down into the long sleep. Heavy-laden hoary old Dominus Hugo,
fare thee well.

One thing we cannot mention without a due thrill of horror:
namely, that, in the empty exchequer of Dominus Hugo, there was
not found one penny to distribute to the Poor that they might
pray for his soul! By a kind of godsend, Fifty shillings did, in
the very nick of time, fall due, or seem to fall due, from one of
his Farmers (the _Firmarius_ de Palegrava), and he paid it, and
the Poor had it; though, alas, this too only _seemed_ to fall
due, and we had it to pay again afterwards. Dominus Hugo's
apartments were plundered by his servants, to the last portable
stool, in a few minutes after the breath was out of his body.
Forlorn old Hugo, fare thee well forever.

Chapter V

Twelfth Century

Our Abbot being dead, the _Dominus Rex,_ Henry II, or Ranulf de
Glanvill _Justiciarius_ of England for him, set Inspectors or
Custodiars over us;--not in any breathless haste to appoint a new
Abbot, our revenues coming into his own Scaccarium, or royal
Exchequer, in the meanwhile. They proceeded with some rigour,
these Custodiars; took written inventories, clapt-on seals,
exacted everywhere strict tale and measure: but wherefore should
a living monk complain? The living monk has to do his devotional
drill-exercise; consume his allotted _pitantia,_ what we
call _pittance,_ or ration of victual; and possess his soul
in patience.

Dim, as through a long vista of Seven Centuries, dim and very
strange looks that monk-life to us; the ever-surprising
circumstance this, That it is a _fact_ and no dream, that we see
it there, and gaze into the very eyes of it! Smoke rises daily
from those culinary chimney-throats; there are living human
beings there, who chant, loud-braying, their matins, nones,
vespers; awakening echoes, not to the bodily ear alone. St.
Edmund's Shrine, perpetually illuminated, glows ruddy through
the Night, and through the Night of Centuries withal; St.
Edmundsbury Town paying yearly Forty pounds for that express end.
Bells clang out; on great occasions, all the bells. We have
Processions, Preachings, Festivals, Christmas Plays, _Mysteries_
shewn in the Churchyard, at which latter the Townsfolk sometimes
quarrel. Time was, Time is, as Friar Bacon's Brass Head
remarked; and withal Time will be. There are three Tenses,
_Tempora,_ or Times; and there is one Eternity; and as for us,

'We are such stuff a