the day before, or very shortly after, the delivery of Becket's sermon, that King Henry II. received them at the castle of Bur, near Bayeux, the same place where Harold had sworn his fatal oath to William the Conqueror. On their recital of the tale of their excommunication, and the insult thus offered to himself, to his son who had been crowned by them, and-what, perhaps, he cared less for-to the pope, who had authorized the act, he went off into one of those paroxysms of rage to which he was subject. Some one had said, "As long as Thomas lives, you will have neither good days, peaceful kingdom, nor quiet life;" and then Henry gave utterance in his anger to the fatal words, "Will none of my court rid me of this low-born priest !"

Words like these from the mouth of the king could not be uttered without effect; and four knights of the king's chamber-Fitzurse, Brito, Moreville, and Tracy-took secret counsel together, and set off that very night for Canterbury, with the determination to compel the archbishop to take off the anathemas he had fulminated, or to have his life.

7. Now, then, we have arrived at the crisis of our tale. After a painful and exciting interview with the primate in his own chamber, about four P.M., after he had refused all concession, and they had given no uncertain tokens that they were determined to proceed to extremities, the knights armed themselves, and called on all around, on their allegiance to the king, not to interfere in the archbishop's behalf. They then followed him into the cathedral, whither he had proceeded with the declared view of taking part in the vesper service. He was on the steps of the altar when they burst into the church, surrounded by his friends and attendants. The knights shouted for him to stay, and called him traitor; he turned and descended the steps, and having recognized the voice of Fitzurse above the rest, cried aloud, "Reginald, here I am; no traitor, but. a priest of God!" A brief and fiery altercation then took place, in which all grew desperately excited; and the knights and their followers, anxious to avoid the sacrilege of bloodshed in the church, strove to take Becket prisoner, and force him with violence outside the door. The old warlike spirit of the man was roused by personal violence; he forgot himself so far as to revile one of his assailants in opprobrious terms; he struggled with desperate vehemence, and showed immense personal strength, wrenching his mantle from Fitzurse's grasp; and then, seizing Tracy, he shook him by his coat of mail, and hurled the armed warrior to the ground! Then came the end. Fitzurse whirled his sword above his head, calling on the rest to strike, and aimed a blow that struck the primate's cap from his head, but scarcely, if at all, wounded him. A second blow, aimed by Tracy-who had recovered himself from his fall, and thrown off some of his armour to move more nimbly,-was intercepted by the arm of

the Saxon monk Grim, but wounded Becket on the head and shoulder. The third blow, struck also by Tracy, brought him to his knees. Words of prayer were then heard from his lips as he fell, fainting, forwards, when a tremendous stroke from Brito severed his skull, and the sword snapped in two in coming in contact with the marble pavement. Moreville struck no stroke, but kept back at his sword's point the crowds who were thronging to the scene of the murder; but one wretched man, Hugh, "the ill clerk" of Horsea, scattered, with the point of his sword, the brains of the murdered man over the pavement, crying, "The traitor is now dead; he will rise no more!"

The moral of this sad history remains only to be told. Suffering triumphed, where Action had failed. The king, though not intentionally a murderer, was placed so thoroughly in the wrong by the cruel deed that had followed on his passionate words, that he bowed before the papal power he had so long defied. All the concessions Becket had striven for in vain in life were yielded to his blood-stained corpse. The proud man was canonized as a glorious martyr, and the shrine of Becket received hundreds of thousands of pilgrims whose knees have worn those cavities in the stones which the visitors to Canterbury may to this day behold. But the most celebrated pilgrim of all was Plantagenet himself. Henry submitted to the abject humiliation of a public penance before the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and received the lash of penance on his bared shoulders from the monks in the open cathedral. The regale bowed before the pontificate; the regal and judicial power, in the person of Henry II., acknowledged a spiritual supremacy that was still more firmly riveted on the neck of England in the reign of John; and the dark shadow of the papacy brooded over our land, until the light of scriptural truth broke out dawningly through Wycliffe's translation of the Bible, and increased in gathering strength until it culminated in the blessings of THE REFORMATION!

Note.-In Henry VIII.'s time, an absurd suit was commenced against the dead Becket, who was cited into court to answer for his offences. His name was in consequence erased by order from the Calendar of the English Church, and the day of St. Thomas of Canterbury (IV. Dan) expunged.

29th Dec./)

In the illuminated MS. of the Hours of the Virgin, the day of St. Thomas à Becket is pasted over by an illuminated I.H.S., and a legend below.

The name is also erased from the Calendar prefixed to an illuminated Psalter of the fifteenth century.

Both these books are in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

PICTURES OF DOMESTIC LIFE.

A BABY IN THE SUNLIGHT.

OUR little Benjamin is only an average baby. In the eyes of every one else who knows him his merits are doubtless of the common-place order. "Is he then worth writing about ?" asks the reader. I defer my reply, being his father.

We have a spare room. A sleeping-room it has been, but the little one who used to occupy it having been removed nearer to ourselves, the vacant room was forthwith dedicated to the baby, and to a few flowers in pots, petted by the baby's mother. Just one little association connected with its former use may be mentioned. Over the mantelpiece there still remains, painted in fancy scroll work, the sacred monition"Commune with your own heart, and in your chamber, and be still."

Benjamin's day sleeping-room (for of course, as master of the house, he has assigned to him other quarters at night) is at a pleasant distance from the noise and tumult created by three voices, and three pairs of helter-skeltering little feet on the ground-floor. This circumstance favours his repose, and the collectedness of those who may wish to think or to write in the house; for the other three little voices we can still, the other little feet can be tortured into rest; but when Benjamin's monotone once begins, he can't be made to understand that his hearers have finely-strung and acutely-sensitive nerves; and, pro bono domestico, it is judged advisable on such occasions to remove the master of the house into retirement, where he is supposed to occupy his time variously, as may seem best to his autocratic will, either in sleeping off his ill humours, or in staring at the sunbeams and the flowers.

Shadows lay thickly and darkly over our path at the time of which I write. With a heart not the lightest in the world, I had ascended the stairs, when a sudden impulse of curiosity prompted me to intrude surreptitiously on Benjamin's contemplative retreat; for during two or three hours previously, we might have fancied his very existence a myth. The cradle was so situated that its little occupant dreamed not his privacy had been invaded. And there he lay, his large round bright eyes wide open, in an overflowing flood of sunbeams, whose waves of golden light danced as merrily along the walls of the room as we have seen the waters of the dark blue sea skip about for joy beneath the favour of the orb of day.

I could not help thinking there was something very lovely in that not uncommon home-spectacle, and that altogether it formed a subject not unworthy of a word-picture, nor devoid of simple lessons for those Christians to learn whose " eyes are single, and their whole bodies full of light"-lessons good for the heart.

It was very natural to speculate, first of all, as to what my little son was thinking about. Ever and anon the rogue gave vent to inarticulate sounds, ambitious of speech, and which appeared to be expres sive of his entire satisfaction with the position accorded him. I venture to bring the said sham-speech to bear against the theory of those who would suggest that he was "thinking of nothing at all," that he was simply in a state of stupid contentment, and that within his baby-soul all was vacancy, or mere animal self-indulgence. One has seen kittens frisk with each other in the sunbeams, and would not be tempted to suppose that their glee had any deeper origin than the mere physical elasticity of kittenhood. But when a baby lies on his back, talking with the merry sunlight glow, it seems as though there were impres sions in the heart, or in the little-by-little unfolding intellect, whence his utterances well up like the fountain from its hidden springs.

"Babies think? The idea is ridiculous! Thought is built up of words; to words we attach meanings, and what possible knowledge of words or meanings would you attribute to an abridged edition of the human species only a few months old ?"

one.

I do not think it correct to say that thought is built up solely and entirely of words. We stand before a noble painting: we muse on it: our souls drink in its interesting details as they crowd forward one by We are in the throes of thought then; yet how very rarely can we trace at such a time any sequence of words or ideas mentally present! Now I believe that Benjamin's thoughts were like a succession of interesting pictures, "borne in upon his mind." And hence, accept from the little fellow, dear reader, his first unconscious piece of instruction, interpreted, of course, from the original by means of words.

"You Christians older than I am, are often urged to meditate constantly on Divine Truths. You would like to be satisfied that you can so meditate upon them for your soul's good, but you regard meditation as if it were a certain power of hammering out for ever a series of strikingly original word-clothed thoughts, which should bring you more and more deeply into the mines of spiritual wealth, that the particular subject before you is calculated to open out. No such thing. Look at it intently and calmly, even as I gaze at these pretty sunbeams. By and by you will see lovely pictures in it, drawn, as it were, by ethereal pencils. Suffer your thoughts to roam free from the narrowing, confining power of words. Revel in the pictures which good angels will put before your souls when they find out your determination

THE BABE A TEACHER.

487 to be attentive. Raise your hearts to look at Things Divine. This is meditation."

But again. Whence comes the light of the sun? Is it the radiance thrown upon that distant orb from the immediate Presence of the Glory of the Uncreated Sun, and reflected upon the earth, even as the rays of the created king of day are reflected upon it from the surface of the moon? A sweet belief possesses me that it is so. And Benjamin's mother and I-linked together in Christian marriage— delight to feel that the little boy lay basking, on this occasion, in the Uncreated Glory, subdued by Him from whom it emanates, so that it might not scorch and wither up the poor mortals whose hearts it gladdens. And we like to feel that He who gave us Benjamin, and who received him at the font into his own family-circle, was minded to interest him as he lay in his empty room, to unfold thus, in a gradual way, his baby-love of "the sublime and beautiful," and to make of him a Heaven-appointed, though unconscious, preacher to ourselves. I hope the earth-shadows will not efface these impressions; and I hope we may inoculate some who may read this little sketch, and who will feel, if they have not already felt very often, the heavy load of care, with our own views. So when, perchance, they find their own babes lying awake, smiling and talking to the sunlight, they may think of the circumstance, without hardening unbelief, as exemplifying the truth that God is present in their homes, is delighting the senses of their offspring, more innocent and open to His Good Teachings than they, and is willing to shake off from the wings of their own faith, hope, and love, the dust that prevents them from soaring oft above earth's troubles to heaven's peace, and joy, and rest.

Benjamin was absorbed in the contemplation of the sunlight. Earth's fading flowers were in the room, but the warm, bright glow above took up all his powers of attention. We know not but that he saw the angels standing by with their harps. We know not but that the little fellow's fingers may have played over their harp-strings. But if we could obtain, as a precious gift, our baby's concentrativeness; if in a world whose fulness is emptiness, and whose fairest flowers fade, we could dwell absorbed on the Sunlight of God's Countenance, that so often would shine directly upon us but for the earth-mists that hide it from our view, we should be better enabled to know and to understand The Blessed One's Love for little children. And we should not be unwilling to learn of the little preachers in our own family circles that the beginning of heavenly wisdom, joy, love, contentedness with our lot, is to be children again ourselves, as far as God's promised Grace will enable us to be, in humility, unquestioning faith, and simple purity of purpose.