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of every religious person were well known in the house where he resided; and a slight lisp in his speech gave him the surname of Balbulus. He had resided for some years in that marvellous monastery of S. Gall; the church of which was the pattern of all monastic edifices, till it was eclipsed by a church, the description of which now reads like a most glorious dream—Cluny. While watching the samphire-gatherers on the precipitous cliffs that surrounded S. Gall, Notker had composed the world-famous hymn, 'In the midst of life we are in death.' But, desirous of obtaining the best education which Christendom could afford, he afterwards betook himself to the Monastery of Jumièges, and there formed an acquaintance with many of its monks. With one of them he had, it seems, a friendly discussion, whether the interminable ia of the Alleluia might not be altered into a religious sense; a discussion which, for the time, had no result. But Jumièges, in common with so many other French monasteries, was desolated by the barbarian Normans. Whereupon Notker's friend, bethinking himself of S. Gall, took refuge in that great house; and the discussion which years before had commenced was again carried on between the two associates. At length Notker determined to put words to the notes which had hitherto only interminably prolonged the Alleluia. He did so; and as a first attempt produced a sequence which began with the line—

'Laudes Deo concinat orbis universus:'

and which has lately been republished. He brought this, notes and all, on a parchment rolled round a cylinder of wood, to Yso, precentor of what we should