ng of their being on
forbidden ground. Their accounts of the phenomenon accordingly leave
it only half explained: How he was surprised by armed Heathen
Devil's-servants in his sleep; was violently set upon, and his
"beautiful bowels (_pulchra viscera_) were run through with seven
spears:" but this of the ROMOVA, or Sacred Bangputtis Church of
Oak-trees, perhaps chief ROMOVA of the Country, rashly intruded into,
with consequent strokes, and fall in the form of a crucifix, appears
now to be the intelligible account. [Baillet, _Vies des Saints_ (Paris,
1739), iii. 722. Bollandus, _Acta Sanetorum, Aprilis tom. iii (DIE 23;
in Edition venetiis,_ 1738), pp. 174-205. Voigt, _Geschichte Preussens_
(Konigsberg, 1827-1839), i. 266-270.] We will take it for the real
manner of Adalbert's exit;--no doubt of the essential transaction, or
that it was a very flaming one on both sides. The date given is 23d
April, 997; date famous in the Romish Calendar since.

He was a Czech by birth, son of a Heathen Bohemian man of rank: his name
(Adalbert, A'lbert, BRIGHT-in-Nobleness) he got "at Magdeburg, whither
he had gone to study" and seek baptism; where, as generally elsewhere,
his fervent devout ways were admirable to his fellow-creatures. A "man
of genius," we may well say: one of Heaven's bright souls, born into the
muddy darkness of this world;--laid hold of by a transcendent Message,
in the due transcendent degree. He entered Prag, as Bishop, not in
a carriage and six, but "walking barefoot;" his contempt for earthly
shadows being always extreme. Accordingly, his quarrels with the
SOECULUM were constant and endless; his wanderings up and down, and
vehement arguings, in this world, to little visible effect, lasted
all his days. We can perceive he was short-tempered, thin of skin: a
violently sensitive man. For example, once in the Bohemian solitudes,
on a summer afternoon, in one of his thousand-fold pilgrimings and
wayfarings, he had lain down to rest, his one or two monks and he,
in some still glade, "with a stone for his pillow" (as was always his
custom even in Prag), and had fallen sound asleep. A Bohemian shepherd
chanced to pass that way, warbling something on his pipe, as he wended
towards looking after his flock. Seeing the sleepers on their stone
pillows, the thoughtless Czech mischievously blew louder,--started
Adalbert broad awake upon him; who, in the fury of the first moment,
shrieked: "Deafness on thee! Man cruel to the hum