Whether the ecstasy of his own rapt and abstract communion with the unseen, that subtle inspiration of an Invisible too clearly conceived for human weakness to sustain, had gone to Gregory's head and drawn him into fuller expression of this extraordinary assertion and claim beyond all reason: or whether the long-determined theory of his life thus found complete development it is difficult to tell. These assumptions were, indeed, the simple and practical outcome of claims already made and responsibilities assumed: claims which had been already put feebly into operation by other Popes before. But they had never before been put into words so living or so solemn. Gregory himself had, hitherto, claimed only the right to judge, to arbitrate at the head of a National Diet. He had not himself, so far as we can see, assumed up to this moment the supposed rights of Peter, alone and uncontrolled. He had given England to William, but only on the warrant of the bond of Harold solemnly sworn before the altar. He had made legitimate the claims already established by conquest of Robert Guiscard and others of the Norman conquerors. But the standard set up in the Lateran Council of 1080 was of a far more imperative kind, and asserted finally through Peter and Paul, his holy fathers and lords, an authority absolute and uncompromising such as made the brain reel. This extraordinary address must have sent a multitude, many of them no doubt ordinary men with no lofty ideal like his own, back to their bishoprics and charges, swelling with a sense of spiritual grandeur and power such as no promotion could give, an inspiration which if it made here and there a high spirit thrill to the necessities of a great position, was at least as likely to make petty tyrants and oppressors of meaner men. The only saving clause in a charge so full of the elements of mischief, is that to the majority of ordinary minds it would contain very little personal meaning at all. [Illustration: ISLAND ON TIBER. _To face page 286._]