Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/430

 who stood forth as the champion of right against both political and moral wrong in the days when both political and moral wrong were at their darkest.

I have already pointed out the contrast between the characters of Lanfranc and Anselm, in recording one memorable discourse between them, in which Anselm won Lanfranc over to a better mind in the matter of our English Ælfheah. The calling and the work of the two men were different; and the work of Anselm implied the earlier work of Lanfranc. Lanfranc was, after all, in some sort a conqueror of the English Church, and the character of a conqueror was one in which Anselm could never have shown himself. Lanfranc was a statesman, one whose policy could spread itself far beyond the bounds of this or that kingdom or nation, but whose very policy compelled him not to let the distinctions of kingdoms and nations slip out of his sight. To Anselm we could almost fancy that such distinctions were of small account. He was the servant of God and the friend of all God's creatures; he perhaps hardly stopped to think whether those whose souls and bodies he was ever ready to help were Burgundian, Norman, or English. With such a spirit as this, he could not have done Lanfranc's work; and it is worthy of remark that the Conqueror, who so greatly valued him, seems never to have thought of him for any preferment in England. Lanfranc had to carry out a policy, in some measure harsh and worldly, but which, granting his own position and that of his master, could not be avoided. Anselm fittingly came after him, at a time when national distinctions and national wrongs were almost forgotten in the universal reign of evil, to protest in the name of universal right, and in so doing to protest against particular and national wrongs. He would have been out of place