are now.

land, with the exceptions of Orkney and Shetland, was coextensive with its present limits. Its natural features of mountain, forest, lake, and river, were perhaps more grand and imposing than they The Celtic, Anglic, British, and Norman populations were being welded together into one harmonious whole. Burghs and towns were coming into existence. Roads were being formed where formerly only mere bridle-paths had been. Bridges were beginning to span the great rivers. Villages were springing up near mills, and other scenes of industry. Agriculture was progressing. Norman architecture and civilisation were penetrating into almost every corner of the land. The rivers abounded with fish. The great foreststhe noble trees of many of which had not yet been levelled to the ground to meet the exigencies of agriculture and war-were filled with deer and other kinds of game. Horses, sheep, and cattle browsed upon the rich pastures. Money was becoming plentiful; and everywhere throughout the country there were signs of prosperity and comfort—a prosperity and comfort, however, that were to be rudely disturbed when, towards the close of the century, the throne was left vacant, and the War of Independence began.

As regards the ecclesiastical condition of Scot

land in the thirteenth century, it is perhaps impossible now to form just and accurate conceptions. Great changes in the religious life and habits of the people, as well as in the doctrine, discipline, and government of the Church, have taken place since then; and yet such changes seem to be a natural law of all human existence. In David de Bernham's days the Columban Church had gone. The Culdee establishments were either wholly swept away, or about to be merged in that new order of things which Malcolm III. and Margaret, and the monarchs immediately descended from them, had helped to introduce. Monasticism was in the very greatness and plenitude of its power and influence. There was a magnificent Benedictine Monastery at Dunfermline, a Cistercian Abbey at Balmerino, a Priory of Canons-Regular of St Austin at St Andrews, another of Benedictines at Lindores, and several other religious houses of a more or less imposing character, all in the county of Fife. On the borders of Scotland there were the famous monasteries of Melrose, Kelso, Jedburgh, and Dryburgh. In Renfrewshire there was a Clugniac Abbey at Paisley. In the county of Clackmannan there was an Abbey of CanonsRegular at Cambuskenneth; and in almost every

county of Scotland there were edifices of a more or less imposing description, giving abundant evidence of the existence of monastic and conventual religious life all throughout the land. King Edgar, in 1098, founded the large and beautiful Benedictine Priory of Coldingham, in Berwickshire, where formerly a Saxon nunnery had been. Alexander I. brought into existence the monastery of Aberbrothoc; whilst David, the youngest brother of the two preceding kings, in 1128, founded Holyrood, and many other religious establishments throughout the country. In this century, too, the great cathedral churches of St Andrews, Glasgow, Dunkeld, Dunblane, Moray, Aberdeen, Brechin, Galloway, Caithness, Ross, Orkney, and Argyle, were all in existence, although some of them were only partially completed. In all probability, moreover, most of the ancient parish churches of Scotland had been erected, and some of them even now in Norman type, giving evidence of the great spread of Christianity, the interest taken in religion, and the power of the clergy to draw forth the aspirations as well as the liberality of the people.

1 St Giles', Edinburgh, was only a collegiate church before the Reformation. It became a cathedral church when, in 1636, Charles I. created the Protestant Bishopric of Edinburgh, out of what was the ancient Archdeaconry of Lothian in the Diocese of St Andrews.

That, however, which chiefly distinguished the Church of the middle ages in Scotland from the Church of the later centuries, was the existence at the former period of great religious houses, and cells connected with them, where separate communities of individuals of both sexes lived either a cœnobitical, eremitical, or conventual life. This peculiar feature of Christianitywhich may almost be said to be coeval with its rise, and which perhaps the early persecutions helped to introduce-was not, however, confined to Scotland. In almost all the countries of Europe and Asia during these times, there were to be found edifices of the stateliest and most imposing description, inhabited separately by men and women, who from the deepest feelings of devotion sought a home in these quiet and hallowed retreats. Nor were such persons, who thus voluntarily separated themselves from the businesses and pleasures of the world, the ignorant or inexperienced among mankind, those to whom life had become a burden and duty a pain. On the contrary, in many instances they were said to be the very flower of honourable manhood and womanhood. Ladies and gentlemen of rank and position, even in early youth, would forsake the companionship of friends, and renounce the

fascinations of worldly society, in order that they might give their days and nights to devotion, and to a more constant and uninterrupted fellowship with God, in preparation for an eternal world. The monarch would leave his throne, the baron his castle, the soldier the excitement of the camp, and the lady of rank the boasted charms of life, so that in these retired abodes they might carry out more effectively the rigid and self-denying precepts of the Saviour of the world. This was a marked and undoubted feature of Christianity in Scotland in the days of David de Bernham. These monasteries were homes of shelter, charity, and devotion, where the poor were attended to, and where even the solitary wanderer at midnight, guided by the monastery's light, would receive a kindly welcome, and be asked to take part in the prayers and praises that might then be rising to God. Not only so, but these religious houses were the seminaries of learning in the middle ages -where youth was instructed, where books were written, and manuscripts copied and preserved. They were, moreover, nurseries of industry, where agriculture was studied, and around which large tracts of waste land were brought into cultivation; and when, in addition to all this, it is remembered that