abstained also from flesh
and fleshmeats (_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, 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 Earth a mystic Temple to him, the Earth's business all a kind
of worship. Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common
sunlight; angels yet hover doing God's messages among men: that
rainbow was set in the clouds by the hand of God! Wonder,
miracle encompass the man; he lives in an element of miracle;
Heaven's splendour over his head, Hell's darkness under his feet.
A great Law of Duty, high as these two Infinitudes, dwarfing all
else, annihilating all else,--making royal Richard as small as
peasant Samson, smaller if need be!--The 'imaginative faculties?'
'Rude poetic ages?' The 'primeval poetic element?' O for God's
sake, good reader, talk no more of all that! It was not a
Dilettantism this of Abbot Samson. It was a Reality, and it is
one. The garment only of it is dead; the essence of it lives
through all Time and all Eternity!

And truly, as we said above, is not this comparative silence of
Abbot Samson as to his religion, precisely the healthiest sign of
him and of it? 'The Unconscious is the alone Complete.' Abbot
Samson all along a busy working man, as all men are bound to be,
his religion, his worship was like his daily bread to him;--which
he did not take the trouble to talk much about; which he merely
ate at stated intervals, and lived and did his work upon! This
is Abbot Samson's Catholicism of the Twelfth Century;--something
like the _Ism_ of all true men in all true centuries, I fancy!
Alas, compared with any of the _Isms_ current in these poor days,
what a thing! Compared with the respectablest, morbid,
struggling Methodism, never so earnest; with the respectablest,
ghastly, dead or galvanised Dilettantism, never so spasmodic!

Methodism with its eye forever turned on its own navel; asking
itself with torturing anxiety of Hope and Fear, "Am I right, am I
wrong? Shall I be saved, shall I not be damned?"--what