"I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad
In leathern girdle, with a clasp of bone,"


you have the expression of his sense of the increasing luxury of the
age, already sapping its faith. But when Bellincion Berti walked abroad
in skins not yet made into leather, and with the bones of his dinner in
a heap at his door, instead of being cut into girdle clasps, he was
just as far from capacity of being a Christian.

55. The following passage, from Carlyle's "Chartism," expresses better
than any one else has done, or is likely to do it, the nature of this
Christian era, (extending from the twelfth to the sixteenth century,)
in England,--the like being entirely true of it elsewhere:--

"In those past silent centuries, among those silent classes, much had
been going on. Not only had red deer in the New and other forests been
got preserved and shot; and treacheries [1] of Simon de Montfort, wars
of Red and White Roses, battles of Crecy, battles of Bosworth, and many
other battles, been got transacted and adjusted; but England wholly,
not without sore toil and aching bones to the millions of sires and the
millions of sons of eighteen generations, had been got drained and
tilled, covered with yellow harvests, beautiful and rich in
possessions. The mud-wooden Caesters and Chesters had become steepled,
tile-roofed, compact towns. Sheffield had taken to the manufacture of
Sheffield whittles. Worstead could from wool spin yarn, and knit or
weave the same into stockings or breeches for men. England had property
valuable to the auctioneer; but the accumulate manufacturing,
commercial, economic skill which lay impalpably warehoused in English