l again cease to be
opaque, this 'coloured glass.' Nay, may it not become at once
translucent and uncoloured? Painting no Pictures more for us,
but only the everlasting Azure itself? That will be a right
glorious consummation!--

Saint Edmund from the horizon's edge, in shining armour,
threatening the misdoer in his hour of extreme need: it is
beautiful, it is great and true. So old, yet so modern, actual;
true yet for every one of us, as for Henry the Earl and Monk! A
glimpse as of the Deepest in Man's Destiny, which is the same for
all times and ages. Yes, Henry my brother, there in thy extreme
need, thy soul _is lamed;_ and behold thou canst not so much as
fight! For justice and Reverence _are_ the everlasting central
Law of this Universe; and to forget them, and have all the
Universe against one, God and one's own Self for enemies, and
only the Devil and the Dragons for friends, is not that a
'lameness' like few? That some shining armed St. Edmund hang
minatory on thy horizon, that infinite sulphur-lakes hang
minatory, or do not now hang,--this alters no whit the eternal
fact of the thing. I say, thy soul is lamed, and the God and all
Godlike in it marred: lamed, paralytic, tending towards baleful
eternal death, whether thou know it or not;--nay hadst thou never
known it, that surely had been worst of all!--

Thus, at any rate, by the heavenly Awe that overshadows earthly
Business, does Samson, readily in those days, save St. Edmund's
Shrine, and innumerable still more precious things.

Chapter XV

Practical--Devotional

Here indeed, perhaps, by rule of antagonisms, may be the place to
mention that, after King Richard's return, there was a liberty of
tourneying given to the fighting men of England: that a
Tournament was proclaimed in the Abbot's domain, 'between
Thetford and St. Edmundsbury,'--perhaps in the Euston region, on
Fakenham Heights, midway between these two localities: that it
was publicly prohibited by our Lord Abbot; and nevertheless was
held in spite of him,--and by the parties, as would seem,
considered 'a gentle and free passage of arms.'

Nay, next year, there came to the same spot four-and-twenty young
men, sons of Nobles, for another passage of arms; who, having
completed the same, all rode into St. Edmundsbury to lodge for
the night. Here is modesty! Our Lord Abbot, being instructed of
it, ordered the Gates to be closed; the whole party shut in.
The morrow was