Have mercy upon _me;'_

with firm voice, firm step and head, no change in his countenance
whatever. "By God's eyes," said the King, "that one, I think,
will govern the Abbey well." By the same oath (charged to your
Majesty's account), I too am precisely of that opinion! It is
some while since I fell in with a likelier man anywhere than this
new Abbot Samson. Long life to him, and may the Lord _have_
mercy on him as Abbot!


Thus, then, have the St. Edmundsbury Monks, without express
ballot-box or other good winnowing-machine, contrived to
accomplish the most important social feat a body of men can do,
to winnow out the man that is to govern them: and truly one sees
not that, by any winnowing-machine whatever, they could have done
it better. O ye kind Heavens, there is in every Nation and
Community, a _fittest,_ a wisest, bravest, best; whom could we
find and make King over us, all were in very truth well;--the
best that God and Nature had permitted _us_ to make it! By what
art discover him? Will the Heavens in their pity teach us no
art; for our need of him is great!

Ballot-boxes, Reform Bills, winnowing-machines: all these are
good, or are not so good;--alas, brethren, how _can_ these, I
say, be other than inadequate, be other than failures, melancholy
to behold? Dim all souls of men to the divine, the high and
awful meaning of Human Worth and Truth, we shall never, by all
the machinery in Birmingham, discover the True and Worthy. It is
written, 'if we are ourselves valets, there shall exist no hero