d them a Visitor furnished with the necessary authority for
carrying out so delicate and difficult a mission, and they made choice
of Matthew Paris as the fittest possible person for such a work.
Reluctantly Brother Matthew was compelled to undertake the task; he
started on his northern voyage in 1248, and was absent about a year. In
Norway he soon grew into high favour with King Hacon, who peradventure
would have kept him at his side if he could. This seems to have been the
most important episode in his otherwise uneventful life. But the
advantages and opportunities which were at the command of any ambitious
and studious young monk at St. Alban's were in themselves extraordinary.
We have said that building was always going on. It was going on on a
very large scale indeed in Abbot William's time. That means that there
were the plans and sections and working drawings to be copied for the
architect, and measurements and calculations by the thousand to be
made--_a school of architecture_, in short: and besides that, what Roger
de Wendover was in the scriptorium, that Walter of Colchester, _pictor
et sculptor incomparabilis_, was in the painting room. Walter was a
sculptor; indeed he wrought at his marvellous pulpit which the Abbot set
up in the middle of the church: and he carved the story of St. Alban
upon the great beam over the high altar, and did many another thing of
which we have only too brief descriptions. Then, too, there was Richard,
the monk who decorated the grand new guests' hall _deliciose_, as we are
told, and who painted pictures and carried out other works of
embellishment at a pace which none could have kept up, but that he had
his father to help him with his brush, and another artist, John of
Wallingford, to carry out his great designs, and many more skilled
limners whose names have gone down into silence.

When Abbot William's reign came to an end, the monks were unanimous in
choosing John of Hertford as his successor, and the new Abbot lost no
time in showing favour to Matthew Paris. Next year Roger de Wendover
died, and who could there be so worthy to succeed him as historiographer
as the versatile and accomplished brother, who by this time was the
boast of the great house? And historiographer accordingly Matthew
became--_mutatis mutandis_, a sort of 13th-century editor of the
'Times;' his business was to gather from all points of the compass, if
not the latest news, yet the best and most trustworthy r