the Loretto, scene of many a pious pilgrimage, and Crashaw was appointed sub-canon of the basilica church there. This last scene in the dreamer's human tragedy has been thus described by Mr. Edmund Gosse:
"We can imagine with what feelings of rapture and content the world-worn poet crossed the Apennines and descended to the dry little town above the shores of the Adriatic. . . . As he ascended the last hill, and saw before him the magnificent basilica which Bramante had built as a shelter for the Holy House, he would feel that his feet were indeed upon the threshold of his rest. With what joy, with what a beating heart he would long to see that very Santa Casa, the cottage built of brick, which angels lifted from Nazareth out of the black hands of the Saracen, and gently dropped among the nightingales in the forest of Loreta on that mystic night of the year 1294. There . . . the humble Casa lay in the marble enclosure which Sansovino had made for it, and there through the barbaric brickwork window in the Holy Chimney he could see, in a trance of wonder, the gilded head of Madonna's cedarn image that St. Luke the Evangelist had carved with his own hands. . . . To minister all day in the rich incense . . . to trim the golden lamps . . . to pass in and out between the golden cherubim and brazen seraphim. . . . There, in the very house of Jesus, to hear the noise and mutter of the officiating priest, the bustle of canons, chaplains, monks, and deacons, the shrill sweet voices of the acolytes singing all day long—this must have seemed the very end of life and beginning of heaven to the mystical and sensuous Crashaw."
But a greater rest was at hand. Making his
