But there was yet, in the Feudal System, one Seventh and Final Authority, of which the imagination is like to be also lost to Protestant minds. That of the King of Kings, and Ruler of Empires; in whose ordinances and everlasting laws, and in ‘feudom’ or faith and covenant with whom, as the Giver of Land and Bread, all these subordinate powers lived, and moved, and had their being. And truly if, since we cannot find this King of Kings in the most carefully digested residuum, we are sure that we cannot find Him anywhere; and if, since by no fineness of stopper we can secure His essence in a bottle, we are sure that we cannot stay Him anywhere, truly what I hear on all hands is correct; and the Feudal System, with all consequences and members thereof, is verily at an end. In the meantime, however, you can now clearly understand the significance, in that system, of the word Princess, meaning a King’s daughter, bred in such ways and knowledges as may fit her for dominion over nations. And thus you can enjoy, if otherwise in a humour for its enjoyment, the story of the Princess Ursula, here following,—though for the present you may be somewhat at a loss to discern the practical bearings of it; which, however, if you will note that the chief work of the Princess is to convert the savage minds of the ‘English,’ or people of Over-sea, from the worship of their god ‘Malcometto,’ to the ‘rule of St. John the Baptist,’—you may guess to be in some close connection with the proposed ‘practice’ of St. George’s Company; not less, indeed, than the functions of Carpaccio’s other two chiefly worshipped saints. The legends of St. Ursula, which were followed by him, have been collated here at Venice, and reduced to this pleasant harmony, in true help to me, by my good scholar James Reddie Anderson. For whose spirit thus active with us, no less than for the spirit, at rest, of the monk who preserved the story for us, I am myself well inclined to say another Pater and Ave. THE STORY OF ST. URSULA. [99] There was once a just and most Christian King of Britain, called Maurus. To him and to his wife Daria was born a little girl, the fairest creature that this earth ever saw. She came into the world wrapped in a hairy mantle, and all men wondered greatly what this might mean. Then the King gathered together his wise men to inquire of them. But they could not make known the thing to him, for only God in Heaven knew how the rough robe signified that she should follow holiness and purity all her days, and the wisdom of St. John the Baptist. And because of the mantle, they called her ‘Ursula,’ ‘Little Bear.’