en of flesh and
blood, made altogether as we are. Had thou and I then been, who
knows but we ourselves had taken refuge from an evil Time, and
fled to dwell here, and meditate on an Eternity, in such fashion
as we could? Alas, how like an old osseous fragment, a broken
blackened shin-bone of the old dead Ages, this black ruin looks
out, not yet covered by the soil; still indicating what a once
gigantic Life lies buried there! It is dead now, and dumb; but
was alive once, and spake. For twenty generations, here was the
earthly arena where painful living men worked out their life-
wrestle,--looked at by Earth, by Heaven and Hell. Bells tolled
to prayers; and men, of many humours, various thoughts, chanted
vespers, matins;--and round the little islet of their life rolled
forever (as round ours still rolls, though we are blind and deaf)
the illimitable Ocean, tinting all things with _its_ eternal hues
and reflexes; making strange prophetic music! How silent now;
all departed, clean gone. The World-Dramaturgist has written:
_Exeunt._ The devouring Time-Demons have made away with it all:
and in its stead, there is either nothing; or what is worse,
offensive universal dustclouds, and grey eclipse of Earth and
Heaven, from 'dry rubbish shot here!'--

Truly, it is no easy matter to get across the chasm of Seven
Centuries, filled with such material. But here, of all helps, is
not a Boswell the welcomest; even a small Boswell? Veracity,
true simplicity of heart, how valuable are these always! He that
speaks what _is_ really in him, will find men to listen, though
under never such impediments. Even gossip, springing free and
cheery from a human heart, this too is a kind of veracity and
_speech;_--much preferable to pedantry and inane grey haze!
Jocelin is weak and garrulous, but he is human. Through the thin
watery gossip of our Jocelin, we do get some glimpses of that
deep-buried Time; discern veritably, though in a fitful
intermittent manner, these antique figures and their life-method,
face to face! Beautifully, in our earnest loving glance, the old
centuries melt from opaque to partially translucent, transparent
here and there; and the void black Night, one finds, is but the
summing up of innumerable peopled luminous _Days._ Not parchment
Chartularies, Doctrines of the Constitution, O Dryasdust; not
altogether, my erudite friend!--

Readers who please to go along with us into this poor _Jocelini
C