laboriously keep its pot boiling, and St. Edmund's Shrine lighted, under such conditions and averages as it can.

How much is still alive in England; how much has not yet come into life! A Feudal Aristocracy is still alive, in the prime of life; superintending the cultivation of the land, and less consciously the distribution of the produce of the land, the adjustment of the quarrels of the land; judging, soldiering, adjusting; everywhere governing the people, so that even a Gurth, born thrall of Cedric, lacks not his due parings of the pigs he tends. Governing; and, alas, also game-preserving; so that a Robert Hood, a William Scarlet and others have, in these days, put on Lincoln coats, and taken to living, in some universal-suffrage manner, under the greenwood-tree !

How silent, on the other hand, lie all Cotton-trades and suchlike; not a steeple-chimney yet got on end from sea to sea! North of the Humber, a stern Willelmus Conquæstor burnt the Country, finding it unruly, into very stern repose. Wild fowl scream in those ancient silences, wild cattle roam in those ancient solitudes; the scanty sulky Norse-bred population all coerced into silence,-feeling that, under these new Norman Governors, their history has probably as good as ended. Men and Northumbrian Norse populations know little what has ended, what is but beginning! The Ribble and the Aire roll down, as yet unpolluted by dyers' chemistry; tenanted by merry trouts and piscatory otters; the sunbeam and the vacant wind's-blast alone traversing those moors. Side by side sleep the coal-strata and the iron-strata for so many ages; no SteamDemon has yet risen smoking into being. Saint Mungo rules in Glasgow; James Watt still slumbering in the deep of Time. Mancunium, Manceaster, what we now call Manchester, spins no cotton,-if it be not wool 'cottons,' clipped from the backs of mountain sheep. The Creek of the Mersey gurgles, twice in the four-and-twenty hours, with eddying brine, clangorous with sea-fowl; and is a Lither-Pool, a lazy or sullen Pool, no monstrous pitchy City, and Seahaven of the world! The Centuries are big; and the birth-hour is coming, not yet come. Tempus ferax, tempus edax rerum.

CHAPTER VI.

MONK SAMSON.

WITHIN doors, down at the hill-fcot, in our Convent here, we are a peculiar people,-hardly conceivable in the Arkwright Corn-Law ages, of mere Spinning-Mills and Joe-Mantons ! There is yet no Methodism among us, and we speak much of Secularities: no Methodism; our Religion is not yet a horrible restless Doubt, still less a far horribler composed Cant; but a great heaven-high Unquestionability, encompassing, interpenetrating the whole of Life. Imperfect as we may be, we are here, with our litanies, shaven crowns, vows of poverty, to testify incessantly and indisputably to every heart, That this Earthly Life and its riches and possessions, and good and evil hap, are not intrinsically a reality at all, but are a shadow of realities eternal, infinite; that this Time-world, as an air-image, fearfully emblematic, plays and flickers in the grand still mirror of Eternity; and man's little Life has Duties that are great, that are alone great, and go up to Heaven and down to Hell. This, with our poor litanies, we testify, and struggle to testify.

Which, testified or not, remembered by all men or forgotten by all men, does verily remain the fact, even in Arkwright JoeManton ages! But it is incalculable, when litanies have grown obsolete; when fodercorns, avragiums, and all human dues and reciprocities have been fully changed into one great due of cash payment; and man's duty to man reduces itself to handing him certain metal coins, or covenanted money-wages, and then shoving him out of doors; and man's duty to God becomes a cant, a doubt, a dim inanity, a ‘pleasure of virtue' or suchlike; and the thing a man does infinitely fear (the real Hell of a man) is, 'that he do not make money and advance himself,' say, it is incalculable what a change has introduced itseif everywhere into human affairs! How human affairs shall now circulate everywhere not healthy life-blood in them, but, as it were a actestable copperas banker's ink; and all is grown acrid, divisive. threatening dissolution; and the huge tumultuous Life of Society is galvanic, devil-ridden, too truly possessed by a devil! For, in short, Mammon is not a god at all; but a devil, and even a very despicable devil. Follow the Devil

faithfully, you are sure enough to go to the Devil: whither else can you go?-In such situations, men look back with a kind of mournful recognition even on poor limited Monk-figures, with their poor litanies; and reflect, with Ben Jonson, that soul is indispensable, some degree of soul, even to save you the expense of salt !—

For the rest, it must be owned, we Monks of St. Edmundsbury are but a limited class of creatures, and seem to have a somewhat dull life of it. Much given to idle gossip; having indeed no other work, when our chanting is over. Listless gossip, for most part, and a mitigated slander; the fruit of idleness, not of spleen. We are dull, insipid men, many of us; easy-minded; whom prayer and digestion of food will avail for a life. We have to receive all strangers in our Convent, and lodge them gratis; such and such sorts go by rule to the Lord Abbot and his special revenues; such and such to us and our poor Cellarer, however straitened. Jews themselves send their wives and little ones hither in war-time, into our Pitanceria; where they abide safe, with due pittances,—for a consideration. We have the fairest chances for collecting news. Some of us have a turn for reading Books; for meditation, silence; at times we even write Books. Some of us can preach, in English-Saxon, in Norman-French, and even in Monk-Latin; others cannot in any language or jargon, being stupid.

Failing all else, what gossip about one another! This is a perennial resource. How one hooded head applies itself to the ear of another, and whispers-tacenda. Willelmus Sacrista, for instance, what does he nightly, over in that Sacristy of his? Frequent bibations, 'frequentes bibationes et quædam tacenda,' -eheu ! We have tempora minutionis,' stated seasons of blood-letting, when we are all let blood together; and then there is a general free-conference, a sanhedrim of clatter. Notwithstanding our vow of poverty, we can by rule amass to the extent of 'two shillings;' but it is to be given to our necessitous kindred, or in charity. Poor Monks! Thus too a certain Canterbury Monk was in the habit of 'slipping, clanculo, from his sleeve,' five shillings into the hand of his mother, when she came to see him, at the divine offices, every two months. Once, slipping the money clandestinely, just in the act of taking leave, he slipt it not into her hand but on the floor, and another had it; whereupon the poor Monk, coming to know it, looked mere

despair for some days; till Lanfranc the noble Archbishop, questioning his secret from him, nobly made the sum seven shillings,1 and said, Never mind!

One Monk, of a taciturn nature, distinguishes himself among these babbling ones: the name of him Samson; he that answered Jocelin, "Fili mi, a burnt child shuns the fire." They call him Norfolk Barrator,' or litigious person; for indeed, being of grave taciturn ways, he is not universally a favourite; he has been in trouble more than once. The reader is desired to mark this Monk. A personable man of sevenand-forty; stout-made, stands erect as a pillar; with bushy eyebrows, the eyes of him beaming into you in a really strange way; the face massive, grave, with a very eminent nose;' his head almost bald, its auburn remnants of hair, and the copious ruddy beard, getting slightly streaked with gray. This is Brother Samson; a man worth looking at.

He is from Norfolk, as the nickname indicates; from Tottington in Norfolk, as we guess; the son of poor parents there. He has told me Jocelin, for I loved him much, That once in his ninth year he had an alarming dream ;- —as indeed we are all somewhat given to dreaming here. Little Samson, lying uneasily in his crib at Tottington, dreamed that he saw the Arch Enemy in person, just alighted in front of some grand building, with outspread bat-wings, and stretching forth detestable clawed hands to grip him, little Samson, and fly-off with him whereupon the little dreamer shrieked desperate to St. Edmund for help, shrieked and again shrieked; and St. Edmund, a reverend heavenly figure, did come,—and indeed poor little Samson's mother, awakened by his shrieking, did come; and the Devil and the Dream both fled away fruitless. On the morrow, his mother, pondering such an awful dream, thought it were good to take him over to St. Edmund's own Shrine, and pray with him there. See, said little Samson at sight of the Abbey-Gate; see, mother, this is the building I dreamed of! His poor mother dedicated him to St. Edmund,-left him there with prayers and tears: what better could she do? The exposition of the dream, Brother Samson used to say, was this: Diabolus with outspread bat-wings shadowed forth the pleasures of this world, voluptates hujus sæculi, which were about to snatch

1 Fadmeri Hist. p. 8.

and fly away with me, had not St. Edmund flung his arms round me, that is to say, made me a monk of his. A monk, accordingly, Brother Samson is; and here to this day where his mother left him. A learned man, of devout grave nature; has studied at Paris, has taught in the Town Schools here, and done much else; can preach in three languages, and, like Dr. Caius, has had losses' in his time. A thoughtful, firm-stand

ing man; much loved by some, not loved by all; his clear eyes flashing into you, in an almost inconvenient way!

Abbot Hugo, as we said, had his own difficulties with him; Abbot Hugo had him in prison once, to teach him what authority was, and how to dread the fire in future. For Brother Sam. son, in the time of the Antipopes, had been sent to Rome on business; and, returning successful, was too late,—the business had all misgone in the interim! As tours to Rome are still frequent with us English, perhaps the reader will not grudge to look at the method of travelling thither in those remote ages. We happily have, in small compass, a personal narrative of it. Through the clear eyes and memory of Brother Samson one peeps direct into the very bosom of that Twelfth Century, and finds it rather curious. The actual Papa, Father, or universal President of Christendom, as yet not grown chimerical, sat there; think of that only! Brother Samson went to Rome as to the real Light-fountain of this lower world; we now—!— But let us hear Brother Samson, as to his mode of travelling:

'You know what trouble I had for that Church of Woolpit; 'how I was despatched to Rome in the time of the Schism be'tween Pope Alexander and Octavian; and passed through 'Italy at that season, when all clergy carrying letters for our 'Lord Pope Alexander were laid hold of, and some were clapt ' in prison, some hanged; and some, with nose and lips cut off, were sent forward to our Lord the Pope, for the disgrace and 'confusion of him (in dedecus et confusionem ejus). I, how'ever, pretended to be Scotch, and putting on the garb of a Scotchman, and taking the gesture of one, walked along; and 'when anybody mocked at me, I would brandish my staff in 'the manner of that weapon they call gaveloc,2 uttering com'minatory words after the way of the Scotch. To those that 'met and questioned me who I was, I made no answer but :

2 Javelin, missile pike. Gaveloc is still the Scotch name for crowbar.