had given him. Thou brave Richard, thou brave
Samson! Richard too, I suppose, 'loved a man,' and knew one when he
saw him.

* * * * *

No one will accuse our Lord Abbot of wanting worldly wisdom, due
interest in worldly things. A skilful man; full of cunning insight,
lively interests; always discerning the road to his object, be it
circuit, be it short-cut, and victoriously travelling forward thereon.
Nay rather it might seem, from Jocelin's Narrative, as if he had his
eye all but exclusively directed on terrestrial matters, and was much
too secular for a devout man. But this too, if we examine it, was
right. For it is _in_ the world that a man, devout or other, has his
life to lead, his work waiting to be done. The basis of Abbot
Samson's, we shall discover, was truly religion, after all. Returning
from his dusty pilgrimage, with such welcome as we saw, 'he sat down
at the foot of St. Edmund's Shrine.' Not a talking theory, that; no, a
silent practice: Thou, St. Edmund, with what lies in thee, thou now
must help me, or none will!

This also is a significant fact: the zealous interest our Abbot took
in the Crusades. To all noble Christian hearts of that era, what
earthly enterprise so noble? 'When Henry II., having taken the cross,
came to St. Edmund's, to pay his devotions before setting out, the
Abbot secretly made for himself a cross of linen cloth: and, holding
this in one hand and a threaded needle in the other, asked leave of
the King to assume it.' The King could not spare Samson out of
England;--the King himself indeed never went. But the Abbot's eye was
set on the Holy Sepulchre, as on the spot of this Earth where the true
cause of Heaven was deciding itself. 'At the retaking of Jerusalem by
the Pagans, Abbot Samson put on a cilice and hair-shirt, and wore
under-garments of hair-cloth ever after; he abstained also from flesh
and flesh-meats (_carne et carneis_) thenceforth to the end of his
life.' Like a dark cloud eclipsing the hopes of Christendom, those
tidings cast their shadow over St. Edmundsbury too: Shall Samson Abbas
take pleasure while Christ's Tomb is in the hands of the Infidel?
Samson, in pain of body, shall daily be reminded of it, daily be
admonished to grieve for it.

The great antique heart: how like a child's in its simplicity, like a
man's in its earnest solemnity and depth! Heaven lies over him
wheresoever he goes or stands on the Earth; making all the Ear