e, I will next tell you. I saw the Teviot oozing, not flowing,
between its wooded banks, a mere sluggish injection, among the filthy
stones, of poisonous pools of scum-covered ink; and in front of Jedburgh
Abbey, where the foaming river used to dash round the sweet ruins as if
the rod of Moses had freshly cleft the rock for it, bare and foul
nakedness of its bed, the whole stream carried to work in the mills, the
dry stones and crags of it festering unseemly in the evening sun, and
the carcass of a sheep, brought down in the last flood, lying there in
the midst of the children at their play, literal and ghastly symbol, in
the sweetest pastoral country in the world, of the lost sheep of the
house of Israel.

That is your symbol to-day, of the Lamb as it had been slain; and that
the work of your prayerless science;--the issues, these, of your
enlightened teaching, and of all the toils and the deaths of the
Covenanters on those barren hills, of the prophetic martyrs here in your
crossing streets, and of the highest, sincerest, simplest patriot of
Catholic England, Sir Thomas More, within the walls of England's central
Tower. So is ended, with prayer for the bread of this life, also the
hope of the life that is to come. Yet I will take leave to show you the
light of that hope, as it shone on, and guided, the children of the ages
of faith.

290. Of that legend of St. Ursula which I read to you so lately, you
remember, I doubt not, that the one great meaning is the victory of her
faith over all fears of death. It is the laying down of all the joy, of
all the hope, nay of all the Love, of this life, in the eager
apprehension of the rejoicing and the love of Eternity. What truth there
was in such faith I dare not say that I know; but what manner of human
souls it made, you may for yourselves _see_. Here are enough brought to
you, of the thoughts of a believing people.[180] This maid in her purity
is no fable; this is a Venetian maid, as she was seen in the earthly
dawn, and breathed on by the breeze of her native sea. And here she is
in her womanhood, in her courage and perfect peace, waiting for her
death.

I have sent for this drawing for you, from Sheffield, where it is to
stay, they needing it more than you. It is the best of all that my
friend did with me at Venice, for St. George, and with St. George's help
and St. Ursula's. It shows you only a piece of the great picture of the
martyrdom--nearly all have fallen around