A.D. 1200. TWELVE ABBATS COME TO KING JOHN. tied the noose, has she forbidden to die by the purposed death ! Sometimes at the altar does the violator of the temple take refuge, nor does he dread to invoke the offended Deity's aid." Then, returning to himself, he exclaimed, "Be silent, thou my tongue, nothing more art thou allowed to say." After which, turning to the clergy, he said, " Pity me, do you, at least, pity me, ye friends of God, and pray for me unto the Lord, that He in His ineffable mercy may have mercy unto me. Por Satan and his works I renounce." And immediately, upon prayer being made for him unto the Lord, the chains of Satan were loosed, by which his hands had been bound together, and he was made a whole man from that hour, praising and glorifying God. " At praises being given such as thine, do they in heaven rejoice, that so, what their power is able to effect, by testimony they may prove. Pull oft do they aBeviate punishments, and restore the light withdrawn, when they see that a sin has been sincerely repented of.", s On the eighth day before the calends of December, being the sixth day of the week, the body of the said Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, was, after the solemnity of the mass, carried into the new church which he himself had founded in honor of the blessed Mary, the Mother of God and ever a Virgin ; and he was buried by the before-named archbishops and bishops, near the altar of Saint John the Baptist. Oh ! how great was the grief of aB, how great their lamentations ! and those of the clergy in'especial. For he was truthful in word, Justin judgment, foreeseing in counsel, conspicuous in virtue, and remarkable for every endowment of manners ; and his life shed a glorious "ght jipon aB churches. " The closing day of man must ever be aVtwtf d, and before his death and the last rites ought no man to be pronounced happy."13 For to Bve is not a glorious thing, but to live well is the thing to be gloried in. Also, whUe John, king of England, was staying at Lincoln, there came to him twelve abbats of the Cistercian order, and, faBing at his feet, begged for mercy, saying that his foresters 72 73 Two Elegiac couplets. A quotation,— _" Ultima semper Expectatione dies nomini est ; dicique beatus Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet." The classical reader will here remember the conversation of Solon with Croesus, and his story of the deaths of Cleobis and Biton, related in the first Book of Herodotus.