s Dreams are made of!'

Indisputable, though very dim to modern vision, rests on its hill-
slope that same _Bury,_ _Stow,_ or Town of St. Edmund; already a
considerable place, not without traffic, nay manufactures, would
Jocelin only tell us what. Jocelin is totally careless of
telling: but, through dim fitful apertures, we can see
_Fullones,_ 'Fullers,' see cloth-making; looms dimly going,
dye-vats, and old women spinning yarn. We have Fairs too,
_Nundinae,_ in due course; and the Londoners give us much
trouble, pretending that they, as a metropolitan people, are
exempt from toll. Besides there is Field-husbandry, with
perplexed settlement of Convent rents: comricks pile themselves
within burgh, in their season; and cattle depart and enter; and
even the poor weaver has his cow,--'dung-heaps' lying quiet at
most doors (_ante foras,_ says the incidental Jocelin), for the
Town has yet no improved police. Watch and ward nevertheless we
do keep, and have Gates,--as what Town must not; thieves so
abounding; war, _werra,_ such a frequent thing! Our thieves, at
the Abbot's judgment bar, deny; claim wager of battle; fight,
are beaten, and _then_ hanged. 'Ketel, the thief,' took this
course; and it did nothing for him,--merely brought us, and
indeed himself, new trouble!

Every way a most foreign Time. What difficulty, for example, has
our Cellerarius to collect the _repselver,_ 'reaping silver,' or
penny, which each householder is by law bound to pay for cutting
down the Convent grain! Richer people pretend that it is
commuted, that it is this and the other; that, in short, they
will not pay it. Our _Cellerarius_ gives up calling on the rich.
In the houses of the poor, our _Cellerarius_ finding, in like
manner, neither penny nor good promise, snatches, without
ceremony, what _vadium_ (pledge, _wad_) he can come at: a joint-
stool, kettle, nay the very house-door, _'hostium;'_ and old
women, thus exposed to the unfeeling gaze of the public, rush out
after him with their distaffs and the angriest shrieks:
_'vetulae exibant cum colis suis,'_ says Jocelin, 'minantes
et exprobrantes.'_

What a historical picture, glowing visible, as St. Edmund's
Shrine by night, after Seven long Centuries or so! _Vetulae cum
colis:_ My venerable ancient spinning grandmothers,--ah, and ye
too have to shriek, and rush out with your distaffs; and become
Female Chartists, and scold all evening with void doorway;--and
in