Here we bring our Records and excursions to a close. Like Vikings of old (under a figure) we have harried the country round, and (in a sense) ravished its many charms. We have explored shrines consecrated by olden memories, enriched by the associations of centuries; but (unlike the Vikings), we have done this in no irreverent spirit, and with no predatory purpose. We have carried off our hoards of treasure, but we have left no ill traces behind us of our raid. No burning monasteries or homesteads have marked our track; no orphaned children or widowed wives follow us with their execrations. Enriching ourselves, we have not impoverished others, and the country is still open for further investigation, with, doubtless, many a nook yet unexplored, and many a mushy folio unopened, whence others may extract materials of further interest. On the whole we trust that our readers will endorse the words of a Lincolnshire man whom we have already quoted more than once, {260} that, although ours may be “a county which few have defended, still fewer have praised, and too many have depreciated”; yet that it does possess many objects and associations of no small interest, and that not the least of these are to be found in the Records of Woodhall Spa, and its neighbourhood. This is hardly the place to moralise, nor have we space to do so to more than a very limited extent; yet two reflections seem to force themselves upon us as the result of the archæological enquiries which have produced the last three chapters of this work. One of these is the evil consequences of a barren formalism in religion. The monkish perfunctory services, with their “vain repetitions” and “long players,” reduced the individual well-nigh to the level of a praying machine, which could run off, as it were, from the reel, so many litanies in a given time, with little effort of intellect, and only a blind exercise of faith; both fatal to religious vitality. The dissolution of the monasteries, which were, perhaps, more abundant in our own neighbourhood than in any other similarly limited area in the kingdom, is not only a fact in history, but also may be an object-lesson in a different age. At the close of the enlightened 19th century we witnessed a church—may I not almost say, a nation?—convulsed over questions of religious ceremonial, which, to minds endeavouring to take a sober and unbiassed view, seem bordering on the puerile, compared with the weightier matter of the religion of heart and life. We can hardly help exclaiming, “Oh, that practical Englishmen would spend their energies on larger issues rather than thus give a handle to their enemies!” There is such a thing as “having the form of godliness without the indwelling power thereof.” From such let us turn away, or history may, even yet, repeat itself.