al desires are satisfied in stone and marble, in oak and gold, and
remain through all the maddest revolutions of modern England, while all
the ambitions of those who dictated to him have gone away like dust upon
the wind.

Edward the Confessor, like Henry VI., was not only an invalid but almost
an idiot. It is said that he was wan like an albino, and that the awe
men had of him was partly that which is felt for a monster of mental
deficiency. His Christian charity was of the kind that borders on
anarchism, and the stories about him recall the Christian fools in the
great anarchic novels of Russia. Thus he is reported to have covered the
retreat of a common thief upon the naked plea that the thief needed
things more than he did. Such a story is in strange contrast to the
claims made for other kings, that theft was impossible in their
dominions. Yet the two types of king are afterwards praised by the same
people; and the really arresting fact is that the incompetent king is
praised the more highly of the two. And exactly as in the case of the
last Lancastrian, we find that the praise has really a very practical
meaning in the long run. When we turn from the destructive to the
constructive side of the Middle Ages we find that the village idiot is
the inspiration of cities and civic systems. We find his seal upon the
sacred foundations of Westminster Abbey. We find the Norman victors in
the hour of victory bowing before his very ghost. In the Tapestry of
Bayeux, woven by Norman hands to justify the Norman cause and glorify
the Norman triumph, nothing is claimed for the Conqueror beyond his
conquest and the plain personal tale that excuses it, and the story
abruptly ends with the breaking of the Saxon line at Battle. But over
the bier of the decrepit zany, who died without striking a blow, over
this and this alone, is shown a hand coming out of heaven, and declaring
the true approval of the power that rules the world.

The Confessor, therefore, is a paradox in many ways, and in none more
than in the false reputation of the "English" of that day. As I have
indicated, there is some unreality in talking about the Anglo-Saxon at
all. The Anglo-Saxon is a mythical and straddling giant, who has
presumably left one footprint in England and the other in Saxony. But
there was a community, or rather group of communities, living in Britain
before the Conquest under what we call Saxon names, and of a blood
probably more Germanic and ce