probably even in his own Cathedral of Lincoln there is no very absorbing interest taken in St. Hugh himself; but still the study of this book may be pressed upon all those who desire to learn how our religious ancestors actually lived and thought and felt. Protestant readers especially need this kind of literature; for they usually regard the ages before the Reformation as altogether dark and corrupt. We are in danger of forgetting the truth, so often proclaimed by Carlyle, that no system can long endure after it has become altogether corrupt.

After an introductory chapter, in which he relates the previous history of Lincoln Cathedral, Mr. Perry opens the more immediate subject of his book by a capital account of the kings and clergy in the days of St. Hugh. His sketch of the three monarchs, Henry the Second, Richard, and John, agrees with the estimate formed by other modern historians; but his intimate acquaintance with the monastic annalists enables him to paint very vividly the manners and customs of the clergy. The wealth of the Church had already begun to accumulate in the hands of the monks, and consequently the parish priests were often in a state of wretched poverty. The inevitable result was that they eked out their meager incomes by various forms of simony. Thus it was a common practice to say the mass as far as the offertory; when that had been taken up, to begin afresh, and to repeat the process as long as the congregation put any thing into the boxes. Perhaps profanity never reached a higher point than when the Lord's Supper was used in magical rites. The mass was said over waxen images, devoting to death, with solemn imprecations, the persons represented. No wonder the monkish annalist remarks that the rural parish priests were worse than Judas; for he, believing Jesus to be a man, sold him for thirty pieces of silver; but they, believing him to be a God, sell him for a penny. Another feature of clerical life under the Plantagenet was the remarkable ignorance even of those priests who undertook to preach. "A certain priest preaching about Barnabas, said he was a good and holy man, but he was a robber,' confounding Barnabas with Barabbas. Another described the Canaanitish woman as partly woman, partly a dog, thinking her name to be derived from canis, a dog. The Latin equivalent for a broiled fish and a piece of a honey-comb' was transformed by another into an ass-fish and beans covered with honey!' The word used in the Vulgate for a 'fire of coals,' (pruna,) another explained as meaning plums. A somewhat more serious fault was his who argued from the words, 'Fornicators and adulterers God will judge,' that no other evil-doers were to be judged."— Page 152. Yet more serious charges than those of simony and ignorance were constantly laid against the clergy. William of Newbury mentions more than three hundred homicides with

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which the clergy of his own time were popularly credited; while even some of those officials who had been active in the introduction of celibacy admit that it had produced a frightful amount of immorality. "The superior clergy were generally," says Mr. Perry, "free from these stains, but ignorance, meanness, avarice and servility were common among them all. There was a paralysis of discipline in the Church." There is no need to study carefully the lives of the leading bishops in order to judge their spiritual influence: Every reader of English history knows the pomp and vanity, the secular ambition and religious pride, the violence and warlike habits, of many of these servants of Christ. Shakspeare's Cardinal Beaufort expresses the popular conception of a powerful bishop: that there is no man so wicked as a wicked priest. Thus the clergy were base, and apparently the people were miserable. A modern historian gives an extract from the English Chronicle, which reveals the terrible anguish of the English in the days of St. Hugh's happy youth in Burgundy. "They hanged men up by their feet, and smoked them with foul smoke. Some were hanged up by their thumbs, others by the head, and burning things were hung on to their feet. They put knotted strings about their head, and writhed them till they entered the brain. They put men into prisons where adders and snakes and toads were crawling, and so they tormented them. Many thousands they afflicted with hunger." Against this terrible oppression the Church alone had power to come in between the people and the barons; and when, therefore, the clergy were corrupt, we may conclude that it was never merry world in England. Such were some aspects of English society in the days of St. Hugh; and his biographer rightly remarks that there could have been no greater boon conferred on the country than the sincere, bold, and saintly example of the Burgundian monk.

Hugh was born at Avalon, close to the Savoy frontier, probably in 1135. He sprang from a line of noble ancestors, as renowned for piety as for gentle blood; and when, in his eighth or ninth year, his mother died, his father devoted himself to a "religious "life, and took Hugh with him into the monastery. A beautiful feature in the future bishop's character was his affection for birds, and even squirrels, which were tamed by him so perfectly that they would leave the woods, and, at the hour of supper, come to share his frugal meals. Finding the discipline of the monastery not sufficiently stern to satisfy his devotion, Hugh broke an oath of loyalty which he had taken, and fled to the Carthusian Convent, at Grenoble. Here Mr. Perry notices a singular fact which seems to us to prove that the life of man cannot possibly be ordered by regulations imposed by external authority. The Cistercians required that the whole time of the monks should be occupied in devotion and manual labor, while the Franciscan friars were not allowed to possess a book. Now such is the perversity of human nature that the laborious Cistercians became the most luxurious, and the ignorant Franciscans

the most learned of the monastic orders. Here, in the obscurity of Grenoble, St. Hugh spent his early manhood, until he was suddenly translated to England, became the favorite of the sagacious Henry the Second, and ended his days as Bishop of Lincoln.

The immediate cause for Hugh's transfer was the foundation of a new abbey in Somersetshire. The Norman Conquest had given a vast impulse to this particular form of piety, so that the next century witnessed the rise of many of our most stately buildings, and in ten years which followed 1128 nearly twenty large Cistercian monasteries were erected, including such stately foundations as Riveaux and Fountains. In accordance with the prevailing fashion, Henry made a vow to found three abbeys; and after several other priors had failed, Hugh was invited to take the government of the new foundation at Witham, in Somersetshire. In his character of religious patron, Henry seems to have fallen into the error so amusingly put into rhyme by Mr. Canning:

"In matters of commerce, the fault of the Dutch

Is giving too little, and asking too much."

Henry

Accordingly Hugh found that almost every thing was needed, and only after much ingenious diplomacy and some bold speaking, prevailed on the king to give full effect to his vow. At this period of his life he laid the foundation of a close intimacy with his sovereign, and it is pleasant to believe that Henry found one churchman who asked nothing for himself. The manner in which the pious monarch sought to defraud the heavenly powers may be judged from the singular history of a Bible. gave ten marks to St. Hugh for the purchase of parchment, on which the monks might copy the word of God; but shortly afterward he determined to enrich his new foundation with a complete illuminated copy of the whole Bible. Accordingly, having heard that there was a fine copy in the monastery at Winchester, he coolly ordered the prior to make him a present of it. latter, of course, did as he was commanded, hoping, but apparently in vain, for some rich reward in return. The king then sent the splendid manuscript as a royal present to Hugh and his brethren. Much to the credit of the brethren at Witham, it is added that when the pious fraud was discovered, Hugh insisted on returning the costly treasure to its first owners at Winchester.

The

In 1186 St. Hugh was consecrated Bishop of Lincoln. One of his first acts was to take a firm stand against the iniquitous forest laws. These laws were so oppressive that we can hardly understand how the country contrived to exist under the burden. The old annalist exclaims that "violence was instead of law, rapine a matter of praise, equity a thing to be hated, and innocence the greatest guilt." Hugh ventured to excommunicate the king's own forester, and did not consent to remove the excommu

nication till the forester had submitted to be flogged. Mr. Perry rightly remarks, a little later in the narrative, that "a still greater proof of true courage, because it shows a moral courage very rare in the men of his generation, was the way in which Hugh behaved when invited to inspect an alleged miracle. A priest once called upon him to inspect a miraculous appearance in the chalice, where it was said that the actual conversion into flesh and blood of part of the host could be seen with the bodily eyes. Hugh indignantly refused to look at it. 'In the name of God,' he said, 'let them keep to themselves the signs of their want of faith.'"-Page 235. In his communication with his own diocese, Hugh appears to have been the very ideal of a Roman Catholic bishop. He performed with due solemnity all the official duties of his post; endeavored to familiarize himself with his flock; was especially successful in winning the affections of the young; and on the wildest nights, after the hardest toils, was ever at the call of the afflicted or bereaved. Mr. Perry says only little of this bishop's work as an architect; but the pious historian of the English cathedrals narrates that "the whole of the front choir, east transept, with its chapels, chapter house, and eastern side of the great transept, were all erected during his life, and such was his earnest zeal in this great work, that, when seized with mortal sickness in London, he occupied himself a considerable time in giving parting instructions to the master of the fabric. In him the bishop, the architect, and the saint were united." Mr. Perry dates the commencement of his work in 1190, or two years later. It is easy to believe that it was carried on with the greatest energy, when we find that the bishop himself worked with his own hands, carrying cut stones in a basket, or sometimes a hod of mortar on his head. It may be added here, that when the main body of the cathedral was completed, in 1280, the body of St. Hugh was translated to the magnificent presbytery at the east end of the choir, and inclosed in a shrine said to have been of solid gold. The historian already quoted appears to marvel that not even the sanctity of the good bishop could protect his remains from the sacrilegious hand of Henry the Eighth's Commissioners. Our wonder would rather be first, how so great a mass of gold was gathered together, and then how it escaped so long! One would fancy that when Cardinal Beaufort was Bishop of Lincoln such a mountain of gold would hardly be likely to escape annexation.

St. Hugh's intercourse with that strange hero of English_romance, Richard I., was marked by the same intrepidity and dexterity which he had manifested in the previous reign. Not only did he venture to resist the king's demand for money, but he even openly remonstrated with him for his immorality. "If you serve God," said the bishop, "he will make your enemies peaceably disposed toward you, or he will overthrow them. But beware lest you commit some sin, either against God or your neighbor. It is currently reported of you that you are unfaithful to your FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXII.-24

marriage bed, and that you receive bribes for appointments to spiritual offices. If this be true you cannot have peace from the Lord." This is in the true spirit of Nathan; and when we read these bold strong words, we can forgive the good bishop for appropriating a few relics of departed saints. Would that all monarchs had such bold advisers, and that all monarchs would heed their warnings! Equally bold was his treatment of the crafty, if cowardly, John. He preached before this monarch on the duties of the kings; but, much too serious for a man who made as port of all things, sacred and profane, he preached too long. Three times John sent messengers to the pulpit to tell the preacher to conclude; he, however, proceeded with his discourse till all his hearers, except John, who appears to have been as nearly a professed atheist as the times would allow, were deeply affected. Unfortunately, as has happened so frequently in later days, the bishop's eloquence failed to affect the one man whom it was mainly intended to reach.

St. Hugh died in London in the year 1200, in the episcopal residence, which stood on the present site of Lincoln's Inn. Twenty years later he was canonized according to the rites of the Church of Rome, and his shrine soon rivaled the popularity of that of Thomas à Becket, at Canterbury. Such a life, while scarcely conceivable in England to-day, must have been of incalculable benefit to his own generation, and the records of human virtue would have been incomplete without a suitable memorial of St. Hugh. His abiding monument on earth is the grand cathedral of Lincoln; and who can doubt that in the heavenly world he is already surrounded by many whom, according to his light, he allured to virtue? While we have felt it necessary to complain of some features of this work, we yet have to thank Mr. Perry for his instructive and learned volume. A little more care in the composition would have smoothed away a few blots, and made this biography as interesting as it is able. It is with history as with geography. The careful study of an atlas is necessary for all who wish to possess an accurate knowledge of any foreign country; but a far more vivid idea will be gained from a good painting of some characteristic village. In the same way, the historical student must make himself familiar with the long roll of kings, battles, and revolutions; but to make the life of our ancestors real, we need a careful photograph of some typical individual; and such a photograph of the days of the Plantagenets Mr. Perry has presented us in the life of St. Hugh.