reach the chapel vast and dim, and there, before the great altar
with its gleaming lights, the Abbot in his robes chants the
services, but where the voices of choir and people were wont to
join, there sounds only the clear high voice of one little boy.

That little boy was Bede.

And thus night and morning the sound of prayer and praise rose
from the deserted chapel until the force of the plague had spent
itself, and it was once more possible to find men to take the
places of those singers who had died.

So the years passed on until, when Bede was thirty years of age,
he became a priest. He might have been made an abbot had he
wished. But he refused to be taken away from his beloved books.
"The office," he said, "demands household care, and household
care brings with it distraction of mind, hindering the pursuit of
learning."*

*H. Morley, English Writers.

Bede wrote many books, but it is by his Ecclesiastical History
(that is Church history) that we remember him best. As Caedmon
is called the Father of English Poetry, Bede is called the Father
of English History. But it is well to remember that Caedmon
wrote in Anglo-Saxon and Bede in Latin.

There were others who wrote history before Bede, but he was
perhaps the first who wrote history in the right spirit. He did
not write in order to make a good minstrel's tale. He tried to