trumpet of judgment. And now follows music in lengthened peals, and then in peaceful sweetness hardly endurable from its sublimity, such as might almost be instrumental in creating a world. From what mysterious source does all this proceed in such harmony with religion? seems to have arisen from some kind of instinctive consciousness," says a profound modern, "that admiration, and reverence, and love, and all our higher and purer feelings delight to dwell and repose on their objects, and to linger about them, thereby intimating their original and ultimate union with eternity and infinity and peace; while hatred and arrogance, and every base and malignant passion are abrupt and concise, that is literally, break themselves off and cut themselves short, and thus bear witness of the nothingness from which they are struggling to escape, and into which at the same time they appear impatient to return.”1 Thus there were objectors who condemned the repetitions and the tones and the pauses, and the whole ceremonial in the offices of the Church. Again, it was not a small advantage arising from this ceremonial and discipline, that the poor stranger in every climate found a home in the Church. There he heard the tones and the language which formed his youth to piety; there he beheld the same solemn and beautiful forms with which he had been so familiar in his happy early days. But further, the Church by its institutions and discipline afforded a source of inestimable consolation to all the miserable; to all who were unfortunate in the circumstances of their birth, or in the frame of their bodies, or in the course of their lives. The face of these poor objects was lighted up with the smile of peace and gratitude; their subdued eye sent forth a sweet and gentle beam; men who would otherwise have been left to go to their graves a horror to the thoughtful, a scorn to the half-hearted, children of cursing and bitterness, swallowed up with the deep sullen sense of having been born but to suffer intolerable wrong, and of having been denied the blessed power of loving their fellow-men, were now enabled to sing with the Psalmist, "Quam dilecta tabernacula tua, Domine virtutum circumdabo altare tuum, Domine, ut audiam vocem

1 Guesses at Truth.

laudis, et enarrem universa mirabilia tua. Domine, dilexi decorem domus tuæ, et locum habitationis gloriæ tuæ. Concupiscit et deficit anima mea in atria Domini." O the justice of God! how equally dost thou still hold the balance! Thou seasonest the delights of the prosperous evil men, who seek only their own comfort, with care, melancholy, dolour, jealousy, envy, anxiety, terror, and remorse, which are able to make them sweat blood; thou refreshest the poor in spirit, who may be children of sorrow, with visions and hopes and love, which can unfold heaven to their souls. They dry their eyes, and when they approach the altar of their God, their desires confer more happiness than all the possessions of the proud.

Bone Pastor, Panis vere, Jesu, nostri miserere:

tu nos pasce, nos tuere; tu nos bona fac videre

in terra viventium.

Tu qui cuncta scis et vales, qui nos pascis hic mortales;
tuos ibi commensales, cohæredes et sodales

fac sanctorum civium. Amen.

The Church assigned a practice of devotion for every hour of the day. Besides the offices of the night, at break of day men were invited in the hymn of St. Ambrose to beg the protection of God, peace, government of the senses, guard of the heart, and mortification of the flesh at the third hour, when the Holy Ghost descended upon the Apostles, to pray to the Holy Ghost to replenish their understandings, wills, senses, hearts, and tongues at the sixth hour, which is noon, to look up to the Sun of Justice, to pray for alienation from the heat of concupiscence, mortification of anger, health of body, and peace of mind: at the ninth hour, three o'clock, when the sun is now declining towards the West, to pray their great star, the immovable centre, about which the world is turned, to grant them a happy evening, a constancy in virtue, a good end at vespers, when darkness draweth near, to pray for grace and direction, that when deprived of this temporal light, they may retreat into the bosom of God, the fountain of intellectual light at complins, now that darkness covered the face of the earth, they took shelter like little birds under God's wings, beseeching him to protect them, to drive away evil dreams, and to keep off the adversary, who goeth up and down like a roaring lion, be

:

setting the sheep-fold. The vespers for Saturday were particularly remarkable for expressing their hopes of heaven as the end of the week reminded men of the end of life. The moderns condemned the principle of these divisions with little reason. Let an admirable modern writer defend the ancients here: "We are tardy in finding out the beauty of order; our upstart will cannot be readily brought to acknowledge the sublimity of law. On the contrary, we prate about the uncontrollable vehemence of greatness, the excessive vagaries of genius; as if, forsooth, the uniformity of the sun's march detracted from its glory; as if the orderliness of the universe, by which the Greeks were so charmed that they called the world kóσμos, or order, and made the endeavour to conform thereto the regulative principle of their minds, could in any wise lessen its majesty or loveliness."l

So familiar were men with the divine offices, that the bare mention of the verses or hymns which the Church employed on particular days was considered a sufficient record of the period when an event took place. Thus the curious old poem, lately printed from manuscript in the King of France's library, on the battle of the thirty English and thirty Bretons, states in the title that it was fought "le sammedi devant Letare Jherusalem;" and again, that

Le dimence dapres saint Eglise chanta
Letare Jhlrm en yce saint temps la.

So, in the beautiful legend, by Musäus, of Liebestreue, when the countess is anxiously expecting the return of her lord from the wars : "The vines," she says, "have not yet sent out sprouts, the wind howls through the forest, the savage Harz is white with snow; and the woods must be green, and the vineyards blossom, the Harz must lay aside its wintery covering, before my lord returns. Thus days and weeks passed on: the snow disappeared, the shoots of the vine came out, the woods grew green, and the Veni Creator was entoned in the church; but Count Henry returned not again." It must not be denied, however, that there were evils attending this holy observance, which arose from the conduct of the irreligious and careless part of

Guesses at Truth.

men, who sought to combine obedience to the rules of life with the indulgence of their own weakness or evil passion ; and these are recorded in consequence of the horror and concern which they occasioned to good and brave men. Roger, bishop of Salisbury in King Stephen's time, had been in the days of William Rufus a poor priest, having a cure in a village near to the city of Caen in Normandy. And as it chanced, the first Henry, the king's brother, came thither on a time, and called for a priest to say masse before him. Whereupon this Roger, comying to the altar, had so speedily made an end thereof, that the men of war, which as these were attendant on the said Henry, affirmed that this priest only, above all other, was a chaplin meet to say masse before men of war, because he could make such quick dispatch withal.”1 It must be remembered, however, that William Rufus and his brother were but little distinguished by any religious feeling.2 The expression was terribly solemn which was used to mark the sin of those hurried offices of devotion which wild hunters and profane travellers used sometimes to extort from priests: "Missa sicca non celebratur pro fidelibus." Hence Gilles de Rome is very severe upon the extreme love of hunting which prevailed: he says that "some will not even wait to hear mass, and others, if they hear it, will be so hurried that the priest can hardly finish; et combien que presentement ils soyent à l'office, si ont ils le cueur au boys." Pierre de St. Louis, in his poem La Madeleine, complains of the light behaviour of certain persons in church :

Hélas! combien de fois avez-vous à la messe
Fait voir vos vanités avec votre paresse,
L'esprit toujours distrait et les yeux égarés,
Aux idoles unis, et de Dieu séparés;
Tantôt au damoiseau, puis à la damoiselle,
Amusant celui-ci, parlant à celle-là,

Au scandale public de ceux qui venaient là.

But the horror which these instances excited proves what was the general practice. Women frequently came to church like Marie Clotilde, Queen of Sardinia, in long veils. Froissart relates of the Earl of Foix, that he would never permit any interruption while in the church; and I Holinshed, ii. 372.

2 Eadmeri Historia Novorum, i.

R

knights were among the first to reprove those whose behaviour was contrary to the solemn respect which was due to the altar of God. The opinion of the brave Joinville upon this subject is strikingly evinced, where he relates the following event which took place upon the eve of the battle of Mansourah. "Le jour devant Caresmeprenant, je vis une chose que je vueil bien racompter. Car celui jour mourut un tres-vaillant, preux, et hardy chevalier, qui avoit nom Messire Hugues de Landricourt, qui estoit avec moy à banniere: et fut enterré en ma chapelle. Et ainsi que je oyoie messe, six de mes chevaliers estoient la appuiez sur des sacs d'orge, qui estoient en ma dite chapelle; et parloient hault l'un à l'autre, et faisoient ennuy au prestre qui chantoit messe. Et je me levé, et leur allé dire qu'ils se teussent, et que c'estoit chose villaine à gentilshommes de parler ainsi hault tandis qu'on chantoit la messe. Et ilz commancerent à rire, et me disdrent, qu'ilz parloient ensemble de remarier la femme d'icelui Messire Hugues, qui estoit la en bierre. Et de ce je les reprins durement, et leur dis que telles paroles n'estoient bonnes ne belles; et qu'ilz avoient trop toust oublié leur compaigOr advint-il, que le lendemain, qui fut la grant bataille, dont j'ay devant parlé, du jour de Caresmeprenant. Car on se pouvoit bien rire de leur follie, et en fist Dieu telle vengeance que de tous les six n'en eschappa pas ung, qu'ilz ne feussent tuez, et non point enterrez, et eu la fin a convenu à leurs femmes leur remarier toutes six. Parquoy est à croire que Dieu ne laisse rien impugny de son malfait."

non.

1

XXI. Every thing in these ages bore a devotional aspect, and all objects of human contemplation, mountains, lakes, flowers, birds, were converted into memorials of subjects in religious history. On the eve of St. John, fires on the mountains were symbolical of him who was a burning and shining light. Bridges, streets, and forests, recalled the charity, or the martyrdom, or the holy solitude of the saints, which now are either converted into memorials of war, and trophies of victory over Christian nations, or else designated by "such mincing, minikin, make-believe sounds," as make one wish that they were

1 St. John v.