hbishop she. Archbishop of
Athens, too--archbishops may marry out there! Before she was
twenty she knew all that men may know; she was worth two
universities of Paris any day; she foretold the coming of
plagues and storms, and eclipses--and--more wonderful
still--the coming of earthquakes too: and John of
Basingstoke was her scholar, and whatever he knew that was
deep and rare, he learnt it of the lady Constantina, the
Archbishop's daughter.'

Matthew is very great when he has to tell of omens and portents:

'We were scurvily treated by Pope Innocent III.,' he says,
'in the days of Abbot John. Spite of all our privileges and
indulgences, the Pope would have him come to Rome every
third year; a sore burden and harm to us all. Forthwith evil
omens came. Thrice in three years was our tower struck by
lightning. After that wrong of his Holiness it was no wonder
that the impression of the papal seal in wax, which we had
taken good care to fix on the top of the steeple, availed
not to keep off the thunderbolt--small good you see in that
kind of thing.'

Besides the miscellaneous paragraphs, there are periodical reports of
the weather, and the storms, and the droughts, and the harvests.
Moreover, there are what answer to our police reports, and details of
criminal proceedings against Jew and Gentile, and births and deaths and
marriages, and now and then brief notes upon the state of the markets,
and sometimes hints and reflections upon the desirability of certain
reforms in Church and State; and all this not in the spirit of modern
journalism, which at its best too often bears the marks of haste, and
betrays the literary soldier of fortune paid for his work at so much a
column, but genuine, hearty, throbbing with a certain passionate loyalty
to a tradition, or an idea which you may say is exploded, grotesque, or
fanciful, but which in the 13th century honest men and devout ones lived
by and lived for, and were trying in their own way to carry out into
action.

But now that we have got this precious 'Chronicle,' not to mention other
works in the composition of which Brother Matthew had at least a large
share--though our space forbids us dwelling upon them or their contents,
and we must refer our readers to Dr. Luard's elaborate prefaces if they
would desire to know all about them--another question suggests itself,
which sooner or late