evening; and is not De Wilton a curious introduction to it? But
Aubrey knew that I meant the bewilderment of having yet to discover
that Divine Justice is longer-sighted than human justice, and he
cited the perplexities of high-minded heathen. Thence we came to the
Christian certainty that "to do well and suffer for it is
thankworthy;" and that though no mortal man can be so innocent as to
feel any infliction wholly unmerited and disproportioned, yet human
injustice at its worst may be working for the sufferer an exceeding
weight of glory, or preparing him for some high commission below.
Was not Ralph de Wilton far nobler and purer as the poor palmer, than
as Henry the Eighth's courtier! And if you could but have heard our
sequel, arranging his orthodoxy, his Scripture reading, and his
guardianship of distressed monks and nuns, you would have thought he
had travelled to some purpose, only he would certainly have been
burnt by one party, and beheaded by the other. On the whole, I think
Leonard was a little comforted, and I cannot help hoping that the
first apparently cruel wrong that comes before him may be the less
terrible shock to his faith from his having been set to think out the
question by "but half a robber and but half a knight."'

* * * * * *

'August 1st.--Yesterday afternoon we three were in our private
geological treasury, Leonard making a spread-eagle of himself in an
impossible place on the cliff side, trying to disinter what hope,
springing eternal in the human breast, pronounced to be the paddle of
a saurian; Aubrey, climbing as high as he durst, directing operations
and making discoveries; I, upon a ledge half-way up, guarding Mab and
poking in the debris, when one of the bridal pairs, with whom the
place is infested, was seen questing about as if disposed to invade