dust; re-created, as it were, by the breath of religion, he adopted
its tenets even after the fashion of his age. The secret of his
shame, the error of his conscience, humbled him. Those unlettered
monks whom he had so despised, how had he lost the right to stand
aloof from their control! how had his wisdom, and his strength, and
his courage, met unguarded the hour of temptation!

Yes, might the time come, when England could spare him from her side!
when he, like Sweyn the outlaw, could pass a pilgrim to the Holy
Sepulchre, and there, as the creed of the age taught, win full pardon
for the single lie of his truthful life, and regain the old peace of
his stainless conscience!

There are sometimes event and season in the life of man the hardest
and most rational, when he is driven perforce to faith the most
implicit and submissive; as the storm drives the wings of the petrel
over a measureless sea, till it falls tame, and rejoicing at refuge,
on the sails of some lonely ship. Seasons when difficulties, against
which reason seems stricken into palsy, leave him bewildered in dismay
--when darkness, which experience cannot pierce, wraps the conscience,
as sudden night wraps the traveller in the desert--when error
entangles his feet in its inextricable web--when, still desirous of
the right, he sees before him but a choice of evil; and the Angel of
the Past, with a flaming sword, closes on him the gates of the Future.
Then, Faith flashes on him, with a light from the cloud. Then, he
clings to Prayer as a drowning wretch to the plank. Then, that solemn
authority which clothes the Priest, as the interpreter between the
soul and the Divinity, seizes on the heart that trembles with terror
and joy; then, that mysterious recognition of Atonement, of sacrifice,
of purifying lustration (mystery which lies hid in the core of all