Welby must have possessed the jewel which this incident, related by Izaak Walton in his Angler, discovers to be so indispensable. "I knew a man," he says, "that had health and riches and several houses, all beautiful and ready furnished, and would often trouble himself and family to be removing from one house to another; and, being asked by a friend why he removed so often from one house to another, replied, 'It was to find content in some one of them.' 'Content,' said his friend, 'ever dwells in a meek and quiet soul.'"
"It's no in titles nor in rank; It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank, To purchase peace and rest; It's no in making muckle mair: It's no in books; it's no in lear, To make us truly blest: If happiness hae not her seat And centre in the breast, We may be wise, or rich, or great, But never can be blest: Nae treasures, nor pleasures, Could make us happy lang; The heart aye's the part aye, That makes us right or wrang."
Out of mud, say the Orientalists, springs the lotus flower; out of clay comes gold and many precious things; out of oysters the pearls; brightest silks, to robe fairest forms, are spun by a worm; bezoar from the bull, musk from the deer, are produced; from a stick is born flame; from the jungle comes sweetest honey. As from sources of little worth come the precious things of earth, even so is it with hearts that hold their fortune within. They need not lofty birth or noble kin. Their victory is recorded. A rain-drop, they say, fell into the sea. "I am lost!" it cried; "what am I in such a sea?" Into the shell of a gaping oyster it fell, and there was formed into the orient pearl which now shines fairest in Britain's diadem. Humility creates the worth it underrates. "By two things," says the author of the Imitation, "a man is lifted up from things earthly, namely, by simplicity and purity. A pure heart penetrateth heaven and hell. Such as every one is inwardly, so he judgeth outwardly. If there be joy in the world, surely a man of a pure heart possesseth it.... Let not thy peace depend on the tongues of men; for whether they judge well of thee or ill, thou art not on that account other than thyself. He that careth not to please men, nor feareth to displease them, shall enjoy much peace.... He enjoyeth great tranquillity of heart, that careth neither for the praise nor dispraise of men. If thou consider what thou art in thyself, thou wilt not care what men say of thee. Man looketh on the countenance, but God on the heart. Man considereth the deeds, but God weigheth the intentions." "Will you not be very glad to know," wrote Eugénie de Guérin to her brother, in Paris, "that I have just been spending a pleasant quarter of an hour on the terrace-steps, seated by the side of an old woman, who was singing me a lamentable ballad on an event that occurred long ago at Cahuzac? This came about apropos of a gold cross that has been stolen from the neck of the blessed Virgin. The old woman remembered her grandmother telling her that she had heard in olden times of this same church being the scene of a still more sacrilegious robbery, since it was then the blessed sacrament that was carried off one day when it was left exposed in the empty church. A young girl came to the altar while everybody was busy in the harvest, and, mounting upon it, put the pyx into her apron, and went and placed it under a rose-tree in a wood. The shepherds who discovered it told where it was, and nine priests came in procession to adore the blessed sacrament under the rose-tree, and to carry it back to the church. But for all that, the poor shepherdess was arrested, tried, and condemned to be burned. Just when about to die, she requested to confess, and owned the fact to a priest; but it was not, she said, because of any thievish propensities she took it, but that she wanted to have the blessed sacrament in the forest. 'I thought that the good God would be as satisfied under a rose-tree as on an altar.' At these words an angel descended from heaven to announce her pardon, and to comfort the pious criminal, who was burnt on a stake, of which the rose-tree formed the first fagot." There is a tradition that one night, Gabriel, from his seat in paradise, heard the voice of God sweetly responding to a human heart. The angel said, "Surely this must be an eminent servant of the Most High, whose spirit is dead to lust and lives on high." The angel hastened over land and sea to find this man, but could not find him in the earth or heavens. At last he exclaimed, "O Lord, show me the way to the object of thy love!" God answered, "Turn thy steps to yon village, and in that pagoda thou shalt behold him." The angel sped to the pagoda, and therein found a solitary man kneeling before an idol.