distribute them among the priests of the monastery; then, giving away these poor memorials, he besought them not to forget him in their prayers, and to perform masses for him when he should be departed, for this would probably be the last time they would see him in this world. "It is now time," said he, "that I should be released, and go to Him who created me. I have lived long, and my merciful Judge hath ordered my ways well. The hour of my freedom is at hand, and my soul desires to behold Christ in his glory." When this parting was over, the young disciple said to him, Master, there is yet one sentence more. Write quickly then, he replied, Presently Wilberth said, Now it is done! You have said truly, rejoined the dying man; it is finished! Take my head between thy hands, and place me so that I may look towards my oratory, and there call upon my Father." Being then laid on the pavement, in

from him took the name of Beads." (582.) And in another place he says, "I do not know by what warrant from ancient monuments the devout writer, by some stated the chancellor of the blessed Virgin, B. Alanus de Rupe, affirms, that St. Bede was the first who began in England the exercise of particular devotions and reciting of chaplets to the honour of that glorious queen of Virgins; for so we find the Oraria, distributed by St. Bede to his brethren, translated; and that from Brittany such devotion was propagated into France and other foreign countries."-p. 583.

the position which he directed, he expired presently, chaunting the doxology with his latest. breath.

A life of Bede, larded as usual with miracles, was prepared by pious fraud for popular credulity; but it appears to have been of foreign* growth; and the only fables concerning him which seem to have obtained currency in his own country, are two stories to account for the epithet which time and custom have affixed to his name. One is the well known and silly tale that an invisible Being made use of the word to botch a leonine verse which some sorry poet, intending it for his epitaph, had left unfinished in despair. The other is less trite, and in a more unusual style of invention. It represents him as having lost his sight in his old age. A boy whom he employed to lead him when he went abroad to preach in the open air, stopt one day in mockery near a heap of stones, where there was no person present, and told the blind man he might begin to hold forth, for there were plenty there to hear him. The holy

* The Bollandists obtained a manuscript of it from Bödeken, a convent of Regular Canons in the diocese of Paderborn. (Mar. t. vi. 719). But it was one of the gnats at which they strained, and therefore was not printed in their invaluable collection.

† Yepes. Coronica General de la Orden de S. Benito. 3. ff. 55.

father began accordingly, and when he had concluded his discourse, the stones, in proof that his pious intention had been accepted, spake and said, Amen, thou hast preached well O venerable Bede!*

The little stone cell in which, apart from the monastery and from all interruption, he used to read, write, dictate, or meditate, was shown some centuries after his death as a spot which his presence had hallowed. He was buried at Jarrow, and it is not known at what time the pious resurrection-men removed his remains to Durham, nor whether with permission of the convent, or furtively. But about three hundred years after his death, a certain priest, Elfrid by name, who said he was instructed in a vision to go about the churches and monasteries in Northumberland discovering relics, imparted to

* "Others, disclaiming this conceit," says Fuller, (p. 99.) assign this reason: because Bede's homilies were read in all churches in his life time, plain Bede was conceived too little, and Saint Bede too much, because, according to Popish (but not St. Paul's) principles, Saint is too much flattery to be given to any whilst alive; Solon allowing none happy, and thus mine author none in this degree holy, before their death. Whereupon Venerable was found out as an expedient to accommodate the difference, luckily hitting the mark, as a title neither too high, nor too low; just even to so good a man and great a scholar whilst alive."

+ Acta SS. Maii. t. vi. 721.

one of his friends in confidence that he had deposited the bones of Bede in the same coffin with those of St. Cuthbert, charging him to keep the spot where they were deposited religiously secret, lest this treasure should be purloined by strangers, who were always sufficiently ready to carry off such spoils, and to whom the relics of the Venerable Bede would be particularly tempting. They were separated afterwards, and placed in a shrine; but in Queen Elizabeth's reign Whitingham, Dean of Durham, (a man who brought with him puritanical opinions from Frankfort,) removed† them it is not known whither, in order that they might no longer be visited by the Papists. The stone, however, which once covered his remains, is still shown in that cathedral, and will not be regarded without some thoughtful and respectful feelings by those who are free from all taint of Romish superstition. The place of his abode can no longer inspire that sentiment. Jarrow,

* Acta SS. Maii. t. vi. 723.

† A grave was shown in the Vatican Church as containing his remains; but undoubtedly this was some other Bede. (Acta SS. Maii. vi. 723.) A body was also shown as his in the Monastery of St. Benigno, at Genoa; but this Bede was a Saint who flourished a century later at the court of Charlemagne. (Yepes. 3. ff. 56.)

where he, who was, in his days, the most learned of living men, past his long life in devotion, or in tuition, or in study, is now inhabited by pitmen and colliers, and the ruins of the monastery are almost choked with ashes and coal-dust. There, however, Bede's chair is at this day exhibited,..preserved I must not say, for it is every where carved with the initials of mischievous visitors, and moreover miserably disfigured by the more accountable, but not less destructive practice of carrying away pieces as memorials or as relics. Nothing but the Saxon massiveness of its construction has enabled it to outlast these disgraceful mutilations.