much as dreamed of. There were opinions to be combated and refuted, practices to be inquired into, heretics to be detected and punished, the fallen off to be reclaimed, the wavering to be confirmed, scandal to be removed from the clergy, and the vigour of discipline to be re-established. Post upon post arrived at the monastery of Saint Mary's—horses reeking, and riders exhausted—this from the privy council, that from the Primate of Scotland, and this other again from the Queen Mother, exhorting, approving, condemning. requesting advice upon this subject, and requiring information upon that.
These missives Abbot Boniface received with an important air of helplessness, or a helpless air of importance, whichever the reader may please to term it, evincing at once gratified vanity and profound trouble of mind.
The sharp-witted Primate of Saint Andrews had foreseen the deficiencies of the abbot of Saint Mary's, and endeavoured to provide for them by getting admitted into his monastery as sub-prior a brother Cistercian, a man of parts and knowledge, devoted to the service of the Catholic Church, and very capable not only to advise the abbot on occasions of difficulty, but to make him sensible of his duty in case he should, from good nature or timidity, be disposed to shrink from it.
Father Eustace played the same part in the monastery as the old general who, in foreign armies, is placed at the elbow of the prince of the blood, who nominally commands in chief, on condition of attempting nothing without the advice of his dry-nurse; and he shared the fate of all such dry-nurses, being heartily disliked as well as feared by his principal. Still, however, the Primate's intention was fully answered. Father Eustace became the constant theme and often the bugbear of the worthy abbot, who hardly dared to turn himself in his bed without considering what Father Eustace would think of it. In every case of difficulty. Father Eustace was summoned, and his opinion asked; and no sooner was the embarrassment removed, than the abbot's next thought was how to get rid of his adviser. In every letter which he wrote to those in power, he recommended Father Eustace to some high church preferment, a bishopric or an abbey; and as they dropped one after another, and
