contains not a few noble and eloquent passages. Of these we cite but a single one, and that because it bears directly upon a theme which was soon to engross for some time the best thoughts of Carlyle:

CROMWELL'S PLACE IN HISTORY.

"As things gradually became manifest the character of the Puritans began to clear itself. Their memories were one after another taken down from the gibbet; nay, a certain portion of them are now as good as canonized. . . . One Puritan, I think, and almost he alone, our poor Oliver, seems to hang yet on his gibbet, and finds no hearty apologist anywhere. His dead body was hung in chains; his 'Place in History' has been a place of ignominy, accusation, blackness, and disgrace; and here to-day, who knows if it is not a rash act in me to be among the first to pronounce him not a knave and a liar, but a genuinely honest man?"

In 1843 Carlyle put forth his "Past and Present," a book about one half larger than "Sartor Resartus," and worth about one tenth as much. It is a kind of hodge-podge, or olla podrida, compounded somewhat in this wise: Eight centuries ago or thereabouts, Henry the Second being King of England, a hitherto obscure monk, named Samson, was most unexpectedly made Abbot of the great monastery of St. Edmundsbury. Abbot Samson found the monastery in the most deplorable condition every way. The monks were given to wine-bibbing and gluttony; so much so that

they were forced to have stated times of blood, letting (tempora minutionis), this necessary sa natory operation being undergone in common. Moreover, the mere temporal affairs of the monastery had gone to the bad. The vast revenues of St. Edmund had been fearfully squandered, and the Saint was terribly in debt to Hebrew moneylenders, whose bonds, duly executed, at double, triple, or tenfold compound interest, had become awful to contemplate.

We give a single specimen of monkish and Hebrew financiering in those days, as set down by Brother Jocelyn de Brakelond (of whom we shall speak anon), giving the sums in coin at our present valuation.* Some repairs were required on the convent buildings, and, there being no money in the treasury, Abbot Hugo, the predecessor of Samson, borrowed 540 dollars from "Benedict the Jew" to make these repairs. The account ran on for a while, until with interest the debt amounted to 10,000 dollars, when Benedict began to press for payment. Moreover, Abbot Hugo had from time to time borrowed other sums from Benedict, amounting in all, interest added, to another 10,000 dollars. There is still no money in St. Edmund's treasury, and Abbot Hugo has to ask for an "ex

*As nearly as we can estimate, the purchasing power of gold and silver coin at that time was about twenty times greater than at present; that is, a pound was equivalent to a hundred of our dollars.

tension."

This is granted by Benedict upon certain terms, which were that Abbot Hugo should give him new bonds, sealed with the seal of the Saint, for 40,000 dollars, payable in four years. The four years pass, and still there is no money in St. Edmund's treasury. So Benedict and Hugo make a new arrangement. The Abbot shall give to the Jew a bond for 88,800 dollars, to be paid in installments at the rate of 8,000 dollars a year. Somehow all this has grown out of loans amounting in all to 10,540 dollars. Nor is this the whole. Benedict has memoranda of certain "small debts, fourteen years old," due him from St. Edmund. Putting all together, the Hebrew's whole claim foots up 120,000 dollars "besides interest."

All these abuses, and many more, Abbot Samson undertook to put an end to; and he accomplished the work in an incredibly short space of time, and thereafter came to be in many ways one of the most notable men of his time. Yet of him after times narrowly missed knowing anything at all. Such profound historians as Hume and Lingard never heard of the man; nor would Carlyle or we have ever heard of him save for a sort of accident. But it so happened that there was in the monastery a young monk, Jocelyn de Brakelond by name, who knew him very well, being, as he says, "Chaplain to my Lord Abbot, living beside him night and day for the space of six years." This Jocelyn got into the way of jotting down

from time to time, in the most monkish of MonkLatin, a kind of Boswellian record of what he saw or had heard concerning the sayings and doings of Abbot Samson, which record grew into a manuscript of considerable size, the title of it being, "Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda, de Rebus Gestis Samsonis Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Edmundi" ("Chronicle of Jocelyn of Brakelond, of Things Done by Abbot Samson of the Monastery of St. Edmund "). Of this monk and this manuscript of his Carlyle thus writes:

JOCELYN OF BRAKELOND.

"He was a kind of born Boswell, though an infinitesimally small one; neither did he altogether want his Johnson even there and then. Johnsons are rare; yet as has been asserted, Boswells still rarer,—the more is the pity on both sides! This Jocelyn, as we can discern well, was an ingenious and ingenuous, a cheery-hearted, innocent, yet withal shrewd, noticing, quick-witted man; and from under his monk's cowl has looked out on that narrow section of the world in a really human manner; not in any simial, canine, ovine or otherwise inhuman manner, afflictive to all that have humanity! The man is of patient, peaceable, loving, clear-smiling nature; open for this and that. A wise simplicity is in him; much natural sense; a veracity that goes deeper than words. Veracity: it is the basis of all; and some say it means genius itself; the prime essence of all genius whatsoever.

"Our Jocelyn for the rest, has read his classical manuscripts, his Virgilius, his Flaccus, Ovidius Naso; of

course still more, his Homilies and Breviaries, and if not the Bible, considerable extracts of the Bible. Then also he has a pleasant wit; and loves a timely joke, though in a mild subdued manner, very amiable to see. A learned grown man, yet with the heart as of a good child; whose whole life indeed has been that of a childSt. Edmundsbury monastery a larger kind of cradle for him, in which his whole prescribed duty was to sleep kindly, and love his mother well! This is the Biography of Jocelyn; 'a man of excellent religion,' says one of his contemporary Brother Monks, eximia religionis, potens sermone et opere.'

6

"For one thing, he had learned to write a kind of Monk or Dog Latin, still readable to mankind; and, by good luck for us, had bethought him of noting down thereby what things seemed notablest to him. Hence gradually resulted a Chronica Jocelini; new manuscript in the Liber Albus of St. Edmundsbury. Which Chronicle, once written in its childlike transparency, in its innocent good-humor, not without touches of ready pleasant wit and many kinds of worth, other men liked naturally to read; whereby it failed not to be copied, to be multiplied, to be inserted in the Liber Albus; and so surviving Henry the Eighth, Putney Cromwell, the dissolution of Monasteries, and all the accidents of malice and neglect for six centuries or so, it got into the Harleian Collection-and has now therefrom, by Mr. Rokewood of the Camden Society, been deciphered into clear print; and lies before us, a dainty thin quarto, to interest for a few minutes whomsoever it can."

Of this "Chronica Jocelini," Carlyle, who was at the time, we suppose, mainly busied upon his