ird-of-Paradise, living on perfumes; sleeping
in the aether with outspread wings. The Heroic, _independent_ of bed
and board, is found in Drury-Lane Theatre only; to avoid
disappointments, let us bear this in mind.

By the law of Nature, too, all manner of Ideals have their fatal
limits and lot; their appointed periods, of youth, of maturity or
perfection, of decline, degradation, and final death and
disappearance. There is nothing born but has to die. Ideal
monasteries, once grown real, do seek bed and board in this world; do
find it more and more successfully; do get at length too intent on
finding it, exclusively intent on that. They are then like diseased
corpulent bodies fallen idiotic, which merely eat and sleep; _ready_
for 'dissolution,' by a Henry the Eighth or some other. Jocelin's St.
Edmundsbury is still far from this last dreadful state: but here too
the reader will prepare himself to see an Ideal not sleeping in the
aether like a bird-of-paradise, but roosting as the common wood-fowl
do, in an imperfect, uncomfortable, more or less contemptible
manner!--

* * * * *

Abbot Hugo, as Jocelin, breaking at once into the heart of the
business, apprises us, had in those days grown old, grown rather
blind, and his eyes were somewhat darkened, _aliquantulum caligaverunt
oculi ejus_. He dwelt apart very much, in his _Talamus_ or peculiar
Chamber; got into the hands of flatterers, a set of mealy-mouthed
persons who strove to make the passing hour easy for him,--for him
easy, and for themselves profitable; accumulating in the distance mere
mountains of confusion. Old Dominus Hugo sat inaccessible in this way,
far in the interior, wrapt in his warm flannels and delusions;
inaccessible to all voice of Fact; and bad grew ever worse with us.
Not that our worthy old _Dominus Abbas_ was inattentive to the divine
offices, or to the maintenance of a devout spirit in us or in himself;
but the Account-Books of the Convent fell into the frightfulest state,
and Hugo's annual Budget grew yearly emptier, or filled with futile
expectations, fatal deficit, wind and debts!

His one worldly care was to raise ready money; sufficient for the day
is the evil thereof. And how he raised it: From usurious insatiable
Jews; every fresh Jew sticking on him like a fresh horseleech, sucking
his and our life out; crying continually, Give, give! Take one example
instead of scores. Our _Camera_ having fallen into