nd proceeding he found the feet standing stiff up, like the
feet of a man dead yesterday; and he touched the toes and counted them
(_tangendo numeravit_).

'And now it was agreed that the other Brethren should be called
forward to see the miracles; and accordingly those ten now advanced,
and along with them six others who had stolen in without the Abbot's
assent, namely, Walter of St. Alban's, Hugh the Infirmirarius, Gilbert
brother of the Prior, Richard of Henham, Jocellus our Cellarer, and
Turstan the Little; and all these saw the Sacred Body, but Turstan
alone of them put forth his hand, and touched the Saint's knees and
feet. And that there might be abundance of witnesses, one of our
Brethren, John of Dice, sitting on the roof of the Church, with the
servants of the Vestry, and looking through, clearly saw all these
things.'

* * * * *

What a scene; shining luminous effulgent, as the lamps of St. Edmund
do, through the dark Night; John of Dice, with vestrymen, clambering
on the roof to look through; the Convent all asleep, and the Earth all
asleep,--and since then, Seven Centuries of Time mostly gone to sleep!
Yes, there, sure enough, is the martyred Body of Edmund, landlord of
the Eastern Counties, who, nobly doing what he liked with his own, was
slain three hundred years ago: and a noble awe surrounds the memory of
him, symbol and promoter of many other right noble things.

But have not we now advanced to strange new stages of Hero-worship,
now in the little Church of Hampden, with our penknives out, and
twelve grave-diggers with pulleys? The manner of men's Hero-worship,
verily it is the innermost fact of their existence, and determines all
the rest,--at public hustings, in private drawing-rooms, in church,
in market, and wherever else. Have true reverence, and what indeed is
inseparable therefrom, reverence the right man, all is well; have
sham-reverence, and what also follows, greet with it the wrong man,
then all is ill, and there is nothing well. Alas, if Hero-worship
become Dilettantism, and all except Mammonism be a vain grimace, how
much, in this most earnest Earth, has gone and is evermore going to
fatal destruction, and lies wasting in quiet lazy ruin, no man
regarding it! Till at length no heavenly _Ism_ any longer coming down
upon us, _Isms_ from the other quarter have to mount up. For the
Earth, I say, is an earnest place; Life is no grimace, but a most
serious fac