may embrace, and the strong cannot despise. Their leader, Serlo's axiom, was, "Moderation in all things." Although mild to the good, he was fierce and terrific to the haughty; to corroborate which, I shall insert the verses of Godfrey the prior concerning him:—
Virtue's sharp sword, and justice's fond pride:
Speaker of truth, no vain discourse he lov'd.
And pleas'd the very princes he reprov'd:
A hasty judgment, or disorder'd state
Of life, or morals, were his utter hate.
The third of March was the propitious day,
When Serlo wing'd, through death, to life his way.
Who can in silence pass Lanzo, who flourished at that time, equal to any in sanctity? A monk of Clugny, and prior of St. Pancras[1] in England; who, by his worth, so ennobled that place with the grace of monastic reverence, that it might be justly declared the peculiar habitation of virtue. As nothing I can say will equal the merits of his life, I shall merely subjoin, in the language I found it, an account of his death; that it may plainly appear, how gloriously he had lived, who died so highly favoured.
"The affectionate Lord who scourges every son whom he receives,—who promises the just, that they shall be partakers of his sufferings as well as of his consolation; permitted Lanzo to approach his death by such bitter sickness, during three days, that if any spot from earthly intercourse had adhered to his pure soul, it must no doubt have been wiped away by that suffering. For, as that great apostle, who reclined on the breast of our Lord, says, 'If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us;' and since Christ will judge every sin, either lightly here or more severely hereafter, he was unwilling that any offence should be in the way of him after death, whom he knew to have loved him with all his heart. Wherefore, if there was anything which he thought worthy of examination in Lanzo, he was desirous of consuming it in his life-time. To this assertion his confidence in death bore witness. For when in full health, on the fifth day of the week before the passion of our Lord, having read the psalter, according
- ↑ At Lewes in Sussex.
