is well; have sham-reverence, and
what also follows, greet with it the wrong man, then all is ill,
and there is nothing well. Alas, if Hero-worship become
Dilettantism, and all except Mammonism be a vain grimace, how
much, in this most earnest Earth, has gone and is evermore going
to fatal destruction, and lies wasting in quiet lazy ruin, no man
regarding it! Till at length no heavenly _Ism_ any longer coming
down upon us, _Isms_ from the other quarter have to mount up.
For the Earth, I say, is an earnest place; Life is no grimace,
but a most serious fact. And so, under universal Dilettantism
much having been stript bare, not the souls of men only, but
their very bodies and bread-cupboards having been stript bare,
and life now no longer possible,--all is reduced to desperation,
to the iron law of Necessity and very Fact again; and to temper
Dilettantism, and astonish it, and burn it up with infernal fire,
arises Chartism, _Bare-backism,_ Sansculottism so-called! May
the gods, and what of unworshiped heroes still remain among us,
avert the omen.--

But however this may be, St. Edmund's Loculus, we find, has the
veils of silk and linen reverently replaced, the lid fastened
down again with its sixteen ancient nails; is wrapt in a new
costly covering of silk, the gift of Hubert Archbishop of
Canterbury: and through the sky-window John of Dice sees it
lifted to its place in the Shrine, the panels of this latter duly
refixed, fit parchment documents being introduced withal;--and
now John and his vestrymen can slide down from the roof, for all
is over, and the Convent wholly awakens to matins. 'When we
assembled to sing matins,' says Jocelin, 'and understood what had
been done, grief took hold of all that had not seen these things,
each saying to himself, "Alas, I was deceived." Matins over, the
Abbot called the Convent to the great Altar; and briefly
recounting the matter, alleged that it had not been in his power,
nor was it permissible or fit, to invite us all to the sight of
such things. At hearing of which, we all wept, and with tears
sang _Te Deum laudamus;_ and hastened to toll the bells in
the Choir.

Stupid blockheads, to reverence their St. Edmund's dead Body in
this manner? Yes, brother;--and yet, on the whole, who knows how
to reverence the Body of a Man? It is the most reverend
phenomenon under this Sun. For the Highest God dwells visible in
that mystic unfathomable Visibility, which calls i