money-wages, and then shoving him out of doors; and man's
duty to God becomes a cant, a doubt, a dim inanity, a 'pleasure of
virtue' or suchlike; and the thing a man does infinitely fear (the
real _Hell_ of a man) is, 'that he do not make money and advance
himself,'--I say, it is incalculable what a change has introduced
itself everywhere into human affairs! How human affairs shall now
circulate everywhere not healthy life-blood in them, but, as it were,
a detestable copperas banker's ink; and all is grown acrid, divisive,
threatening dissolution; and the huge tumultuous Life of Society is
galvanic, devil-ridden, too truly possessed by a devil: For, in short,
Mammon _is_ not a god at all; but a devil, and even a very despicable
devil. Follow the Devil faithfully, you are sure enough to _go_ to the
Devil: whither else can you go?--In such situations, men look back
with a kind of mournful recognition even on poor limited Monk-figures,
with their poor litanies; and reflect, with Ben Jonson, that soul is
indispensable, some degree of soul, even to save you the expense of
salt!--

For the rest, it must be owned, we Monks of St. Edmundsbury are but a
limited class of creatures, and seem to have a somewhat dull life of
it. Much given to idle gossip; having indeed no other work, when our
chanting is over. Listless gossip, for most part, and a mitigated
slander; the fruit of idleness, not of spleen. We are dull, insipid
men, many of us; easy-minded; whom prayer and digestion of food will
avail for a life. We have to receive all strangers in our Convent, and
lodge them gratis; such and such sorts go by rule to the Lord Abbot
and his special revenues; such and such to us and our poor Cellarer,
however straitened. Jews themselves send their wives and little ones
hither in war-time, into our _Pitanceria_; where they abide safe, with
due _pittances_,--for a consideration. We have the fairest chances
for collecting news. Some of us have a turn for reading Books; for
meditation, silence; at times we even write Books. Some of us can
preach, in English-Saxon, in Norman-French, and even in Monk-Latin;
others cannot in any language or jargon, being stupid.

Failing all else, what gossip about one another! This is a perennial
resource. How one hooded head applies itself to the ear of another,
and whispers--_tacenda_. Willelmus Sacrista, for instance, what does
he nightly, over in that Sacristy of his? Frequent bibations,
'_frequentes biba