Past and Present Part 22

Chap. VII. _The Canva.s.sing._

A new Abbot to be elected. Even gossip, seven centuries off, has significance. The Prior with Twelve Monks, to wait on his Majesty at Waltham. An 'election' the one important social act. Given the Man a People choose, the worth and worthlessness of the People itself is given. (p. 92.)

Chap. VIII. _The Election._

Electoral methods and manipulations. Brother Samson ready oftenest with some question, some suggestion that has wisdom in it. The Thirteen off to Waltham, to choose their Abbot: In the solitude of the Convent, Destiny thus big and in her birthtime, what gossiping, babbling, dreaming of dreams! (p. 96.)--King Henry II. in his high Presence-chamber. Samson chosen Abbot: the King's royal acceptation.

(99.)--St. Edmundsbury Monks, without express ballot-box or other winnowing machine. In every Nation and Community there is at all times _a fittest_, wisest, bravest, best. Human Worth and human Worthlessness. (103.)

Chap. IX. _Abbot Samson._

The Lord Abbot's arrival at St. Edmundsbury: The selfsame Samson yesterday a poor mendicant, this day finds himself a _Dominus Abbas_ and mitred Peer of Parliament. (p. 105.)--Depth and opulence of true social vitality in those old barbarous ages. True Governors go about under all manner of disguises now as then. Genius, Poet; what these words mean George the Third, head charioteer of England; and Robert Burns, gauger of ale in Dumfries. (106.)--How Abbot Samson found a Convent all in dilapidation. His life-long harsh apprentices.h.i.+p to governing, namely obeying. First get your Man; all is got. Danger of blockheads. (108.)

Chap. X. _Government._

Beautiful, how the chrysalis governing-soul, shaking off its dusty slough and prison, starts forth winged, a true royal soul! One first labour, to inst.i.tute a strenuous review and radical reform of his economics. Wheresoever Disorder may stand or lie, let it have a care; here is a man that has declared war with it. (p. 112.)--In less than four years the Convent debts are all liquidated, and the harpy Jews banished from St. Edmundsbury. New life springs beneficent everywhere: Spiritual rubbish as little tolerated as material. (114.)

Chap. XI. _The Abbot's Ways._

Reproaches, open and secret, of ingrat.i.tude, unsociability: Except for 'fit men' in all kinds, hard to say for whom Abbot Samson had much favour. Remembrance of benefits. (p. 117.)--An eloquent man, but intent more on substance than on ornament. A just clear heart the basis of all true talent. One of the justest of judges: His invaluable 'talent of silence.' Kind of people he liked worst. Hospitality and stoicism. (119.)--The country in those days still dark with n.o.ble wood and umbrage: How the old trees gradually died out, no man heeding it.

Monachism itself, so rich and fruitful once, now all rotted into _peat_. Devastations of four-footed cattle and Henry-the-Eighths.

(122.)

Chap. XII. _The Abbot's Troubles._

The troubles of Abbot Samson more than tongue can tell. Not the spoil of victory, only the glorious toil of battle, can be theirs who really govern. An insurrection of the Monks. Behave better, ye remiss Monks, and thank Heaven for such an Abbot. (p. 124.)--Worn down with incessant toil and tribulation: Gleams of hilarity too; little s.n.a.t.c.hes of encouragement granted even to a Governor. How my Lord of Clare, coming to claim his _un_due 'debt,' gets a Roland for his Oliver. A Life of Literature, n.o.ble and ign.o.ble. (126.)

Chap. XIII. _In Parliament._

Confused days of Lackland's usurpation, while Coeur-de-Lion was away: Our brave Abbot took helmet himself, excommunicating all who should favour Lackland. King Richard a captive in Germany. (p.

131.)--St. Edmund's Shrine not meddled with: A heavenly Awe overshadowed and encompa.s.sed, as it still ought and must, all earthly Business whatsoever. (132.)

Chap. XIV. _Henry of Ess.e.x._

How St. Edmund punished terribly, yet with mercy: A Narrative significant of the Time. Henry Earl of Ess.e.x, standard-bearer of England: No right reverence for the Heavenly in Man. A traitor or a coward. Solemn Duel, by the King's appointment. An evil Conscience doth make cowards of us all. (p. 134.)

Chap. XV. _Practical-Devotional._

A Tournament proclaimed and held in the Abbot's domain, in spite of him. Roystering young dogs brought to reason. The Abbot a man that generally remains master at last: The importunate Bishop of Ely outwitted. A man that dare abide King Richard's anger, with justice on his side. Thou brave Richard, thou brave Samson! (p. 139.)--The basis of Abbot Samson's life truly religion. His zealous interest in the Crusades. The great antique heart, like a child's in its simplicity, like a man's in its earnest solemnity and depth. His comparative silence as to his religion precisely the healthiest sign of him and it. Methodism, Dilettantism, Puseyism. (144.)

Chap. XVI. _St. Edmund._

Abbot Samson built many useful, many pious edifices: ALL ruinous, incomplete things an eye-sorrow to him. Rebuilding the great Altar: A glimpse of the glorious Martyr's very Body. What a scene; how far vanished from us, in these unwors.h.i.+pping ages of ours! The manner of men's Hero-wors.h.i.+p, verily the innermost fact of their existence, determining all the rest. (p. 148.)--On the whole, who knows how to reverence the Body of Man? Abbot Samson, at the culminating point of his existence: Our real-phantasmagory of St. Edmundsbury plunges into the bosom of the Twelfth Century again, and all is over. (154.)

Chap. XVII. _The Beginnings._

Formulas the very skin and muscular tissue of a Man's Life: Living Formulas and dead. Habit the deepest law of human nature. A pathway through the pathless. Nationalities. Pulpy infancy, kneaded, baked into any form you choose: The Man of Business; the hard-handed Labourer; the genus Dandy. No Mortal out of the depths of Bedlam but lives by Formulas. (p. 157.)--The hosts and generations of brave men Oblivion has swallowed: Their crumbled dust, the soil our life-fruit grows on. Invention of Speech, Forms of Wors.h.i.+p; Methods of Justice.

This English Land, here and now, the summary of what was wise and n.o.ble, and accordant with G.o.d's Truth, in all the generations of English Men. The thing called 'Fame.' (161.)

BOOK III--THE MODERN WORKER.

Chap. I. _Phenomena._

How men have 'forgotten G.o.d;' taken the Fact of this Universe as it _is not_, G.o.d's Laws become a Greatest-Happiness Principle, a Parliamentary Expediency. Man has lost the _soul_ out of him, and begins to find the want of it. (p. 171.)--The old Pope of Rome, with his stuffed dummy to do the kneeling for him. Few men that wors.h.i.+p by the rotatory Calabash, do it in half so great, frank or effectual a way. (173.)--Our Aristocracy no longer able to _do_ its work, and not in the least conscious that it has any work to do. The Champion of England 'lifted into his saddle.' The Hatter in the Strand, mounting a huge lath-and-plaster Hat. Our n.o.ble ancestors have fas.h.i.+oned for us, in how many thousand senses, a 'life-road;' and we their sons are madly, literally enough, 'consuming the way.' (175.)

Chap. II. _Gospel of Mammonism._

Heaven and h.e.l.l, often as the words are on our tongue, got to be fabulous or semi-fabulous for most of us. The real 'h.e.l.l' of the English. Cash-payment, _not_ the sole or even chief relation of human beings. Practical Atheism, and its despicable fruits. (p. 181.)--One of Dr. Alison's melancholy facts: A poor Irish Widow, in the Lanes of Edinburgh, _proving_ her sisterhood. Until we get a human _soul_ within us, all things are _im_possible: Infatuated geese, with feathers and without. (185.)

Chap. III. _Gospel of Dilettantism._

Mammonism at least works, but 'Go gracefully idle in Mayfair,' what does or can that mean?--Impotent, insolent Donothingism in Practice and Saynothingism in Speech. No man now speaks a plain word: Insincere Speech the prime material of insincere Action. (p. 188.)--Moslem parable of Moses and the Dwellers by the Dead Sea: The Universe _become_ a Humbug to the Apes that thought it one. (190.)

Chap. IV. _Happy._

All work n.o.ble; and every n.o.ble crown a crown of thorns. Man's pitiful pretension to be what he calls 'happy.' His Greatest-Happiness Principle fast becoming a rather unhappy one. Byron's large audience.

A philosophical Doctor: A disconsolate Meat-jack, gnarring and creaking with rust and work. (p. 192.)--The only 'happiness' a brave man ever troubled himself much about, the happiness to get his work done. (195.)

Chap. V. _The English._

With all thy theoretic plat.i.tudes, what a depth of practical sense in thee, great England! A dumb people, who can do great acts, but not describe them. The n.o.ble Warhorse, and the Dog of Knowledge: The freest utterances not by any means the best. (p. 197.)--The done Work, much more than the spoken Word, an epitome of the man. The Man of Practice, and the Man of Theory: Ineloquent Brindley. The English, of all Nations the stupidest in speech, the wisest in action: Sadness and seriousness: Unconsciously this great Universe is great to them. The silent Romans. John Bull's admirable insensibility to Logic.

(198.)--All great Peoples conservative. Kind of Ready-Reckoner a Solecism in Eastcheap. Berserkir rage. Truth and Justice alone _capable_ of being 'conserved.' Bitter indignation engendered by the Corn-Laws in every just English heart. (203.)

Chap. VI. _Two Centuries._

The 'Settlement' of the year 1660 one of the mournfulest that ever took place in this land of ours. The true end of Government, to guide men in the way they should go: The true good of this life, the portal of infinite good in the life to come. Oliver Cromwell's body hung on the Tyburn gallows, the type of Puritanism found futile, inexecutable, execrable. The Spiritualism of England, for two G.o.dless centuries, utterly forgettable: Her practical material Work alone memorable. (p.

208.)--Bewildering obscurations and impediments: Valiant Sons of Toil enchanted, by the million, in their Poor-Law Bastille. Giant Labour yet to be King of this Earth. (211.)

Chap. VII. _Over-Production._