; that it may become in thee as
noble central heat, fruitful, strong, beneficent; not blaze out,
or the seldomest possible blaze out, as wasteful volcanoism to
scorch and consume!

"We must first creep, and gradually learn to walk," had Abbot
Samson said of himself, at starting. In four years he has become
a great walker; striding prosperously along; driving much
before him. In less than four years, says Jocelin, the Convent
Debts were all liquidated: the harpy Jews not only settled
with, but banished, bag and baggage, out of the _Bannaleuca_
(Liberties, _Banlieue_) of St. Edmundsbury,--so has the King's
Majesty been persuaded to permit. Farewell to _you,_ at any
rate; let us, in no extremity, apply again to you! Armed men
march them over the borders, dismiss them under stern penalties,
--sentence of excommunication on all that shall again harbour them
here: there were many dry eyes at their departure.

New life enters everywhere, springs up beneficent, the Incubus of
Debt once rolled away. Samson hastes not; but neither does he
pause to rest. This of the Finance is a life-long business with
him;--Jocelin's anecdotes are filled to weariness with it. As
indeed to Jocelin it was of very primary interest.

But we have to record also, with a lively satisfaction, that
spiritual rubbish is as little tolerated in Samson's Monastery as
material. With due rigour, Willelmus Sacrista, and his bibations
and _tacenda_ are, at the earliest opportunity, softly, yet
irrevocably put an end to. The bibations, namely, had to end;
even the building where they used to be carried on was razed from
the soil of St. Edmundsbury, and 'on its place grow rows of
beams:' Willelmus himself, deposed from the Sacristry and all
offices, retires into obscurity, into absolute taciturnity
unbroken thenceforth to this hour. Whether the poor Willelmus
did not still, by secret channels, occasionally get some slight
wetting of vinous or alcoholic liquor,--now grown, in a manner,
indispensable to the poor man? Jocelin hints not; one knows not
how to hope, what to hope! But if he did, it was in silence and
darkness; with an ever-present feeling that teetotalism was his
only true course.

Drunken dissolute Monks are a class of persons who had better
keep out of Abbot Samson's way. _Saevit ut lupus;_ was not the
Dream true! murmured many a Monk. Nay Ranulf de Glanville,
Justiciary in Chief, took umbrage at him, seeing these stric