heart, whence the agitation of my piety overflowed, and my tears ran over, and blessed was I therein'. A learned prefect of the Ambrosian Library at Milan has paid a well-deserved tribute to the style of the great prelate's hymns—clear, sweet, and yet vigorous, grand, and noble. Closeness of thought is combined with singular brevity of expression. Archbishop Trench shows how suitably the faith, which was in actual conflict with the powers of the world, found utterance in such, hymns as these, 'wherein is no softness, perhaps little tenderness, but a rock-like firmness, the old Roman stoicism trans muted and glorified into that nobler Christian courage which encountered, and at length overcame, the world.'
Benedict expressly adopted the hymns of Ambrose and his successors in his 'Order of Worship'. The vast community which owned the rule of himself and his successors spread rapidly over Europe. Its customs and usages of worship were followed in England as well as over the north of Europe, 'and, with local variations, in the remainder of Western Christendom'. The glorious strains of the hymn 'Exultet jam angelica turba coelorum', said to have been composed by Augustine when a deacon, were sung by the deacon at the Benediction of the Paschal Candle. The name of Benedict must therefore be linked with that of Ambrose in the history of Latin hymnody. Prudentius of Spain wrote some noble hymns, which found their way into general use. Before the eleventh and twelfth centuries closed the place of hymns in public services had been fixed and settled. They found their way into the Missals, Breviaries, and other offices of that time. Each church also added local hymns in honour of its own founders and patrons. With a few striking exceptions, the clergy and the monks had become the chief poets of the age. Their verses 'were no longer confined to the direct worship and praise of the Creator, of Christ, of the Holy Ghost; to the honour of the Blessed Virgin and of the Apostles, and certain principal saints, and appropriated to the various solemnities of the Church relating to them, such as were those of Ambrose, Gregory, Prudentius Fortunatus, and their successors. They became amplified and refined into eulogies, descriptions of, and meditations upon, the Passion and Wounds of Christ, on His Sacred Countenance, on His Cross, on His Sweet Name, on the Vanity of Life, on the Joys of Paradise, on the Terrors of Judgement; into penitential exercises, of the Holy Sacrament, of the lives and
