'subject, he reminded me of Solomon: "Many sons I have; it 'is not fit that I should smile on them." He would suffer faults, 'damage from his servants, and know what he suffered, and not 'speak of it; but I think the reason was, he waited a good time 'for speaking of it, and in a wise way amending it. He inti'mated, openly in chapter to us all, that he would have no eaves'dropping: "Let none," said he, "come to me secretly accusing 'another, unless he will publicly stand to the same; if he come 'otherwise, I will openly proclaim the name of him. I wish, too, 'that every Monk of you have free access to me, to speak of your 'needs or grievances when you will."'

The kinds of people Abbot Samson liked worst were these three Mendaces, ebriosi, verbosi, Liars, drunkards, and wordy or windy persons;'-not good kinds, any of them! He also much condemned persons given to murmur at their meat or drink, especially Monks of that disposition.' We remark, from the very first, his strict anxious order to his servants to provide handsomely for hospitality, to guard above all things that there be 'no shabbiness in the matter of meat and drink; no look of mean 'parsimony, in novitate mea, at the beginning of my Abbotship;' and to the last he maintains a due opulence of table and equipment for others: but he is himself in the highest degree indifferent to all such things.

'Sweet milk, honey, and other naturally sweet kinds of food, 'were what he preferred to eat: but he had this virtue,' says Jocelin, he never changed the dish (ferculum) you set before him, be what it might. Once when I, still a novice, happened 'to be waiting table in the refectory, it came into my head,' (rogue that I was!) to try if this were true; and I thought I would 'place before him a ferculum that would have displeased any other 'person, the very platter being black and broken. But he, see'ing it, was as one that saw it not: and now some little delay 'taking place, my heart smote me that I had done this; and so, 'snatching up the platter (discus), I changed both it and its contents 'for a better, and put down that instead; which emendation he 'was angry at, and rebuked me for,'-the stoical monastic man! 'For the first seven years he had commonly four sorts of dishes 'on his table; afterwards only three, except it might be presents,

'or venison from his own parks, or fishes from his ponds. And 'if, at any time, he had guests living in his house at the request 'of some great person, or of some friend, or had public messen'gers, or had harpers (citharados), or any one of that sort, he 'took the first opportunity of shifting to another of his Manorhouses, and so got rid of such superfluous individuals,'*-very prudently, I think.

As to his parks, of these, in the general repair of buildings, general improvement and adornment of the St. Edmund Domains, 'he had laid out several, and stocked them with animals, retain'ing a proper huntsman with hounds: and, if any guest of great 'quality were there, our Lord Abbot with his monks would sit in some opening of the woods, and see the dogs run; but he 'himself never meddled with hunting, that I saw.'†

'In an opening of the woods;'-for the country was still dark with wood in those days; and Scotland itself still rustled shaggy and leafy, like a damp black American Forest, with cleared spots and spaces here and there. Dryasdust advances several absurd hypotheses as to the insensible but almost total disappearance of these woods; the thick wreck of which now lies as peat, sometimes with huge heart-of-oak timber logs imbedded in it, on many a height and hollow. The simplest reason doubtless is, that by increase of husbandry, there was increase of cattle; increase of hunger for green spring food; and so, more and more, the new seedlings got yearly eaten out in April; and the old trees, having only a certain length of life in them, died gradually, no man heeding it and disappeared into peat.

A sorrowful waste of noble wood and umbrage! Yes, but a very common one; the course of most things in this world. Monachism itself, so rich and fruitful once, is now all rotted into peat; lies sleek and buried,—and a most feeble bog-grass of Dilettantism all the crop we reap from it! That also was frightful waste; perhaps among the saddest our England ever saw. Why will men destroy noble Forests, even when in part a nuisance, in such reckless manner; turning loose four-footed cattle and Henry-the-Eighths into them! The fifth part of our English * Jocelini Chronica, p. 31. † Ibid., p. 21.

soil, Dryasdust computes, lay consecrated to 'spiritual uses,' better or worse; solemnly set apart to foster spiritual growth and culture of the soul, by the methods then known: and nowit too, like the four-fifths, fosters what? Gentle shepherd, tell me what!

CHAPTER XII.

THE ABBOT'S TROUBLES.

THE troubles of Abbot Samson, as he went along in this abstemious, reticent, rigorous way, were more than tongue can tell. The Abbot's mitre once set on his head he knew rest no more. Double, double toil and trouble; that is the life of all governors that really govern: not the spoil of victory, only the glorious toil of battle can be theirs. Abbot Samson found all men more or less headstrong, irrational, prone to disorder; continually threatening to prone ungovernable.

His lazy Monks gave him most trouble. My heart is tortured,' said he, 'till we get out of debt, cor meum cruciatum est.' Your heart, indeed;-but not altogether ours! By no devisable method, or none of three or four that he devised, could Abbot Samson get these Monks of his to keep their accounts straight; but always, do as he might, the Cellerarius at the end of the term is in a coil, in a flat deficit,-verging again towards debt and Jews. The Lord Abbot at last declares sternly he will keep our accounts too himself; will appoint an officer of his own to see our Cellerarius keep them. Murmurs thereupon among us : Was the like ever heard? Our Cellerarius a cipher; the very Townsfolk know it: subsannatio et derisio sumus, we have become a laughingstock to mankind. The Norfolk barrator and pal

tener!

And consider, if the Abbot found such difficulty in the mere economic department, how much in more complex ones, in spiritual ones perhaps! He wears a stern calm face; raging and gnashing teeth, fremens and frendens, many times, in the secret of his mind. Withal, however, there is a noble slow perseverance in him; a strength of 'subdued rage' calculated to subdue most things: always, in the long-run, he contrives to gain his point.

Murmurs from the Monks, meanwhile, cannot fail; ever deeper murmurs, new grudges accumulating. At one time, on slight cause, some drop making the cup run over, they burst into open mutiny the Cellarer will not obey, prefers arrest on bread and water to obeying; the Monks thereupon strike work; refuse to do the regular chanting of the day, at least the younger part of them with loud clamour and uproar refuse-Abbot Samson has withdrawn to another residence, acting only by messengers: the awful report circulates through St. Edmundsbury that the Abbot is in danger of being murdered by the Monks with their knives! How wilt thou appease this, Abbot Samson? Return; for the Monastery seems near catching fire!

Abbot Samson returns; sits in his Thalamus or inner room, hurls out a bolt or two of excommunication: lo, one disobedient Monk sits in limbo, excommunicated, with foot-shackles on him, all day; and three more our Abbot has gyved 'with the lesser sentence, to strike fear into the others!' Let the others think with whom they have to do. The others think; and fear enters into them. On the morrow morning we decide on humbling 'ourselves before the Abbot, by word and gesture, in order to 'mitigate his mind. And so accordingly was done. He, on the 'other side, replying with much humility, yet always alleging his own justice and turning the blame on us, when he saw that we 'were conquered, became himself conquered. And bursting into tears, perfusus lachrymis, he swore that he had never grieved so 'much for anything in the world as for this, first on his own ac'count, and then secondly and chiefly for the public scandal 'which had gone abroad, that St. Edmund's Monks were going 'to kill their Abbot. And when he had narrated how he went away on purpose till his anger should cool, repeating this word. ' of the philosopher, "I would have taken vengeance on thee, had 'not I been angry," he arose weeping, and embraced each and all of us with the kiss of peace. He wept; we all wept :'*-what a picture! Behave better, ye remiss Monks, and thank Heaven for such an Abbot; or know at least that ye must and shall obey him.

* Jocelini Chronica, p. 85.