ary wages of his servants and men-of-war he
increased, and further showed himself very well bent to all virtue and
goodness." [228]

Extracting the pith from these eulogies, it is clear that, as wise
statesman no less than as good king, Harold sought to strengthen himself
in the three great elements of regal power;--Conciliation of the Church,
which had been opposed to his father; The popular affection, on which his
sole claim to the crown reposed; And the military force of the land,
which had been neglected in the reign of his peaceful predecessor.

To the young Atheling he accorded a respect not before paid to him; and,
while investing the descendant of the ancient line with princely state,
and endowing him with large domains, his soul, too great for jealousy,
sought to give more substantial power to his own most legitimate rival,
by tender care and noble counsels,--by efforts to raise a character
feeble by nature, and denationalised by foreign rearing. In the same
broad and generous policy, Harold encouraged all the merchants from other
countries who had settled in England, nor were even such Normans as had
escaped the general sentence of banishment on Godwin's return, disturbed
in their possessions. "In brief," saith the Anglo-Norman chronicler
[229], "no man was more prudent in the land, more valiant in arms, in the
law more sagacious, in all probity more accomplished:" and "Ever active,"
says more mournfully the Saxon writer, "for the good of his country, he
spared himself no fatigue by land or by sea." [230] From this time,
Harold's private life ceased. Love and its charms were no more. The
glow of romance had vanished. He was not one man; he was the state, the
representative, the incarnation of Saxon England: his sway and the Saxon
freedom, to live or fall together!

The soul really grand is only tested in its errors. As we know the true
might of the intellect by the rich resources and patient strength with
which it redeems a failure, so do we prove the elevation of the soul by
its courageous return into light, its instinctive rebound into higher
air, after some error that has darkened its vision and soiled its plumes.
A spirit less noble and pure than Harold's, once entering on the dismal
world of enchanted superstition, had habituated itself to that nether
atmosphere; once misled from hardy truth and healthful reason, it had
plunged deeper and deeper into the maze. But, unlike his contemporary,
Macbe