Bernard before the Reformation? Were
they, on the other hand, the property of Laud himself? It has been
said that Laud would not have known how to wear them. Fancy sees him
treasuring that bright ecclesiastical raiment, [Greek text which
cannot be reproduced], in some place of security. At night, perhaps,
when candles were lit and curtains drawn, and he was alone, he may
have arrayed himself in the gorgeous chasuble before the mirror, as
Hetty wore her surreptitious finery. "There is a great deal of human
nature in man." If Laud really strutted in solitude, draped rather
at random in these vestments, the ecclesiastical gear is even more
interesting than the thin ivory-headed staff which supported him on
his way to the scaffold; more curious than the diary in which he
recorded the events of night and day, of dreaming hours and waking.
In the library at St. John's they show his bust--a tarnished, gilded
work of art. He has a neat little cocked-up moustache, not like a
prelate's; the face is that of a Bismarck without strength of
character.
In speaking of Oxford before the civil war, let us not forget that
true students and peaceable men found a welcome retreat beyond the
din of theological fictions. Lord Falkland's house was within ten
miles of the town. "In this time," says Clarendon, in his immortal
panegyric, "in this time he contracted familiarity and friendship
with the most polished men of the University, who found such an
immenseness of wit and such a solidity of judgment in him, so
infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination, such a
vast knowledge that he was not ignorant in anything, yet such an
excessive humility as if he had known nothing, that they frequently
resorted and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer air;
so that his house was a university in a less volume, whither they
came not so much for repose as study; and to examine and refine those
grosser propositions, which laziness and consent made current in
vulgar conversation.
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