into better ways by his homely rhythmic utterance. I think we may safely count this old Aldhelm, who had a strain of royal blood in him, as the first of English ballad-mongers.

From the north of England, too, there was at almost the same date, another gleam of crosses, coming by way of Ireland and Iona, where St. Columba,1 commemorated in one of Wordsworth's Sonnets, had established a monastery. We have the good old Irish monk's lament at leaving his home in Ireland for the northern wilderness; there is true Irish fervor in it: "From the high prow I look over the sea, and great tears are in my gray eyes when I turn to Erin-to Erin, where the songs of the birds are so sweet, and where the clerks sing like the birds; where the young are so gentle, and the old so wise; where the great men are so noble to look at, and the women so fair to wed."

Ruined remnants of the Iona monastery are still to be found on that little Western island1 Sonnet composed or suggested during a tour in Scotland, in summer of 1833.

"Isle of Columba's Cell,

Where Christian piety's soul-cheering spark, (Kindled from Heaven between the light and dark Of time) shone like the morning star,-farewell!"

within hearing almost of the waves that surge into the caves of Staffa. And from this island stand-point, the monkish missions were established athwart Scotland; finding foothold too all down the coast of Northumberland. Early among these and very notable, was the famous Abbey of Lindisfarne or the Holy Isle, not far southward from the mouth of the Tweed. You will recall the name as bouncing musically, up and down, through Scott's poem of "Marmion." A little farther to the south, upon the Yorkshire coast, came to be established, shortly afterward, the Whitby monastery; its ruins make now one of the shows of Whitby town -one of the favorite watering places of the eastern coast of England, and well known for giving its name to what is called Whitby jet -which is only a finer sort of bituminous coal, of which there are great beds in the neighborhood.1 The Abbey ruin is upon heights, from which are superb views out upon the German Sea that beats with grand uproar upon the Whitby cliffs. To the westward is the charm

1Of late years, owing to the difficulty of working, the mining and manufacture of the jet has nearly gone byother carbon seems in Spain offering better and more economic results; these latter, however, still bear the name of Whitby Jet.

ing country of Eskdale, and by going a few miles southward one may come to Robinhood's bay; and in the intervening village of Hawsker may be seen the two stones said to mark the flight of the arrows of Robinhood and Little John, when they tried their skill for the amusement of the monks of Whitby.

CÆDMON

WELL, in the year of our Lord 637, this Whitby Abbey was founded by the excellent St. Hilda, and it was under her auspices, and by virtue of her saintly encouragements, that the first true English poet, Cadmon, began to sing his Christian song of the creation. He was but a cattle-tender-unkempt-untaught, full of savagery, but with a fine phrenzy in him, which made his paraphrase of Scripture a spur, and possibly-in a certain imperfect sense, a model for the muse of John Milton. Of the chaos before creation, he says:

Earth's surface was

With grass not yet be-greened; while far and

wide

The dusky ways, with black unending night

Did ocean cover.

Of the great Over-Lord God-Almighty, he says

In Him, beginning never,

Or origin hath been; but he is aye supreme
Over heaven's thrones, with high majesty
Righteous and mighty.

And again, that you may make for yourselves comparison with the treatment and method of Milton,-I quote this picture of Satan in hell:

Within him boiled his thoughts about his heart; Without, the wrathful fire pressed hot upon himHe said, "This narrow place is most unlike

That other we once knew in heaven high,
And which my Lord gave me; tho' own it now
We must not, but to him must cede our realm.
Yet right he hath not done to strike us down
To hell's abyss-of heaven's realm bereft-
Which with mankind to people, he hath planned.
Pain sorest this, that Adam wrought of Earth
On my strong throne shall sit, enjoying Bliss
While we endure these pangs-hell torments dire,
Woe! woe is me! Could I but use my hands
And might I be from here a little time-
One winter's space-then, with this host
would I-

But these iron bands press hard-this coil of chains

There is but one known MS. copy of this poem. It is probably of the tenth, certainly not later than the eleventh century, and is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It is illuminated, and some scenes represented seem to have been taken from the old miracle plays.1 It was printed in 1655: in this form a copy is said to have reached the hands of Milton, through a friend of the printer: and it may well be that the stern old Puritan poet was moved by a hearing of it,—for he was blind at this date, to the prosecution of that grand task which has made his name immortal.

BEDA

WE might, however, never have known anything of Cadmon and of Saint Hilda and all the monasteries north and south, except for

'I ought to mention that recent critics have questioned if all the verse usually attributed to Cædmon was really written by him: nay, there have been queries -if the picture of Satan itself was not the work of another hand. An analysis of the evidence, by Thomas Arnold, may be found in Ency. Br. See, also, Making of England, Chap. VII., note, p. 370.