And the maidens are flocking as doves when they fling the light grain on the road. Low on the riverain mead, where the dull clay-cottages cling To the tall town-ward and the towers, as nests of the martin in spring, Where the year-long fever lurks, and gray leprosy burrows secure, Are the wattled huts of the Friars, the long, white Church of the poor: --Haven of wearied eyelids; of hearts that care not to live; Shadow and silence of prayer; the peace which the world cannot give! Tapers hazily gloaming through fragrance the censers outpour; Chant ever rising and rippling in sweetness, as waves on the shore; Casements of woven stone, with more than the rainbow bedyed; Beauty of holiness! Spell yet unbroken by riches and pride! --Ah! could it be so for ever!--the good aye better'd by Time:-- First-Faith, first-Wisdom, first-Love,--to the end be true to their prime! . . Far rises the storm o'er horizons unseen, that will lay them in dust, Crashings of plunder'd cloisters, and royal insatiate lust:-- Far, unseen, unheard!--Meanwhile the great Minster on high Like a stream of music, aspiring, harmonious, springs to the sky:-- Story on story ascending their buttress'd beauty unfold, Till the highest height is attain'd, and the Cross shines star-like in gold, Set as a meteor in heaven; a sign of health and release:-- And the land rejoices below, and the heart-song of England is Peace. This date has been chosen as representing at once the culminating point in the reign of Edward, and of Mediaevalism in England. The sound, the fascinating elements of that period rapidly decline after the thirteenth century in Church and State, in art and in learning. 'In the person of the great Edward,' says Freeman, 'the work of reconciliation is completed. Norman and Englishman have become one under the best and greatest of our later Kings, the first who, since the Norman entered our land, . . . followed a purely English policy.' _The three children_; William I and II, and Henry I. _The transept_; of Canterbury Cathedral, after Becket's death named the 'Martyrdom.' _Nor again_; See the _Early Plantagenets_, by Bishop Stubbs: one of the very few masterpieces among the shoal of little books on great subjects in which a declining literature is fertile. _Britons on each side sea_; Armorica and Cornwall, Wales and Strathclyde, all share in the great Arthurian legend. _Justinian_; 'Edward,' says Dr. Stubbs, 'is the great lawgiver, the great politician, the great organiser of the mediaeval English polity:' (_Early Plantagenets_). _Keep thy Faith_; 'Pactum serva' may be still seen inscribed on the huge stone coffin of Edward I. _The keels of Guienne . . . Adria's dyes_; The ships of Gascony, of the Hanse Towns, of Genoa, of Venice, are enumerated amongst those which now traded with England. _Malvasian nectar_; 'Malvoisie,' the sweet wine of the Southern Morea, gained its name from Monemvasia, or Napoli di Malvasia, its port of shipment.