St. Edmundsbury
The _Burg,_ Bury, or 'Berry' as they call it, of St. Edmund is
still a prosperous brisk Town; beautifully diversifying, with
its clear brick houses, ancient clean streets, and twenty or
fifteen thousand busy souls, the general grassy face of Suffolk;
looking out right pleasantly, from its hill-slope, towards the
rising Sun: and on the eastern edge of it, still runs, long,
black and massive, a range of monastic ruins; into the wide
internal spaces of which the stranger is admitted on payment of
one shilling. Internal spaces laid out, at present, as a botanic
garden. Here stranger or townsman, sauntering at his leisure
amid these vast grim venerable ruins, may persuade himself that
an Abbey of St. Edmundsbury did once exist; nay there is
no doubt of it: see here the ancient massive Gateway, of
architecture interesting to the eye of Dilettantism; and farther
on, that other ancient Gateway, now about to tumble, unless
Dilettantism, in these very months, can subscribe money to cramp
it and prop it!
Here, sure enough, is an Abbey; beautiful in the eye of
Dilettantism. Giant Pedantry also will step in, with its huge
_Dugdale_ and other enormous _Monasticons_ under its arm, and
cheerfully apprise you. That this was a very great Abbey, owner
and indeed creator of St. Edmund's Town itself, owner of wide
lands and revenues; nay that its lands were once a county of
themselves; that indeed King Canute or Knut was very kind to it;
and gave St. Edmund his own gold crown off his head, on one
occasion: for the rest, that the Monks were of such and such a
genus, such and such a number; that they had so many Carucates
of land in this hundred, and so many in that; and then farther
that the large Tower or Belfry was built by such a one, and the
smaller Belfry was built by &c. &c.--Till human nature can stand
no more of it; till human nature desperately take refuge in
forgetfulness, almost in flat disbelief of the whole business,
Monks, Monastery, Belfries, Carucates and all! Alas, what
mountains of dead ashes, wreck and burnt bones, does assiduous
Pedantry dig up from the Past Time, and name it History, and
Philosophy of History; till, as we say, the human soul sinks
wearied and bewildered; till the Past Time seems all one
infinite incredible grey void, without sun, stars, hearth-fires,
or candle-light; dim offensive dust-whirlwinds filling universal
Nature; and over your Historical Library, it is as if all the
Titans had written for themselves: DRY RUBBISH SHOT HERE!
And yet these grim old walls are not a dilettantism and dubiety;
they are an earnest fact. It was a most real and serious purpose
they were built for! Yes, another world it was, when these black
ruins, white in their new mortar and fresh chiseling, first saw
the sun as walls, long ago. Gauge not, with thy dilettante
compasses, with that placid dilettante simper, the Heaven's-
Watchtower of our Fathers, the fallen God's-Houses, the Golgotha
of true Souls departed!
Their architecture, belfries, land-carucates? Yes,--and that is
but a small item of the matter. Does it never give thee pause,
this other strange item of it, that men then had a _soul,_--not
by hearsay alone, and as a figure of speech; but as a truth that
they knew, and practically went upon! Verily it was another
world then. Their Missals have become incredible, a sheer
platitude, sayest thou? Yes, a most poor platitude; and even,
if thou wilt, an idolatry and blasphemy, should any one persuade
_thee_ to believe them, to pretend praying by them. But yet it
is pity we had lost tidings of our souls:--actually we shall
have to go in quest of them again, or worse in all ways will
befall! A certain degree of soul, as Ben Jonson reminds us, is
indispensable to keep the very body from destruction of the
frightfullest sort; to 'save us,' says he, 'the expense of
_salt.'_ Ben has known men who had soul enough to keep their
body and five senses from becoming carrion, and save salt:--men,
and also Nations. You may look in Manchester Hunger-mobs and
Corn-law Commons Houses, and various other quarters, and
say whether either soul or else salt is not somewhat wanted
at present!--
Another world, truly: and this present poor distressed world
might get some profit by looking wisely into it, instead of
foolishly. But at lowest, O dilettante friend, let us know
always that it was a world, and not a void infinite of grey haze
with fantasms swimming in it. These old St. Edmundsbury walls, I
say, were not peopled with fantasms; but with men of flesh and
blood, made altogether as we are. Had thou and I then been, who
knows but we ourselves had taken refuge from an evil Time, and
fled to dwell here, and meditate on an Eternity, in such fashion
as we could? Alas, how like an old osseous fragment, a broken
blackened shin-bone of the old dead Ages, this black ruin looks
out, not yet covered by the soil; still indicating what a once
gigantic Life lies buried there! It is dead now, and dumb; but
was alive once, and spake. For twenty generations, here was the
earthly arena where painful living men worked out their life-
wrestle,--looked at by Earth, by Heaven and Hell. Bells tolled
to prayers; and men, of many humours, various thoughts, chanted
vespers, matins;--and round the little islet of their life rolled
forever (as round ours still rolls, though we are blind and deaf)
the illimitable Ocean, tinting all things with _its_ eternal hues
and reflexes; making strange prophetic music! How silent now;
all departed, clean gone. The World-Dramaturgist has written:
_Exeunt._ The devouring Time-Demons have made away with it all:
and in its stead, there is either nothing; or what is worse,
offensive universal dustclouds, and grey eclipse of Earth and
Heaven, from 'dry rubbish shot here!'--
Truly, it is no easy matter to get across the chasm of Seven
Centuries, filled with such material. But here, of all helps, is
not a Boswell the welcomest; even a small Boswell? Veracity,
true simplicity of heart, how valuable are these always! He that
speaks what _is_ really in him, will find men to listen, though
under never such impediments. Even gossip, springing free and
cheery from a human heart, this too is a kind of veracity and
_speech;_--much preferable to pedantry and inane grey haze!
Jocelin is weak and garrulous, but he is human. Through the thin
watery gossip of our Jocelin, we do get some glimpses of that
deep-buried Time; discern veritably, though in a fitful
intermittent manner, these antique figures and their life-method,
face to face! Beautifully, in our earnest loving glance, the old
centuries melt from opaque to partially translucent, transparent
here and there; and the void black Night, one finds, is but the
summing up of innumerable peopled luminous _Days._ Not parchment
Chartularies, Doctrines of the Constitution, O Dryasdust; not
altogether, my erudite friend!--
Readers who please to go along with us into this poor _Jocelini
Chronica_ shall wander inconveniently enough, as in wintry
twilight, through some poor stript hazel-grove, rustling with
foolish noises, and perpetually hindering the eyesight; but
across which, here and there, some real human figure is seen
moving: very strange; whom we could hail if he would answer;--
and we look into a pair of eyes deep as our own, _imaging_ our
own, but all unconscious of us; to whom we for the time are
become as spirits and invisible!