olute, wayward prince
whose chief characteristics have just been described. His titles of
Confessor and Saint belong not to the general instincts of Christendom
but to the most transitory feelings of the age." (I protest, No.) "His
opinions, his prevailing motives, were such as in no part of modern
Europe would now be shared by any educated teacher or ruler." (That's
true enough.) "But in spite of these irreconcilable differences,
there was a solid ground for the charm which he exercised over his
contemporaries. His childish and eccentric fancies have passed away;"
(I protest, No;) "but his innocent faith and his sympathy with his
people are qualities which, even in our altered times, may still
retain their place in the economy of the world. Westminster Abbey,
so we hear it said, sometimes with a cynical sneer, sometimes with
a timorous scruple, has admitted within its walls many who have been
great without being good, noble with a nobleness of the earth earthy,
worldly with the wisdom of this world. But it is a counterbalancing
reflection, that the central tomb, round which all those famous names
have clustered, contains the ashes of one who, weak and erring as he
was, rests his claims of interment here, not on any act of power or
fame, but only on his artless piety and simple goodness. He, towards
whose dust was attracted the fierce Norman, and the proud Plantagenet,
and the grasping Tudor, and the fickle Stuart, even the Independent
Oliver, the Dutch William, and the Hanoverian George, was one whose
humble graces are within the reach of every man, woman, and child
of every time, if we rightly part the immortal substance from the
perishable form."

Now I have read you these passages from Dean Stanley as the most
accurately investigatory, the most generously sympathetic, the most
reverently acceptant account of these days, and their people, which
you can yet find in any English history. But consider now, point by
point, where it leaves you. You are told, first, that you are living
in an age of poetry. But the days of poetry are those of Shakespeare
and Milton, not of Bede: nay, for their especial wealth in melodious
theology and beautifully rhythmic and pathetic meditation, perhaps
the days which have given us 'Hiawatha,' 'In Memoriam,' 'The Christian
Year,' and the 'Soul's Diary' of George Macdonald, may be not with
disgrace compared with those of Caedmon. And nothing can be farther
different from the temper, nothing