ions,
American Independences; and Robert Burns is Gauger of ale in Dumfries.
It is an Iliad in a nutshell. The physiognomy of a world now verging
towards dissolution, reduced now to spasms and death-throes, lies
pictured in that one fact,--which astonishes nobody, except at me for
being astonished at it. The fruit of long ages of confirmed Valethood,
entirely confirmed as into a Law of Nature; cloth-worship and
quack-worship: entirely _confirmed_ Valethood,--which will have to
_un_confirm itself again; God knows, with difficulty enough!--

* * * * *

Abbot Samson had found a Convent all in dilapidation; rain beating
through it, material rain and metaphorical, from all quarters of the
compass. Willelmus Sacrista sits drinking nightly, and doing mere
_tacenda_. Our larders are reduced to leanness, Jew harpies and
unclean creatures our purveyors; in our basket is no bread. Old women
with their distaffs rush out on a distressed Cellarer in shrill
Chartism. 'You cannot stir abroad but Jews and Christians pounce upon
you with unsettled bonds;' debts boundless seemingly as the National
Debt of England. For four years our new Lord Abbot never went abroad
but Jew creditors and Christian, and all manner of creditors, were
about him; driving him to very despair. Our Prior is remiss; our
Cellarers, officials are remiss; our monks are remiss: what man is not
remiss? Front this, Samson, thou alone art there to front it; it is
thy task to front and fight this, and to die or kill it. May the Lord
have mercy on thee!

To our antiquarian interest in poor Jocelin and his Convent, where the
whole aspect of existence, the whole dialect, of thought, of speech,
of activity, is so obsolete, strange, long-vanished, there now
superadds itself a mild glow of human interest for Abbot Samson; a
real pleasure, as at sight of man's work, especially of governing,
which is man's highest work, done _well_. Abbot Samson had no
experience in governing; had served no apprenticeship to the trade of
governing,--alas, only the hardest apprenticeship to that of obeying.
He had never in any court given _vadium_ or _plegium_, says Jocelin;
hardly ever seen a court, when he was set to preside in one. But it is
astonishing, continues Jocelin, how soon he learned the ways of
business; and, in all sort of affairs, became expert beyond others. Of
the many persons offering him their service, 'he retained one Knight
skilled in taking