world, and with it reverence. Coventry Patmore says: "God clothes
Himself actually and literally with His whole creation. Herbs take
up and assimilate minerals, beasts assimilate herbs, and God, in
the Incarnation and its proper Sacrament, assimilates us, who, says
St Augustine, 'are God's beasts.'" It is man in his blind self-
seeking who separates woof from weft in the living garment of God,
and loses the more as he neglects the outward and visible signs of
a world-wide grace.

In olden days the herd led his flock, going first in the post of
danger to defend the creatures he had weaned from their natural
habits for his various uses. Now that good relationship has ceased
for us to exist, man drives the beasts before him, means to his
end, but with no harmony between end and means. All day long the
droves of sheep pass me on their lame and patient way, no longer
freely and instinctively following a protector and forerunner, but
DRIVEN, impelled by force and resistless will--the same will which
once went before without force. They are all trimmed as much as
possible to one pattern, and all make the same sad plaint. It is a
day on which to thank God for the unknown tongue. The drover and
his lad in dusty blue coats plod along stolidly, deaf and blind to
all but the way before them; no longer wielding the crook,
instrument of deliverance, or at most of gentle compulsion, but
armed with a heavy stick and mechanically dealing blows on the
short thick fleeces; without evil intent because without thought--
it is the ritual of the trade.

Of all the poor dumb pilgrims of the road the bullocks are the most
terrible to see. They are not patient, but go most unwillingly
with lowered head and furtive sideways motion, in their eyes a