spirit in its author, as well as of a pretty talent for writing easy
prose. If he never rises to the more mystical and poetical beauties of
mediaeval religion, so he never descends to its ferocities and its
puerilities. The rule, the "lady-rule," he says, is the inward; the
outward is only adopted in order to assist and help the inward:
therefore it may and should vary according to the individual, while
the inward cannot. The outward rule of the anchoresses of Tarrant
Keynes was by no means rigorous. They were three in number; they had
lay sisters (practically lady's-maids) as well as inferior servants.
They are not to reduce themselves to bread-and-water fasting without
special direction; they are not to be ostentatious in alms-giving;
they may have a pet cat; haircloth and hedgehog-skins are not for
them; and they are not to flog themselves with briars or leaded
thongs. Ornaments are not to be worn; but a note says that this is not
a positive command, all such things belonging merely to the external
rule. Also they may wash just as often as it is necessary, or as they
like!--an item which, absurd as is the popular notion of the dirt of
the Middle Ages, speaks volumes for the sense and taste of this
excellent anonym.

This part is the last or eighth "dole," as the sections are termed;
the remaining seven deal with religious service, private devotion, the
_Wesen_ or nature of anchorites, temptation, confession, penance,
penitence, and the love of God. Although some may think it out of
fashion, it is astonishing how much sense, kindliness, true religion,
and useful learning there is in this monitor of the anchoresses of
Tarrant Keynes, which place a man might well visit in pilgrimage to
do him honour. Every now and then, rough as is his vehicle of
speech--a transition medium, endowed neither with the oak-and-rock
strength of Anglo-Saxon nor with the varied gifts of modern
English--he can rise to real and true eloquence, as where he speaks of
the soul and "the heavy flesh that draweth her downwards, yet through
the highship [nobleness] of her, it [the flesh] shall become full
light--yea, lighter than the wind is, and brighter than the sun is, if
only it follow her and draw her not too hard to its own low kind." But
though such passages, good in phrase and rhythm, as well as noble in
sense, are not rare, the pleasant humanity of the whole book is the
best thing in it. M. Renan oddly enough pronounced _Ecclesiastes_,
tha