or a moment. The "happy, suffering soul" of Gerontius
lies before the throne of the Crucified and sings:

"Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be,
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep
Told out for me." [13]

Some dozen years before the "Tracts for the Times" began to appear at
Oxford, a sporadic case of conversion at the sister university offers a
closer analogy with the catholicising process among the German romantics.
Kenelm Henry Digby, who took his degree at Trinity College in 1819, and
devoted himself to the study of mediaeval antiquities and scholastic
philosophy, was actually led into the Catholic fold by his enthusiasm for
the chivalry romances, as Pugin was by his love of Gothic architecture.
His singular book, "The Broad Stone of Honour," was first published in
1822, and repeatedly afterwards in greatly enlarged form. In its final
edition it consists of four books entitled respectively "Godefridus,"
"Tancredus," "Morus" (Sir Thomas More), and "Orlandus," after four
representative paladins of Christian chivalry. The title of the whole
work was suggested by the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, the "Gibraltar of
the Rhine." Like Fouque, Digby was inspired by the ideal of knighthood,
but he emphasises not so much the gallantry of the knight-errant as his
religious character as the champion of Holy Church. The book is, loosely
speaking, an English "Genie du Christianisme," less brilliantly
rhetorical than Chateaubriand, but more sincerely devout. It is poetic
and descriptive rather than polemical, though the author constantly
expresses his dislike of modern civilisation, and complains with Burke
that this is an age of sophists, calculators, and economists. He quotes
profusely from German and French reactionaries, like Busching,[14] Fritz
Stolberg, Goerres, Friedrich Schlegel, Lamennais, and Joseph de Maistre,
and illustrates his topic at every turn from mediaeval chronicles,
legendaries, romances, and manuals of chivalry; from the lives of
Charlemagne, St. Louis, Godfrey of Bouillon, the Chevalier Bayard, St.
Anselm, King Rene, etc., and above all, from the "Morte Darthur." He
defends the Crusades, the Templars, and the monastic orders against such
historians as Muller, Sismondi, and Hume; is very contemptuous of the
Protestant concessions of Bishop Hurd's "Letters on Chivalry and
Romance";[15] and, in short, fights a brave battle against the artillery
of "the modern