class, he loved to see the goddess crowned with those garlands of wild
flowers which tradition wreathes for her gentle wearing, and which are
often freshest in their homeliest shapes--he trod with a light step and
bore with a light hand upon the dust of centuries, unwilling to
demolish any of the airy shrines that had been raised above it, if any
good feeling or affection of the human heart were hiding thereabouts.
Thus, in the case of an ancient coffin of rough stone, supposed, for
many generations, to contain the bones of a certain baron, who, after
ravaging, with cut, and thrust, and plunder, in foreign lands, came
back with a penitent and sorrowing heart to die at home, but which had
been lately shown by learned antiquaries to be no such thing, as the
baron in question (so they contended) had died hard in battle, gnashing
his teeth and cursing with his latest breath--the bachelor stoutly
maintained that the old tale was the true one; that the baron,
repenting him of the evil, had done great charities and meekly given up
the ghost; and that, if ever baron went to heaven, that baron was then
at peace. In like manner, when the aforesaid antiquaries did argue and
contend that a certain secret vault was not the tomb of a grey-haired
lady who had been hanged and drawn and quartered by glorious Queen Bess
for succouring a wretched priest who fainted of thirst and hunger at
her door, the bachelor did solemnly maintain, against all comers, that
the church was hallowed by the said poor lady's ashes; that her remains
had been collected in the night from four of the city's gates, and
thither in secret brought, and there deposited; and the bachelor did
further (being highly excited at such times) deny the glory of Queen
Bess, and assert the immeasurably greater glory of the meanest woman in
her realm, who had a merciful and tender heart. As to the assertion
that the flat stone near the door was not the grave of the miser who
had disowned his only child and left a sum of money to the church to
buy a peal of bells, the bachelor did readily admit the same, and that
the place had given birth to no such man. In a word, he would have had
every stone, and plate of brass, the monument only of deeds whose
memory should survive. All others he was willing to forget. They
might be buried in consecrated ground, but he would have had them
buried deep, and never brought to light again.

It was from the lips of such a tutor, that the child