with a mien and motion of austere anger. At St. Edmund's hand
there stood also another Knight, Gilbert de Cereville, whose armour
was not so splendid, whose stature was less gigantic; casting vengeful
looks at him. This he seeing with his eyes, remembered that old crime
brings new shame. And now wholly desperate, and changing reason into
violence, he took the part of one blindly attacking, not skilfully
defending. Who while he struck fiercely was more fiercely struck; and
so, in short, fell down vanquished, and it was thought slain. As he
lay there for dead, his kinsmen, Magnates of England, besought the
King, that the Monks of Reading might have leave to bury him. However,
he proved not to be dead, but got well again among them; and now, with
recovered health, assuming the Regular Habit, he strove to wipe out
the stain of his former life, to cleanse the long week of his
dissolute history by at least a purifying sabbath, and cultivate the
studies of Virtue into fruits of eternal Felicity.'[20]

* * * * *

Thus does the Conscience of man project itself athwart whatsoever of
knowledge or surmise, of imagination, understanding, faculty,
acquirement, or natural disposition, he has in him; and, like light
through coloured glass, paint strange pictures 'on the rim of the
horizon' and elsewhere! Truly, this same 'sense of the Infinite nature
of Duty' is the central part of all with us; a ray as of Eternity and
Immortality, immured in dusky many-coloured Time, and its deaths and
births. Your 'coloured glass' varies so much from century to
century;--and, in certain money-making, game-preserving centuries, it
gets so terribly opaque! Not a Heaven with cherubim surrounds you
then, but a kind of vacant leaden-coloured Hell. One day it will again
cease to be _opaque_, this 'coloured glass.' Nay, may it not become at
once translucent and _un_coloured? Painting no Pictures more for us,
but only the everlasting Azure itself? That will be a right glorious
consummation!--

Saint Edmund from the horizon's edge, in shining armour, threatening
the misdoer in his hour of extreme need: it is beautiful, it is great
and true. So old, yet so modern, actual; true yet for every one of us,
as for Henry the Earl and Monk! A glimpse as of the Deepest in Man's
Destiny, which is the same for all times and ages. Yes, Henry my
brother, there in thy extreme need, thy soul is _lamed_; and behold
thou canst not so much as f