A sorrowful waste of noble wood and umbrage! Yes,--but a very common one; the course of most things in this world. Monachism itself, so rich and fruitful once, is now all rotted into peat; lies sleek and buried,--and a most feeble bog-grass of Dilettantism all the crop we reap from it! That also was frightful waste; perhaps among the saddest our England ever saw. Why will men destroy noble Forests, even when in part a nuisance, in such reckless manner; turning loose four-footed cattle and Henry-the-Eighths into them! The fifth part of our English soil, Dryasdust computes, lay consecrated to 'spiritual uses,' better or worse; solemnly set apart to foster spiritual growth and culture of the soul, by the methods then known: and now-- it too, like the four-fifths, fosters what? Gentle shepherd, tell me what! Chapter XII The Abbot's Troubles The troubles of Abbot Samson, as he went along in this abstemious, reticent, rigorous way, were more than tongue can tell. The Abbot's mitre once set on his head, he knew rest no more. Double, double, toil and trouble; that is the life of all governors that really govern: not the spoil of victory, only the glorious toil of battle can be theirs. Abbot Samson found all men more or less headstrong, irrational, prone to disorder; continually threatening to prove ungovernable. His lazy Monks gave him most trouble. 'My heart is tortured,' said he, 'till we get out of debt, _cor meum cruciatum est.'_ Your heart, indeed;--but not altogether ours! By no devisable method, or none of three or four that he devised, could Abbot Samson get these Monks of his to keep their accounts straight; but always, do as he might, the Cellerarius at the end of the term is in a coil, in a flat deficit,--verging again towards debt and Jews. The Lord Abbot at last declares sternly he will keep our accounts too himself; will appoint an officer of his own to see our Cellerarius keep them. Murmurs thereupon among us: Was the like ever heard? Our Cellerarius a cipher; the very Townsfolk know it: _subsannatio et derisio sumus,_ we have become a laughingstock to mankind. The Norfolk barrator and paltener! And consider, if the Abbot found such difficulty in the mere economic department, how much in more complex ones, in spiritual ones perhaps! He wears a stern calm face; raging and gnashing teeth, _fremens_ and _frendens,_ many times, in the secret of his mind. Withal, however, there is noble slow perseverance in him; a strength of 'subdued rage' calculated to subdue most things: always, in the long-run, he contrives to gain his point.