_vadia_ and _plegia_;' and within the year was
himself well skilled. Nay, by and by, the Pope appoints him Justiciary
in certain causes; the King one of his new Circuit Judges: official
Osbert is heard saying, "That Abbot is one of your shrewd ones,
_disputator est_; if he go on as he begins, he will cut out every
lawyer of us!"[12]

Why not? What is to hinder this Samson from governing? There is in him
what far transcends all apprenticeships; in the man himself there
exists a model of governing, something to govern by! There exists in
him a heart-abhorrence of whatever is incoherent, pusillanimous,
unveracious,--that is to say, chaotic, _un_governed; of the Devil, not
of God. A man of this kind cannot help governing! He has the living
ideal of a governor in him; and the incessant necessity of struggling
to unfold the same out of him. Not the Devil or Chaos, for any wages,
will he serve; no, this man is the born servant of Another than them.
Alas, how little avail all apprenticeships, when there is in your
governor himself what we may well call _nothing_ to govern by:
nothing;--a general gray twilight, looming with shapes of
expediencies, parliamentary traditions, division-lists,
election-funds, leading-articles; this, with what of vulpine alertness
and adroitness soever, is not much!

But indeed what say we, apprenticeship? Had not this Samson served, in
his way, a right good apprenticeship to governing; namely, the
harshest slave-apprenticeship to obeying! Walk this world with no
friend in it but God and St. Edmund, you will either fall into the
ditch, or learn a good many things. To learn obeying is the
fundamental art of governing. How much would many a Serene Highness
have learned, had he travelled through the world with water-jug and
empty wallet, _sine omni expensa_; and, at his victorious return, sat
down not to newspaper-paragraphs and city-illuminations, but at the
foot of St. Edmund's Shrine to shackles and bread-and-water! He that
cannot be servant of many, will never be master, true guide and
deliverer of many;--that is the meaning of true mastership. Had not
the Monk-life extraordinary 'political capabilities' in it; if not
imitable by us, yet enviable? Heavens, had a Duke of Logwood, now
rolling sumptuously to his place in the Collective Wisdom, but
himself happened to plough daily, at one time, on seven-and-sixpence a
week, with no out-door relief,--what a light, unquenchable by logic
and statistic an