or the very first, was to institute a strenuous review and radical reform of his economies. It is the first labour of every governing man, from Paterfamilias to Dominus Rex. To get the rain thatched out from you is the preliminary of whatever farther, in the way of speculation or of action, you may mean to do. Old Abbot Hugo's budget, as we saw, had become empty, filled with deficit and wind. To see his account-books clear, be delivered from those ravening flights of Jew and Christian creditors, pouncing on him like obscene harpies wherever he shewed face, was a necessity for Abbot Samson.

On the morrow after his instalment, he brings in a load of money-bonds, all duly stamped, sealed with this or the other Convent Seal frightful, unmanageable, a bottomless confusion of Convent finance. There they are; but there at least they all are; all that shall be of them. Our Lord Abbot demands that all the official seals in use among us be now produced and delivered to him. Three-and-thirty seals turn up; are straightway broken, and shall seal no more: the Abbot only, and those duly authorised by him shall seal any bond. There are but two ways of paying debt increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying it out. With iron energy, in slow but steady undeviating perseverance, Abbot Samson sets to work in both di rections. His troubles are manifold: cunning milites, unjust bailiffs, lazy sockmen, he an inexperienced Abbot; relaxed lazy monks, not disinclined to mutiny in mass: but continued vigilance, rigorous method, what we call the eye of the master,' work wonders. The clear-beaming eyesight of Abbot Samson, stedfast, severe, all-penetrating,-it is like Fiat lux in that inorganic waste whirlpool; penetrates gradually to all nooks, and of the chaos makes a kosmos or ordered world!

He arranges everywhere, struggles unweariedly to arrange, and place on some intelligible footing, the affairs and dues, res ac redditus,' of his dominion. The Lakenheath eels cease to breed squabbles between human beings; the penny of reap-silver to explode into the streets the Female Chartism of St. Edmundsbury. These and innumerable greater things. Wheresoever Disorder may stand or lie, let it have a care; here is the man that has declared war with it, that never will make peace with it. Man is

the Missionary of Order; he is the servant not of the Devil and Chaos, but of God and the Universe! Let all sluggards and cowards, remiss, false-spoken, unjust, and otherwise diabolic persons have a care: this is a dangerous man for them. He has a wild grave face; a thoughtful sternness, a sorrowful pity: but there is a terrible flash of anger in him too; lazy monks often have to murmur, " Sævit ut lupus, He rages like a wolf; was not our Dream true!" To repress and hold-in such sudden anger he was continually careful,' and succeeded well-right, Samson; that it may become in thee as noble central heat, fruitful, strong, beneficent; not blaze out, or the seldomest possible blaze out, as wasteful volcanoism to scorch and consume!

"We must first creep, and gradually learn to walk," had Abbot Samson said of himself, at starting. In four years he has become a great walker; striding prosperously along; driving much before him. In less than four years, says Jocelin, the Convent Debts were all liquidated the harpy Jews not only settled with, but banished, bag and baggage, out of the Bannaleuca (Liberties. Banlieue) of St. Edmundsbury,-so has the King's Majesty been persuaded to permit. Farewell to you, at any rate; let us, in no extremity, apply again to you! Armed men march them over the borders, dismiss them under stern penalties,―sentence of excommunication on all that shall again harbour them here: there were many dry eyes at their departure.

New life enters everywhere, springs up beneficent, the Incubus of Debt once rolled away. Samson hastes not; but neither does he pause to rest. This of the Finance is a life-long business with him Jocelin's anecdotes are filled to weariness with it. As indeed to Jocelin it was of very primary interest.

But we have to record also, with a lively satisfaction, that spiritual rubbish is as little tolerated in Samson's Monastery as material With due rigour, Willelmus Sacrista, and his bibations and tacenda are, at the earliest opportunity, softly, yet irrevocably put an end to. The bibations, namely, had to end; even the building where they used to be carried on was razed from the soil of St. Edmundsbury, and on its place grow rows of beans:' Willelmus himself, deposed from the Sacristy and all offices, retires

into obscurity, into absolute taciturnity unbroken thenceforth to this hour. Whether the poor Willelmus did not still, by secret channels, occasionally get some slight wetting of vinous or alcoholic liquor,—now grown, in a manner, indispensable to the poor man? Jocelin hints not; one knows not how to hope, what to hope! But if he did, it was in silence and darkness; with an ever-present feeling that teetotalism was his only true course. Drunken dissolute Monks are a class of persons who had better keep out of Abbot Samson's way. Savit ut lupus;. was not the Dream true! murmured many a Monk. Nay, Ranulf de Glanville, Justiciary in Chief, took umbrage at him, seeing these strict ways; and watched farther with suspicion but discerned gradually that there was nothing wrong, that there was much the opposite of wrong.

CHAPTER XI.

THE ABBOT'S WAYS.

ABBOT SAMSON shewed no extraordinary favour to the Monks who had been his familiars of old; did not promote them to offices, nisi essent idonei, unless they chanced to be fit men! Whence great discontent among certain of these, who had contributed to make him Abbot: reproaches, open and secret, of his being ungrateful, hard-tempered, unsocial, a Norfolk barrator and paltenerius.'

Indeed, except it were for idonei, 'fit men,' in all kinds, it was hard to say for whom Abbot Samson had much favour. He loved his kindred well, and tenderly enough acknowledged the poor part of them; with the rich part, who in old days had never acknowledged him, he totally refused to have any business. But even the former he did not promote into offices; finding none of them idonei. Some whom he thought suitable he put into situations in his own household, or made keepers of his country places: if 'they behaved ill, he dismissed them without hope of return.' In his promotions, nay almost in his benefits, you would have said there was a certain impartiality. The official person who had, by Abbot Hugo's order, put the fetters on him at his return 'from Italy, was now supported with food and clothes to the end of his days at Abbot Samson's expense.'

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Yet he did not forget benefits; far the reverse, when an opportunity occurred of paying them at his own cost. How pay them at the public cost;-how, above all, by setting fire to the public, as we said; clapping 'conflagrations' on the public, which the services of blockheads, non-idonei, intrinsically are! He was right willing to remember friends, when it could be done. Take these instances: A certain chaplain who had maintained him at 'the Schools of Paris by the sale of holy water, quæstu aquæ bene

'dicta; to this good chaplain he did give a vicarage, adequate 'to the comfortable sustenance of him.' The Son of Elias, too, 'that is, of old Abbot Hugo's Cupbearer, coming to do homage 'for his Father's land, our Lord Abbot said to him in full court · "I have, for these seven years, put off taking thy homage for the 'land which Abbot Hugo gave thy Father, because that gift was 'to the damage of Elmswell, and a questionable one: but now I 'must profess myself overcome; mindful of the kindness thy 'Father did me when I was in bonds; because he sent me a cup 'of the very wine his master had been drinking, and bade me be 'comforted in God."'

To Magister Walter, son of Magister William de Dice, who 'wanted the vicarage of Chevington, he answered: "Thy Father 'was Master of the Schools; and when I was an indigent clericus, 'he granted me freely and in charity an entrance to his School, and opportunity of learning; wherefore I now, for the sake of 'God, grant to thee what thou askest." Or lastly, take this good instance, and a glimpse, along with it, into long-obsolete times: Two Milites of Risby, Willelm and Norman, being ad'judged in Court to come under his mercy, in misericordia ejus, for a certain very considerable fine of twenty shillings, he thus 'addressed them publicly on the spot: "When I was a Cloister'monk, I was once sent to Durham on business of our Church; 'and coming home again, the dark night caught me at Risby, and 'I had to beg a lodging there. I went to Dominus Norman's, 'and he gave me a flat refusal. Going then to Dominus Wil'lelm's, and begging hospitality, I was by him honourably re'ceived. The twenty shillings therefore of mercy, I, without 'mercy, will exact from Dominus Norman; to Dominus Willelm, 'on the other hand, I, with thanks, will wholly remit the said 'sum." Men know not always to whom they refuse lodgings; men have lodged Angels unawares !

It is clear Abbot Samson had a talent; he had learned to judge better than Lawyers, to manage better than bred Bailiffs :-a talent shining out indisputable, on whatever side you took him. 'An eloquent man he was,' says Jocelin, both in French and 'Latin; but intent more on the substance and method of what