ting his noble deeds and godlike walk and
conversation while on Earth. Till, at length, the very Pope and
Cardinals at Rome were forced to hear of it; and they, summing up as
correctly as they well could, with _Advocatus-Diaboli_ pleadings and
their other forms of process, the general verdict of mankind,
declared: That he had, in very fact, led a hero's life in this world;
and being now _gone_, was gone, as they conceived, to God above, and
reaping his reward _there_. Such, they said, was the best judgment
they could form of the case;--and truly not a bad judgment. Acquiesced
in, zealously adopted, with full assent of 'private judgment,' by all
mortals.

* * * * *

The rest of St. Edmund's history, for the reader sees he has now
become a _Saint_, is easily conceivable. Pious munificence provided
him a _loculus_, a _feretrum_ or shrine; built for him a wooden
chapel, a stone temple, ever widening and growing by new pious
gifts;--such the overflowing heart feels it a blessedness to solace
itself by giving. St. Edmund's Shrine glitters now with diamond
flowerages, with a plating of wrought gold. The wooden chapel, as we
say, has become a stone temple. Stately masonries, long-drawn arches,
cloisters, sounding aisles buttress it, begirdle it far and wide.
Regimented companies of men, of whom our Jocelin is one, devote
themselves, in every generation, to meditate here on man's Nobleness
and Awfulness, and celebrate and show forth the same, as they best
can,--thinking they will do it better here, in presence of God the
Maker, and of the so Awful and so Noble made by Him. In one word, St.
Edmund's Body has raised a Monastery round it. To such length, in
such manner, has the Spirit of the Time visibly taken body, and
crystallised itself here. New gifts, houses, farms, _katalla_[6]--come
ever in. King Knut, whom men call Canute, whom the Ocean-tide would
not be forbidden to wet,--we heard already of this wise King, with his
crown and gifts; but of many others, Kings, Queens, wise men and noble
loyal women, let Dryasdust and divine Silence be the record!
Beodric's-Worth has become St. Edmund's _Bury_;--and lasts visible to
this hour. All this that thou now seest, and namest Bury Town, is
properly the Funeral Monument of Saint or Landlord Edmund. The present
respectable Mayor of Bury may be said, like a Fakeer (little as he
thinks of it), to have his dwelling in the extensive, many-sculptured
Tombs