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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 mild 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, " Savit 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!

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"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. Sævit 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 of fices, 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."'

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To Magister Walter, son of Magister William de Dice, who 'wanted the vicarage of Chevington, he answered: "Thy Father เ 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." 7 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 wh

'was to be said, than on the ornamental way of saying it. He 'could read English Manuscripts very elegantly, elegantissime : 'he was wont to preach to the people in the English tongue, 'though according to the dialect of Norfolk, where he had been 'brought up; wherefore indeed he had caused a Pulpit to be 'erected in our Church both for ornament of the same, and for 'the use of his audiences.' There preached he, according to the dialect of Norfolk: a man worth going to hear.

That he was a just clear-hearted man, this, as the basis of all true talent, is presupposed. How can a man, without clear vision in his heart first of all, have any clear vision in the head? It is impossible! Abbot Samson was one of the justest of judges; insisted on understanding the case to the bottom, and then swiftly decided without feud or favour. For which reason, indeed, the Dominus Rex, searching for such men, as for hidden treasure and healing to his distressed realm, had made him one of the new Itinerant Judges,—such as continue to this day. "My curse on that Abbot's court," a suitor was heard imprecating, "Maledicta sit curia istius Abbatis, where neither gold nor silver can help me to confound my enemy And old friendships and all connexions forgotten, when you go to seek an office from him! kinless loon," as the Scotch said of Cromwell's new judges,-intent on mere indifferent fair-play!

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Eloquence in three languages is good; but it is not the best. To us, as already hinted, the Lord Abbot's eloquence is less admirable than his ineloquence, his great invaluable talent of silence!' ""Deus, Deus," said the Lord Abbot to me once, when 'he heard the Convent were murmuring at some act of his, "I 'have much need to remember that Dream they had of me, that 'I was to rage among them like a wolf. Above all earthly things 'I dread their driving me to do it. How much do I hold in, and 'wink at; raging and shuddering in my own secret mind, and 'not outwardly at all!" He would boast to me at other times: "This and that I have seen, this and that I have heard; yet 'patiently stood it." He had this way, too, which I have never 'seen in any other man, that he affectionately loved many per sons to whom he never or hardly ever shewed a countenance of 'love. Once on my venturing to expostulate with him on the

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