frankly for the immediate help and direction, and to your
own consciences, expressed approval, of God. Live thus, and believe,
and with swiftness of answer proportioned to the frankness of the
trust, most surely the God of hope will fill you with all joy and
peace in believing.

But, if you will not do this, if you have not courage nor heart enough
to break away the fetters of earth, and take up the sensual bed of
it, and walk; if you say that you are _bound_ to win this thing, and
become the other thing, and that the wishes of your friends,--and
the interests of your family,--and the bias of your genius,--and the
expectations of your college,--and all the rest of the bow-wow-wow
of the wild dog-world, must be attended to, whether you like it
or no,--then, at least, for shame give up talk about being free or
independent creatures; recognize yourselves for slaves in whom the
thoughts are put in ward with their bodies, and their hearts manacled
with their hands: and then at least also, for shame, if you refuse to
believe that ever there were men who gave their souls to God,--know
and confess how surely there are those who sell them to His adversary.

LECTURE III.

THE PLEASURES OF DEED.

_ALFRED TO COEUR DE LION._

It was my endeavour, in the preceding lecture, to vindicate the
thoughts and arts of our Saxon ancestors from whatever scorn might lie
couched under the terms applied to them by Dean Stanley,--'fantastic'
and 'childish.' To-day my task must be carried forward, first, in
asserting the grace in fantasy, and the force in infancy, of the
English mind, before the Conquest, against the allegations contained
in the final passage of Dean Stanley's description of the first
founded Westminster; a passage which accepts and asserts, more
distinctly than any other equally brief statement I have met with,
the to my mind extremely disputable theory, that the Norman invasion
was in every respect a sanitary, moral, and intellectual blessing to
England, and that the arrow which slew her Harold was indeed the Arrow
of the Lord's deliverance.

"The Abbey itself," says Dean Stanley,--"the chief work of the
Confessor's life,--was the portent of the mighty future. When Harold
stood beside his sister Edith, on the day of the dedication, and
signed his name with hers as witness to the Charter of the Abbey, he
might have seen that he was sealing his own doom, and preparing for
his own destruction. The solid pillars, the