At the end of the reign of King Edward the First, there lived in the city of Salisbury a poor, honest Parson, who had in his charge a small church abutting on the market-place and the souls of a few hundred people thereabouts. Of both church and people he was the careful and loving custodian, but chiefly of the latter ; for he held it as a truth indubitable, that though Our Blessed Lord deigns to dwell on the altar, it is merely as a stepping-stone to the souls of the faithful.

Under this simple conviction, the Parson—Sir Nicholas by name—toiled his hardest from morning till night to help every man, woman and child in his flock build and beautify, in his or her own heart, a shrine for the Most High. He aided proud, indolent and clumsy sinners to hew new stones for the repairing of their dilapidated or ruined souls; the heaviest stones he carried himself, lent a hand to fit them into their allotted places, and stepped back gaily with the poor wretch, their owner, to admire the progress of his puny fabric and congratulate him as though he were the founder of Rome itself—alter Romulus, says my pious original. For souls more advanced, he was an equal authority on spires and pinnacles, crockets and weather-vanes. All the dizziest flights of heavenly architecture he knew by heart—something from books, something from experience, and some-thing from the inspiration on which he faithfully counted.