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In the xii. century, the Abbey of Cluny, under its celebrated head, Peter the Venerable,—(he held that dignity from 1122 to 1156,)—was at the very height of monastic reputation. Its glorious church, the most magnificent in France, the fulness and exactness of its ritual, and the multitude of its brethren, raised it to a pitch of fame which, perhaps, no other house ever attained.

At that time, one of its children was Bernard, born at Morlaix, in Bretagne; but of English parents. He occupied a portion of his leisure by the composition of a poem, De Contemptu Mundi, in about three thousand lines. The greater part is a bitter satire on the fearful corruptions of the age.

But, as a contrast to the misery and pollution of earth, the poem opens with a description of the peace and glory of heaven, of such rare beauty, as not easily to be matched by any mediaeval composition on the same subject. Dean Trench, in his "Sacred Latin Poetry," gave a very beautiful cento of ninety-five lines from the work. Yet it is a mere patchwork—much being transposed as well as cancelled; so that the editor's own admission that he has adopted "some