Now I have read you these passages from Dean Stanley as the most accurately investigatory, the most generously sympathetic, the most reverently acceptant account of these days, and their people, which you can yet find in any English history. But consider now, point by point, where it leaves you. You are told, first, that you are living in an age of poetry. But the days of poetry are those of Shakespeare and Milton, not of Bede: nay, for their especial wealth in melodious theology and beautifully rhythmic and pathetic meditation, perhaps the days which have given us 'Hiawatha,' 'In Memoriam,' 'The Christian Year,' and the 'Soul's Diary' of George Macdonald, may be not with disgrace compared with those of Caedmon. And nothing can be farther different from the temper, nothing less conscious of the effort, of a poet, than any finally authentic document to which you can be referred for the relation of a Saxon miracle. I will read you, for a perfectly typical example, an account of one from Bede's 'Life of St. Cuthbert,' The passage is a favourite one of my own, but I do not in the least anticipate its producing upon you the solemnizing effect which I think I could command from reading, instead, a piece of 'Marmion,' 'Manfred,' or 'Childe Harold.' ... "He had one day left his cell to give advice to some visitors; and when he had finished, he said to them, 'I must now go in again, but do you, as you are inclined to depart, first take food; and when you have cooked and eaten that goose which is hanging on the wall, go on board your vessel in God's name and return home.' He then uttered a prayer, and, having blessed them, went in. But they, as he had bidden them, took some food; but having enough provisions of their own, which they had brought with them, they did not touch the goose. "But when they had refreshed themselves they tried to go on board their vessel, but a sudden storm utterly prevented them from putting to sea. They were thus detained seven days in the island by the roughness of the waves, and yet they could not call to mind what fault they had committed. They therefore returned to have an interview with the holy father, and to lament to him their detention. He exhorted them to be patient, and on the seventh day came out to console their sorrow, and to give them pious exhortations. When, however, he had entered the house in which they were stopping, and saw that the goose was not eaten, he reproved their disobedience with mild countenance and in gentle language: 'Have you not left the goose still hanging in its place? What wonder is it that the storm has prevented your departure? Put it immediately into the caldron, and boil and eat it, that the sea may become tranquil, and you may return home.'