ife rolled
forever (as round ours still rolls, though we are blind and deaf) the
illimitable Ocean, tinting all things with _its_ eternal hues and
reflexes; making strange prophetic music! How silent now; all
departed, clean gone. The World-Dramaturgist has written: _Exeunt_.
The devouring Time-Demons have made away with it all: and in its
stead, there is either nothing; or what is worse, offensive universal
dust-clouds, and gray eclipse of Earth and Heaven, from 'dry rubbish
shot here!'--

* * * * *

Truly it is no easy matter to get across the chasm of Seven Centuries,
filled with such material. But here, of all helps, is not a Boswell
the welcomest; even a small Boswell? Veracity, true simplicity of
heart, how valuable are these always! He that speaks what _is_ really
in him, will find men to listen, though under never such impediments.
Even gossip, springing free and cheery from a human heart, this too is
a kind of veracity and _speech_;--much preferable to pedantry and
inane gray haze! Jocelin is weak and garrulous, but he is human.
Through the thin watery gossip of our Jocelin, we do get some glimpses
of that deep-buried Time; discern veritably, though in a fitful
intermittent manner, these antique figures and their life-method, face
to face! Beautifully, in our earnest loving glance, the old centuries
melt from opaque to partially translucent, transparent here and there;
and the void black Night, one finds, is but the summing-up of
innumerable peopled luminous _Days_. Not parchment Chartularies,
Doctrines of the Constitution, O Dryasdust; not altogether, my erudite
friend!--

Readers who please to go along with us into this poor _Jocelini
Chronica_ shall wander inconveniently enough, as in wintry twilight,
through some poor stript hazel-grove, rustling with foolish noises,
and perpetually hindering the eyesight; but across which, here and
there, some real human figure is seen moving: very strange; whom we
could hail if he would answer;--and we look into a pair of eyes deep
as our own, _imaging_ our own, but all unconscious of us; to whom we,
for the time, are become as spirits and invisible!

CHAPTER III.

LANDLORD EDMUND.

Some three centuries or so had elapsed since _Beodric's-worth_[4]
became St. Edmund's _Stow_, St. Edmund's _Town_ and Monastery, before
Jocelin entered himself a Novice there. 'It was,' says he, 'the year
after the Flemings were defeated at Fornh