A Tournament proclaimed and held in the Abbot's domain, in spite of him. Roystering young dogs brought to reason. The Abbot a man that generally remains master at last: The importunate Bishop of Ely outwitted. A man that dare abide King Richard's anger, with justice on his side. Thou brave Richard, thou brave Samson! (p. 139.)--The basis of Abbot Samson's life truly religion. His zealous interest in the Crusades. The great antique heart, like a child's in its simplicity, like a man's in its earnest solemnity and depth. His comparative silence as to his religion precisely the healthiest sign of him and it. Methodism, Dilettantism, Puseyism. (144.)
Abbot Samson built many useful, many pious edifices: ALL ruinous, incomplete things an eye-sorrow to him. Rebuilding the great Altar: A glimpse of the glorious Martyr's very Body. What a scene; how far vanished from us, in these unworshipping ages of ours! The manner of men's Hero-worship, verily the innermost fact of their existence, determining all the rest. (p. 148.)--On the whole, who knows how to reverence the Body of Man? Abbot Samson, at the culminating point of his existence: Our real-phantasmagory of St. Edmundsbury plunges into the bosom of the Twelfth Century again, and all is over. (154.)
Formulas the very skin and muscular tissue of a Man's Life: Living Formulas and dead. Habit the deepest law of human nature. A pathway through the pathless. Nationalities. Pulpy infancy, kneaded, baked into any form you choose: The Man of Business; the hard-handed Labourer; the genus Dandy. No Mortal out of the depths of Bedlam but lives by Formulas. (p. 157.)--The hosts and generations of brave men Oblivion has swallowed: Their crumbled dust, the soil our life-fruit grows on. Invention of Speech, Forms of Worship; Methods of Justice. This English Land, here and now, the summary of what was wise and noble, and accordant with God's Truth, in all the generations of English Men. The thing called 'Fame.' (161.)
How men have 'forgotten God;' taken the Fact of this Universe as it _is not_, God's Laws become a Greatest-Happiness Principle, a Parliamentary Expediency. Man has lost the _soul_ out of him, and begins to find the want of it. (p. 171.)--The old Pope of Rome, with his stuffed dummy to do the kneeling for him. Few men that worship by the rotatory Calabash, do it in half so great, frank or effectual a way. (173.)--Our Aristocracy no longer able to _do_ its work, and not in the least conscious that it has any work to do. The Champion of England 'lifted into his saddle.' The Hatter in the Strand, mounting a huge lath-and-plaster Hat. Our noble ancestors have fashioned for us, in how many thousand senses, a 'life-road;' and we their sons are madly, literally enough, 'consuming the way.' (175.)