altar. This was from the hand of Fitzurse, at the shrine of St. Benedict. Another and another succeeded, and Richard Breto, that he might have his share in this dreadful deed of blood, cleft the skull in twain, and broke his sword on the pavement. And to this, that no sort of inhumanity or ingratitude might be wanting to mark the act with atrocity unheard of, and with a brutality unparalleled, Hugh of Horsea, the sub-deacon, drew out the primate's brains, and scattered them on the ground, thus consigning his name to everlasting infamy.

The messengers of Henry-three barons whom he had sent to arrest the primate-arrived too late. The deed was done, and the archbishop's blood cried from the ground!

"It was not," says Inett, in his Origines Anglicanæ, “so much the faults of particular men, as a general licentiousness of the Clergy, together with their contempt of civil authority, founded on a pretence that they were not accountable to the secular power, which gave beginning to, and which was the true basis and foundation of, this unhappy controversy." And, doubtless, there is much truth in these remarks.

But, to inveigh against the Clergy has at all times been an acceptable office, and probably, bad as they may have been,-" borrel men" oftentimes, as that ancient poet styled them in his Pastime of Pleasure,—they did not receive more justice in HENRY II.'s time than now. If at any time moral discipline was at a low ebb with those in Holy Orders, fierce brutality was rampant amongst the Laity. None can read the history of those days without being forcibly struck with the fact, that the law of God, and the laws of man, were sadly set at nought. It redounds much to HENRY'S credit, that throughout his reign he endeavoured to improve what was amiss, and to vindicate the rights of justice.

In truth, HENRY was a great king; and, like his grandfather HENRY I., did all that lay in his power to have justice ministered truly and indifferently. Humanum est errare, and it is not necessary here to speak of the errors of either, which were those of the age. It is enough to declare that they were mighty benefactors to the nation, and could the latter have given his attention, whole

and undivided, to this realm of England, a stop would earlier have been put to much misrule, and probably matters would not have been as they turned out in the reign of RICHARD I. and JOHN. HENRY, too, was a scholar, though not surnamed Beauclerc. From his reign we may date a very considerable improvement in the literary character of our people. Learning was more valued, and learned men were held in more repute. It is true, letters were chiefly confined to the Clergy, in coif or cowl, but each held out the torch to his fellow, as in that ancient race, and the laymen's hound and hawk was sometimes laid aside for bookwhether legend, postil, or breviary-for the minstrel's song, or the chronicler's recitation. Still, the spirit of the age was coarse, and took long to fine down-and it must be confessed that the irregularities of the regulars and the secular clergy-after making every allowance was great. It was later than this that NIGEL WIREKER, Benedictine Monk, and Preceptor of the Church of Canterbury, wrote his Speculum Stultorum-but he must have had cause to say what he did, as had Piers Plowman, and Chaucer, and Skelton afterwards. If they had the license of poets, licentiousness gave them cause!

In the above popular sketch of Becket's life no summary is attempted of his character. The acts were left to bespeak the man, and the reader to form his own judgment. The judgment of the writer is something of this sort.

BECKET's was a mighty spirit—the master-spirit, certainly, of England at the time,-possibly of the world! He was a person of great natural talents, as well as of great acquirements—differing in this from Wolsey, whose life, by Cavendish, presents many points of similarity. Much of what Thucydides has said of Themistocles is applicable to him. His courage was undaunted, insomuch so, that it is a question whether even in his latter days the hero or the saint predominated! But, withal, it must be confessed that he was at heart, haughty, turbulent, and ambitious— in Foxe's words, "of a lusty and haughty stomach." This was the enemy of his household, against which he had to wage a continual war, and oftentimes he had any thing but the victory. At the same time, as is well remarked, "if he was without amiable virtues, he was also without mean vices." There was, in fact,

an openness of character about him when chancellor, which recommended him, not only to his sovereign, but to all around him. He was also free from vice and licentiousness, when the conduct of those in his rank and station was profligate and dissolute, coarse, and profane. No wonder, therefore, that his society was courted, and that the very barons, who envied him, were anxious that their sons should be members of his household, whether in peace or war, so as to be softened by his courtesy-for courteous he could be as well as invigorated by having before them his personal prowess, and the example of his moral courage. They had common sense to see the force of example, and they were aware that BECKET's carriage was such as to command esteem, as well as to furnish excellence. The truth is, that Becket was more severe and strict as chancellor, than he was as archbishop-though the term strictness, when applied to his age, is to be understood with considerable allowances, as may be seen very clearly by extant correspondence.

From whence, then, it will probably be asked, do we date a change (if we may so express ourselves as regards one who can in nowise be called a bad man) for the worse? We have no scruple ourselves in asserting that this change took place after his studies at Bologna. His ambition, which was latently great before, now burnt within him like a pent-up fire. Full of matter, his spirit within him constrained him. He was ready to burst like new bottles that had no vent. He had well weighed the mightiness of the hierarchy. He beheld in it a stupendous power, to which before he was a stranger. It was a moral engine to upheave the world withal,-Christendom at least. The power of kings, of kaisars, and of emperors, was puny when compared with it. It could bind them in chains, and their nobles in links of iron. So that the difficulty was now to repress this predominant feeling. Doubtless, BECKET looked to the primacy, and till it fell into his hands, he had to act the diplomatist. And who so able?-Who so well practised as a negotiator?-His success at Rome was the first cause of his advancement. Why should it not be turned yet again to account!-He determined that it should, and to overcome the misgivings that he had as to overreaching his sovereign lord and friend, he schooled himself in the Decretals, and became

a proficient such as few Jesuits even in after days could compete with. But prelate and Jesuit might both have profited by the heathen's line;

Βούλου κρατεῖν μὲν, ξὺν Θεῷ δ' ἀεὶ κρατεῖν.”

And it is hereupon asked with wonderment,-How was he then sincere?--If vain, ambitious, implacable, obstinate, and self-willed, how is his character at all to be defended?-We must look to the age, but first and foremost to the school in which, by a strange sort of alchemy, these various propensities are turned into virtues. They all became merged into the unflinching champion of the hierarchy. Rome beheld in him the most useful instrument the age had produced-an ufvxov öpyavov. But, as such, she was afraid of his power in the hands of HENRY, and so adopted him, with all his infirmities, as her own child. It is true, we cannot, or can hardly, understand this,

Cum ventum ad verum est, sensus moresque repugnant!

But so it is, even though, in his distress, Rome's Popes sometimes used him scurvily, and when it served their purpose, played fast and loose with the most untractable of men. But the most wonderful point is still behind.

BECKET (alas! for the weakness of human nature,) was selfdeceived! He was brought by degrees to look upon himself as the champion of the Cross! HE CONFOUNDED THE UNHEARD OF PRIVILEGES OF THE CHURCH WITH RELIGION! It was a consequence natural enough, that when matters had once advanced thus far, the king and the primate should be rivals, according to that proverb of the ancients, Unum arbustum non alit duos erithacos!

Then again, such was the robbery and spoliation that the Church had undergone at the hands of the State; such was the miserable condition of the Church's patrimony at this time in England, that the heart of BECKET,-his heart of hearts, and the better part of him,—could not brook the contumely. Bishoprics were not filled up; abbeys were in a like sort; and the chances were, that in a few years no endowments would be left. How should BECKET, of all men living, stomach this? Moreover, schooled as he was, and notwithstanding the vacillating conduct of Rome towards him, when it served a purpose, to him the authority of the Pope was

paramount, and it would be a kind of moral sacrilege to give up the Clergy to lay tribunals. Was the civil sword more to be heeded than that of St. Peter? Condemnation by common law more than censures ecclesiastical?

Acute, strong-minded, and energetic as the primate was, he did not detect the fallacy under which he had laboured. The result of this self-delusion was, that he lost sight of his besetting sinsvanity and personal ambition, however well masked. In the place of these he saw in himself an honest and thorough determination to defend the cause of right, and a firm resolution to support the pedestal of the Cross, as though that foundation were not better laid! Obstinacy became self-devotion; prejudice and bigotry sound zeal for the glory of God, and an intrepid perseverance in the blood of holy martyrs! Sanguis Martyrum semen Ecclesia was to him for hatchment and for posy! Attachment to the hierarchy blotted out all earthly affections, so that ingratitude to a sovereign seemed no sin; and the ties of friendship were snapped asunder like tow, or counted as an amiable weakness! BECKET, in a word, was self-deceived, and "the cause," says one, "which to us wears few marks of Christian truth, to him was sacred, and he defended it sincerely." (Berington, p. 240.)

After all, he was neither such a sinner as some, nor such a saint as others represent him to have been. The best of men are but men at best, and he, like the rest of us, was hedged in by infirmities. He had a great part to play, and great abuses to stem. He was tried by prosperity and adversity. It may be, he was weighed and found wanting; dust nevertheless he was, and mercifully as such to be dealt with by brethren in after ages, who haply err no less than he did in their every-day trials, and every-day temptations! How should the consideration of his life imprint upon the ambitious Churchman the prophet's words, "And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not!" (Jer. xlv. 5,) and much more those words of our Blessed Lord, so little exemplified in his restless, turbulent, and care-galled life. "BLESSED ARE THE MEEK ! "BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS! Great was the name the archbishop left behind him, but many nameless ones have done great acts, and a better record is kept in heaven than in the martyrologies of earth! At the same time, as that great and good Christian philosopher said on his Christian Morals,