The sentence last quoted, wherein the meaning is a great deal clearer than the construction, comes from Messrs. Timbs and Gunn. Let me place side by side with it another quotation from Froude's lecture on "Times of Erasmus and Luther." "The rule of the Church was, nothing for nothing. At a chapel in Saxony there was an image of a Virgin and Child. If a worshipper came in with a good handsome offering, the child bowed and was gracious; if the present was unsatisfactory it turned away its head, and withheld its favours till the purse-strings were untied again. There was a great rood or crucifix of the same kind at Boxley, in Kent, where the pilgrims went in thousands. This figure used to bow, too, when it was pleased; and a good sum of money was sure to secure its good will. When the Reformation came, and the police looked into the matter, the images were found to be worked with wires and pulleys. The German lady was kept as a curiosity in the cabinet of the Elector of Saxony. Our Boxley Rood was brought up and exhibited in Cheapside, and was afterwards torn to pieces by the people." No sort of disrespect towards the Roman Catholic religion is involved in recording this absolutely true statement of historical fact. The trick described was undoubtedly played upon pilgrims in Saxony and in Kent; whether it was justifiable from some points of view matters not at all. The Roman Catholic religion is a great truth, may conceivably be the most exact and precise truth, behind all this kind of thing. It is considerably more than likely that similar devices were employed at Walsingham. They may even have been employed by ecclesiastics otherwise blameless, for the rules of professional practice still occasionally justify strange conduct, or seem to justify it. But the evidence, if there was any, was destroyed at the Dissolution, when Thomas Cromwell took the sacred image away to Chelsea, and burned it. Henry VIII on this occasion, by the way, got some of his own back. He, too, like other kings and queens, native and foreign, had made the pilgrimage to Walsingham before his quarrel with Rome, and had walked the last four miles or so, from Barsham, barefooted. _Quære_, whether, when a king was on pilgrimage bent, the roads were spread with soft sand as they are now, with sand and gravel, when King Edward is going to make a progress in London. Henry gave an offering in the shape of a priceless necklace; but he secured it again in later life, and may even have given it to one of the wives, of whom, it may be remembered, he had several. [Illustration: WALSINGHAM PRIORY]