The old abbeys, with a history that
looked back into a past all clouds and mist, but none the less glorious
for that, affected a supercilious tone towards the mushrooms that had of
late sprouted into vigorous life. A man need not be an old man who can
remember when the Eton and Winchester boys at the Universities affected
an air of contempt for all the 'modern' places of education, and
disdained to number such institutions as Cheltenham or Clifton among the
'public schools.' These were all very well in their way, but where were
their traditions? So with the older and grander Benedictine monasteries,
with charters from Saxon kings, let alone anything else. Glastonbury,
where men said two of the Apostles had built themselves a house of
prayer, and where St. Patrick and St. Dunstan lay entombed; Canterbury,
where Augustine, the English apostle, found a home; Malmesbury, where
St. Aldhelm preached to the barbarous people, and when they tired of his
sermon played to them upon his harp, and, anticipating Mr. Sankey, sang
David's Psalms to the crowds that moved by him as they passed over the
bridge of Avon. These venerable foundations, about whose origin a
glamour of mystery had gathered, whose history had become strangely
obscured by the body of myths that had grown up in the lapse of
centuries--which had survived pillage and anarchy, and all the horrors
of fire and sword, desolating, devastating--were there before men's
eyes, testifying to the amazing vitality which a millennium of strange
vicissitude had not only not destroyed, but not even impaired. Such a
mighty pile of buildings, as had risen up to heaven there in the old
Roman town of Verulam, appealed to the imagination of mankind--the very
materials of the massive tower, ruddy in the blaze of the noon-day, must
have been a wonder and astonishment to many an awe-struck pilgrim
perplexed at the first sight of Roman bricks burnt on the spot a
thousand years ago. There stood the mighty Roman rampart, vast,
enormous--the ground beneath his feet teeming with the tangible memories
of grisly conflict, or of an old civilization that had been blotted out
long ago--the swords of Roman legionaries, the bones of British heroes,
coins with legends that few could read turned up by the ploughman's
share. Yonder, men said, away there at Redburn, the heathen pursuers had
come upon England's proto-martyr and slain the saint of God, whose bones
since then had been gathered up, and were no