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, longdrawn 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 shew 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_*--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 Tombstone of St.
Edmund; in one of the brick niches thereof dwells the present
respectable Mayor of Bury.
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* Goods, properties; what we now call _chattels,_ and still more
singularly _cattle,_ says my erudite friend!
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Certain Times do crystallise themselves in a magnificent manner;
and others, perhaps, are like to do it in rather a shabby one!--
But Richard Arkwright too will have his Monument, a thousand
years hence: all Lancashire and Yorkshire, and how many other
shires and count
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