n with outspread
wings;' steadily into Hellfire these seven-and-forty years;--and
was not melted into terror even at that, such the Lord's goodness
to me? Coeur-de-Lion!

Richard swore tornado oaths, worse than our armies in Flanders,
To be revenged on that proud Priest. But in the end he
discovered that the Priest was right; and forgave him, and even
loved him. 'King Richard wrote, soon after, to Abbot Samson,
That he wanted one or two of the St. Edmundsbury dogs, which he
heard were good. Abbot Samson sent him dogs of the best;
Richard replied by the present of a ring, which Pope Innocent the
Third 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 skillful man; full of cunning
insight, lively interests; always discerning the road to his
object, be it circuit, be it short-cut, and victoriously
traveling 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