The San Greal, fashioned with mysterious care for the most mysterious of oblations, and handed down from remote antiquity by righteous men, to whom it was the pledge of a solemn covenant, was henceforth to be the object of the veneration of the Christian world. Only the pure in heart could guard it. Angels with loving reverence folded their wings around what contained most precious Blood. Its presence conferred a benediction on the land in which it was preserved.
Sir Launcelot saw afterward the hand that came from heaven right to the holy grayle and bare it away. But a comforting voice told him that it should reappear on the earth, though for him the quest was ended.
At the end of four and twenty days, Sir Launcelot awoke. The vision had passed away, but the place was filled with the sweetest odors, as if of Paradise. Wondering thereat, he cried: "I thank God of his infinite mercy for that I have seen, for it comforteth me." And he rose up and went to Camelot, where he found King Arthur and many of the Knights of the Round Table, to whom he related all that had befallen him.
Lives Of The English Cardinals; Including Historical Notices Of The Papal Court, From Nicholas Breakspear (Pope Adrian Iv.) To Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal Legate. By Folkestone Williams, author of, etc., etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1868. 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 484, 543.
Wonders will never cease. A few years since, the present pope, willing to do honor to a great nation, conferred on one of its subjects the highest dignity in his gift. The new cardinal was a man honored alike in England and America for his learning and ability, as well as for his never departing from the strict line of his priestly and episcopal functions. One would have supposed that the English government and people would have felt flattered, and that the English sovereign, who is queen not only of certain Protestant Englishmen, but of a mass of Catholic subjects who cannot number much less than twenty millions, would, while thanking his holiness, have hinted that her twenty millions should have more than one representative in the Sacred College. Instead of this sensible course, a period of insanity ensued--England frothed, England foamed, England grew rabid.