Past and Present: Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII.Carlyle, Thomas
Philosophy
Past and Present: Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII.
Carlyle, Thomas
Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
The rest of St. Edmund's history, for the reader sees he has now
become a _Saint_, is easily conceivable. Pious munificence provided
him a _loculus_, a _feretrum_ or shrine; built for him a wooden
chapel, a stone temple, ever widening and growing by new pious
gifts;--such the overflowing heart feels it a blessedness to solace
itself by giving. St. Edmund's Shrine glitters now with diamond
flowerages, with a plating of wrought gold. The wooden chapel, as we
say, has become a stone temple. Stately masonries, long-drawn arches,
cloisters, sounding aisles buttress it, begirdle it far and wide.
Regimented companies of men, of whom our Jocelin is one, devote
themselves, in every generation, to meditate here on man's Nobleness
and Awfulness, and celebrate and show forth the same, as they best
can,--thinking they will do it better here, in presence of God the
Maker, and of the so Awful and so Noble made by Him. In one word, St.
Edmund's Body has raised a Monastery round it. To such length, in
such manner, has the Spirit of the Time visibly taken body, and
crystallised itself here. New gifts, houses, farms, _katalla_[6]--come
ever in. King Knut, whom men call Canute, whom the Ocean-tide would
not be forbidden to wet,--we heard already of this wise King, with his
crown and gifts; but of many others, Kings, Queens, wise men and noble
loyal women, let Dryasdust and divine Silence be the record!
Beodric's-Worth has become St. Edmund's _Bury_;--and lasts visible to
this hour. All this that thou now seest, and namest Bury Town, is
properly the Funeral Monument of Saint or Landlord Edmund. The present
respectable Mayor of Bury may be said, like a Fakeer (little as he
thinks of it), to have his dwelling in the extensive, many-sculptured
Tombstone of St. Edmund; in one of the brick niches thereof dwells the
present respectable Mayor of Bury.
Certain Times do crystallise themselves in a magnificent manner; and
others, perhaps, are like to do it in rather a shabby one!--But
Richard Arkwright too will have his Monument, a thousand years hence:
all Lancashire and Yorkshire, and how many other shires and countries,
with their machineries and industries, for his monument! A true
_pyr_amid or '_flame_-mountain,' flaming with steam fires and useful
labour over wide continents, usefully towards the Stars, to a certain
height;--how much grander than your foolish Cheops Pyramids or Sakhara
clay ones! Let us withal be hopeful, be content or patient.
FOOTNOTES:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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