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There was many a noble Briton at the husting, and the king's three sons they all were come thither; there was Vortimer, Pascent, and Catiger, and very many others, that came with the brothers; all the folk came thither, that loved the Christendom.

Here, at a later day, Rollo the Dane had that memorable dream of leprosy, the cure of which was the conversion of North Gaul into Normandy, of Pagans into Christians, and the subsequent conquest of every throne in Christendom from Ultima Thule to Byzantium.

Frank though he was, he was too honourable to march at a priest's bidding against Luitprand, his old brother in arms, to whom he had sent the boy Pepin, his son, that Luitprand might take him on his knee, and cut his long royal hair, and become his father-in-arms, after the good old Teuton fashion; Luitprand, who with his Lombards had helped him to save Christendom a second time from the Mussulman in 737.

Once more he ran over the scheme which had brought him from Cipango. If Islam could not be brought to lead in the project, Christendom might be more amenable to reason. The Moslem world was to be reached through the Kaliph whom he expected to find in Egypt; wherefore his contemplated trip down the Nile from Kash-Cush. If driven to the Christian, Constantine was to be his operator.

In one respect, the times of Cicero, in spite of their complicated politics, should have more interest for a modern reader than most of what is called Ancient History. Forget the date but for a moment, and there is scarcely anything ancient about them. The scenes and actors are modern terribly modern; far more so than the middle ages of Christendom.

The result was the wretched existence to which the labour class was doomed, "a life so wretched that even a beast's life seems enviable." No such cry of pity for the poor, of protest against the system of agrarian and manufacturing tyranny which found its expression in the Statute-book had been heard since the days of Piers Ploughman. But from Christendom More turns with a smile to "Nowhere."

How sweetly unifying in the midst of a jarring Christendom has been the spirit of Phillips Brooks! After this I saw him only once. It was at the funeral of James Russell Lowell. In Appleton Chapel he stood in his robes, gentle and powerful, as he read the burial service.

Horses and mules were taken into the church in order to carry off the loads of sacred vessels and the gold and silver plates of the throne, the pulpits, and the doors, and the beautiful ornaments of the church. The soldiers made the chief church of Christendom the scene of their profanity.

A miserable cobbler or weaver might be hurried from his shop to the scaffold, invoking the 'jus de non evocando' till he was gagged, but the Emperor would not stoop from his throne, nor electors palatine and powerful nobles rush to his rescue; but in behalf of these prisoners the most august hands and voices of Christendom had been lifted up at the foot of Philip's throne; and their supplications had proved as idle as the millions of tears and death-cries which had beep shed or uttered in the lowly places of the land.

O burden of solitude, that cleavest to man through every stage of his being! in his birth, which has been in his life, which is in his death, which shall be mighty and essential solitude! that wast, and art, and art to be; thou broodest, like the Spirit of God moving upon the surface of the deeps, over every heart that sleeps in the nurseries of Christendom.