true; and I thought I would place before him a _ferculum_ that
would have displeased any other person, the very platter being black
and broken. But he, seeing it, was as one that saw it not: and now
some little delay taking place, my heart smote me that I had done
this; and so, snatching up the platter (_discus_), I changed both it
and its contents for a better, and put down that instead; which
emendation he was angry at, and rebuked me for,'--the stoical monastic
man! 'For the first seven years he had commonly four sorts of dishes
on his table; afterwards only three, except it might be presents, or
venison from his own parks, or fishes from his ponds. And if, at any
time, he had guests living in his house at the request of some great
person, or of some friend, or had public messengers, or had harpers
(_citharoedos_), or any one of that sort, he took the first
opportunity of shifting to another of his Manor-houses, and so got rid
of such superfluous individuals,'[13]--very prudently, I think.

As to his parks, of these, in the general repair of buildings, general
improvement and adornment of the St. Edmund Domains, 'he had laid out
several, and stocked them with animals, retaining a proper huntsman
with hounds: and, if any guest of great quality were there, our Lord
Abbot with his Monks would sit in some opening of the woods, and see
the dogs run; but he himself never meddled with hunting, that I
saw.'[14]

* * * * *

'In an opening of the woods;'--for the country was still dark with
wood in those days; and Scotland itself still rustled shaggy and
leafy, like a damp black American Forest, with cleared spots and
spaces here and there. Dryasdust advances several absurd hypotheses as
to the insensible but almost total disappearance of these woods; the
thick wreck of which now lies as _peat_, sometimes with huge
heart-of-oak timber-logs imbedded in it, on many a height and hollow.
The simplest reason doubtless is, that by increase of husbandry, there
was increase of cattle; increase of hunger for green spring food; and
so, more and more, the new seedlings got yearly eaten out in April;
and the old trees, having only a certain length of life in them, died
gradually, no man heeding it, and disappeared into _peat_.

A sorrowful waste of noble wood and umbrage! Yes,--but a very common
one; the course of most things in this world. Monachism itself, so
rich and fruitful once, is now all rotted