tumult, dismay, and death. The very crags of the mountain side, loosened
in preparation, come bounding, thundering down. Trunks and roots of pine
trees, gathering speed on their headlong way, are launched down upon the
powerless foe, mingled with the deadly hail of the Tyrolese rifles. And
this fearful storm descends along the whole line at once. No marvel that
two-thirds of all that brilliant invading army are crushed to death
along the grooved pathway, or are tumbled, horse and man, into the
choked and swollen river.
Enough of horrors! Who would willingly linger on the hideous details of
such a scene? Sorrowful that man should come, with his evil ambitions
and his fierce revenges, to stain and to spoil such wonders of beauty as
the hand of the Creator has here moulded. Sorrowful that man, in league
with the serpent, should writhe into such scenes as these, and poison
them with the virus of sin.
Richter
Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail
Against her beauty? May she mix
With men and prosper! Who shall fix
Her pillars? Let her work prevail.
... Let her know her place;
She is the second, not the first,
A higher hand must make her mild,
If all be not in vain; and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With wisdom, like the younger child.
Tennyson
MARSTON MOOR
(A Cavalier Song)
To horse! to horse! Sir Nicholas, the clarion's
note is high!
To horse! to horse! Sir Nicholas, the big drum
makes reply!
Ere this hath Lucas marched, with his gallant
cavaliers,
And the bray of Rupert's trumpets grows fainter
in our ears.
To horse! to horse! Sir Nicholas! White Guy is
at the door,
And the raven whets his beak o'er the field of
Marston Moor.
Up rose the Lady Alice, from her brief and
broken prayer,
And she brought a silken banner down the narrow
turret-stair,
Oh! many were the tears that those radiant eyes
had shed,
As she traced the bright word "Glory" in the
gay and glancing thread;
And mournful was the smile which o'er those
lovely features ran
As she said, "It is your lady's gift, unfurl
it in the van!"
"It shall flutter, noble wench, where the best
and boldest ride,
Midst the steel-clad files of Skippon, the
black dragoons of Pride;
The recreant heart of Fairfax shall feel a
sicklier qualm,
And the rebel lips of Oliver give out a
louder psalm,
When they see my lady's gewgaw flaunt proudly
on their wing,
And hear her loyal soldier's shout, 'For God
and for the King.'"
'Tis noon. The ranks are broken, along the
royal line
They fly, the braggarts of the court! the
bullies of the Rhine!
Stout Langdale's cheer is heard no more, and
Astley's helm is down,
And Rupert sheathes his rapier, with a curse
and with a frown,
And cold Newcastle mutters, as he follows in
their flight,
"The German boor had better far have supped in
York to-night."
The knight is left alone, his steel-cap cleft
in twain,
His good buff jerkin crimsoned o'er with many
a gory stain;
Yet still he waves his banner, and cries amid
the rout,
"For Church and King, fair gentlemen! spur on,
and fight it out!"
And now he wards a Roundhead's pike, and now he
hums a stave,
And now he quotes a stage-play, and now he
fells a knave.
God aid thee now, Sir Nicholas! thou hast no
thought of fear;
God aid thee now, Sir Nicholas! for fearful odds
are here!
The rebels hem thee in, and at every cut and
thrust,
"Down, down," they cry, "with Belial! down with
him to the dust."
"I would," quoth grim old Oliver, "that Belial's
trusty sword
This day were doing battle for the Saints and
for the Lord!"
The Lady Alice sits with her maidens in her
bower,
The gray-haired warder watches from the castle's
topmost tower;
"What news? what news, old Hubert?"--"The battle's
lost and won;
The royal troops are melting, like mists before
the sun!
And a wounded man approaches;--I'm blind, and
cannot see,
Yet sure I am that sturdy step my master's step
must be!"
"I've brought thee back thy banner, wench, from
as rude and red a fray,
As e'er was proof of soldier's thew or theme for
minstrel's lay!
Here, Hubert, bring the silver bowl, and liquor
quantum suff.,
I'll make a shift to drain it yet, ere I part with
boots and buff;--
Though Guy through many a gaping wound is breathing
forth his life,
And I come to thee a landless man, my fond and
faithful wife!
"Sweet! we will fill our money-bags, and freight
a ship for France,
And mourn in merry Paris for this poor land's
mischance:
For if the worst befall me, why, better axe
and rope,
Than life with Lenthal for a king, and Peters
for a pope!
Alas! alas! my gallant Guy!--curse on the
crop-eared boor,
Who sent me with my standard, on foot from
Marston Moor!"
W. M. Praed
LONDON
The huge city perhaps never impressed the imagination more than when
approaching it by night on the top of a coach you saw its numberless
lights flaring, as Tennyson says "like a dreary dawn." The most
impressive approach is now by the river through the infinitude of docks,
quays, and shipping. London is not a city, but a province of brick and
stone. Hardly even from the top of St. Paul's or of the Monument can
anything like a view of the city as a whole be obtained. It is
indispensable, however, to make one or the other of those ascents when a
clear day can be found, not so much because the view is fine, as because
you will get a sensation of vastness and multitude not easily to be
forgotten. There is or was, not long ago, a point on the ridge that
connects Hampstead with Highgate from which, as you looked over London
to the Surrey Hills beyond, the modern Babylon presented something like
the aspect of a city. The ancient Babylon may have vied with London in
circumference, but the greater part of its area was occupied by open
spaces; the modern Babylon is a dense mass of humanity. London with its
suburbs has five millions of inhabitants, and still it grows. It grows
through the passion which seems to be seizing mankind everywhere, on
this continent as well as in Europe, for emigration from the country
into the town, not only as the centre of wealth and employment, but as
the centre of excitement, and, as the people fondly fancy, of enjoyment.
The Empire and the commercial relations of England draw representatives
of trading communities or subject races from all parts of the globe, and
the faces and costumes of the Hindoo, the Parsi, the Lascar, and the
ubiquitous Chinaman, mingle in the motley crowd with the merchants of
Europe and America. The streets of London are, in this respect, to the
modern, what the great Place of Tyre must have been to the ancient
world. But pile Carthage on Tyre, Venice on Carthage, Amsterdam on
Venice, and you will not make the equal, or anything near the equal, of
London. Here is the great mart of the world, to which the best and
richest products are brought from every land and clime, so that if you
have put money in your purse you may command every object of utility or
fancy which grows or is made anywhere, without going beyond the circuit
of the great cosmopolitan city. Parisian, German, Russian, Hindoo,
Japanese, Chinese industry is as much at your service here, if you have
the all-compelling talisman in your pocket, as in Paris, Berlin, St.
Petersburg, Benares, Yokohama or Pekin. That London is the great
distributing centre of the world is shown by the fleets of the carrying
trade of which the countless masts rise along her wharves and in her
docks. She is also the bank of the world. But we are reminded of the
vicissitudes of commerce and the precarious tenure by which its empire
is held when we consider that the bank of the world in the middle of the
last century was Amsterdam.
The first and perhaps the greatest marvel of London is the commissariat.
How can the five millions be regularly supplied with food, and
everything needful to life, even with such things as milk and those
kinds of fruit which can hardly be left beyond a day? Here again we see
reason for concluding that though there may be fraud and scamping in the
industrial world, genuine production, faithful service, disciplined
energy, and skill in organization cannot wholly have departed from the
earth. London is not only well fed, but well supplied with water and
well drained. Vastly and densely peopled as it is, it is a healthy city.
Yet the limit of practicable extension seems to be nearly reached. It
becomes a question how the increasing multitude shall be supplied not
only with food and water but with air.
There is something very impressive in the roar of the vast city. It is a
sound of a Niagara of human life. It ceases not except during the hour
or two before dawn, when the last carriages have rolled away from the
balls and the market carts have hardly begun to come in. Only in
returning from a very late ball is the visitor likely to have a chance
of seeing what Wordsworth saw from Westminster Bridge:
"Earth has not anything to show more fair;
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty;
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the open air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!"
Goldwin Smith: "A Trip to England."
HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX
I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
"Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.
'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
Lokeren, the cocks crew, and twilight dawned clear;
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
At Düffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be;
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
So, Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"
At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare thro' the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:
And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
And one eye's black intelligence--ever that glance
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.
By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her,
We'll remember at Aix"--for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck, and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.
So we were left galloping, Joris and I,
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;
Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"
"How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news, which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.
Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood!
And all I remember is,--friends flocking round,
As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.
Browning
AN INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP
You know, we French stormed Ratisbon:
A mile or so away,
On a little mound, Napoleon
Stood on our storming-day;
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
Oppressive with its mind.
Just as perhaps he mused "My plans
That soar, to earth may fall,
Let once my army-leader Lannes
Waver at yonder wall,"--
Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew
A rider, bound on bound
Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
Until he reached the mound.
Then off there flung in smiling joy,
And held himself erect
By just his horse's mane, a boy:
You scarcely could suspect--
(So tight he kept his lips compressed,
Scarce any blood came through)
You looked twice ere you saw his breast
Was all but shot in two.
"Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace
We've got you Ratisbon!
The Marshal's in the market-place,
And you'll be there anon
To see your flag-bird flap his vans
Where I, to heart's desire,
Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans
Soared up again like fire.
The chief's eye flashed; but presently
Softened itself, as sheathes
A film the mother-eagle's eye
When her bruised eaglet breathes;
"You're wounded!" "Nay," the soldier's pride
Touched to the quick, he said:
"I'm killed, Sire!" And his chief beside,
Smiling the boy fell dead.
Browning
I made them lay their hands in mine and swear
To reverence the King, as if he were
Their conscience, and their conscience as their King,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it.
Tennyson
BRITISH COLONIAL AND NAVAL POWER
The sagacity of England is in nothing more clearly shown than in the
foresight with which she has provided against the emergency of war. Let
it come when it may, it will not find her unprepared. So thickly are her
colonies and naval stations scattered over the face of the Earth, that
her war-ships can speedily reach every commercial centre on the globe.
There is that great centre of commerce, the Mediterranean Sea. It was a
great centre long ago, when the Phoenician traversed it, and, passing
through the Pillars of Hercules, sped on his way to the distant, and
then savage, Britain. It was a great centre when Rome and Carthage
wrestled in a death-grapple for its possession. But at the present day
England is as much at home on the Mediterranean as if it were one of her
own Canadian lakes.
Nor is it simply the number of the British colonies, or the evenness
with which they are distributed, that challenges our admiration. The
positions which these colonies occupy, and their natural military
strength, are quite as important facts. There is not a sea or a gulf in
the world, which has any real commercial importance, but England has a
stronghold on its shores. And wherever the continents tending southward
come to points, around which the commerce of nations must sweep, there
is a British settlement; and the cross of St. George salutes you as you
are wafted by. There is hardly a little desolate, rocky island or
peninsula, formed apparently by Nature for a fortress, and nothing else,
but the British flag floats securely over it.
These are literal facts. Take, for example, the great Overland Route
from Europe to Asia. Despite its name, its real highway is on the waters
of the Mediterranean and Red Seas. It has three gates--three only.
England holds the key to every one of these gates. Count
them--Gibraltar, Malta, Aden. But she commands the entrance to the Red
Sea, not by one, but by several strongholds. Midway in the narrow strait
is the black, bare rock of Perim, sterile, precipitous, a perfect
counterpart of Gibraltar; and on either side, between it and the
mainland, are the ship-channels which connect the Red Sea with the great
Indian Ocean. This rock England holds.
A little farther out is the peninsula of Aden, another Gibraltar, as
rocky, as sterile, and as precipitous, connected with the mainland by a
narrow strait, and having a harbour safe in all winds, and a central
coal depôt. This England bought in 1839. And to complete her security,
she has purchased from some petty sultan the neighbouring islands of
Socotra and Kouri, giving, as it were, a retaining fee, so that, though
she does not need them herself, no rival power may ever possess them.
As we sail a little farther on, we come to the China Sea. What a beaten
track of commerce is this! What wealth of comfort and luxury is wafted
over it by every breeze!--the teas of China; the silks of farther India;
the spices of the East. The ships of every clime and nation swarm on its
waters--the stately barques of England, France, and Holland; the swift
ships of America; and mingled with them, in picturesque confusion, the
clumsy junk of the Chinaman, and the slender, darting canoe of the
Malaysian islanders.
At the lower end of the China Sea, where it narrows into Malacca Strait,
England holds the little island of Singapore--a spot of no use to her
whatever, except as a commercial depôt, but of inestimable value for
that; a spot which, under her fostering care, is growing up to take its
place among the great emporiums of the world. Half-way up the sea she
holds the island of Labuan, whose chief worth is this, that beneath its
surface and that of the neighbouring mainland there lie inexhaustible
treasures of coal, which are likely to yield wealth and power to the
hand that controls them. At the upper end of the sea she holds
Hong-Kong, a hot, unhealthy island, but an invaluable base from which to
threaten and control the neighbouring waters.
Even in the broad, and as yet comparatively untracked Pacific, she is
making silent advances towards dominion. The vast continent of
Australia, which she has secured, forms its south-western boundary. And
pushed out six hundred miles eastward from this lies New Zealand, like a
strong outpost, its shores so scooped and torn by the waves that it must
be a very paradise of commodious bays and safe havens for the mariner.
The soil, too, is of extraordinary fertility; and the climate, though
humid, deals kindly with the Englishman's constitution. Nor is this all;
for, advanced from it, north and south, like picket stations, are
Norfolk Island, and the Auckland group, both of which have good
harbours. And it requires no prophet's eye to see that, when England
needs posts farther eastward, she will find them among the green coral
islets that stud the Pacific.
Turn now your steps homeward, and pause a moment at the Bermudas, those
beautiful isles, with their fresh verdure--green gems in the ocean, with
air soft and balmy as Eden's was! They have their home uses too. They
furnish arrow-root for the sick, and ample supplies of vegetables
earlier than sterner climates will yield them. Is this all that can be
said? Reflect a little more deeply. These islands possess a great
military and naval depôt; and a splendid harbour, landlocked, strongly
fortified, and difficult of access to strangers;--and all within a few
days' sail of the chief ports of the Atlantic shores of the New World.
England therefore retains them as a station on the road to her West
Indian possessions; and should America go to war with her, she would use
it as a base for offensive operations, where she might gather and whence
she might hurl upon any unprotected port all her gigantic naval and
military power.
"Atlantic Monthly."
ENGLAND, MY ENGLAND
What have I done for you,
England, my England?
What is there I would not do,
England, my own?
With your glorious eyes austere,
As the Lord were walking near,
Whispering terrible things and dear
As the Song on your bugles blown, England--
Round the world on your bugles blown!
Where shall the watchful sun,
England, my England,
Match the master-work you've done,
England, my own?
When shall he rejoice agen
Such a breed of mighty men
As come forward, one to ten,
To the Song on your bugles blown, England--
Down the years on your bugles blown?
Ever the faith endures,
England, my England:--
"Take and break us: we are yours,
England, my own!
Life is good, and joy runs high
Between English earth and sky:
Death is death; but we shall die
To the Song on your bugles blown, England--
To the stars on your bugles blown!"
They call you proud and hard,
England, my England:
You with worlds to watch and ward,
England, my own!
You whose mailed hand keeps the keys
Of such teeming destinies,
You could know nor dread nor ease
Were the Song on your bugles blown, England--
Round the Pit on your bugles blown!
Mother of Ships whose might,
England, my England,
Is the fierce old Sea's delight,
England, my own,
Chosen daughter of the Lord,
Spouse-in-Chief of the ancient Sword,
There's the menace of the Word
In the Song on your bugles blown, England--
Out of heaven on your bugles blown!
W. E. Henley
A GOOD TIME GOING
(Charles Mackay, at the end of his American tour in 1859, was
entertained in Boston by the leading literary men. This poem, written
for the occasion, was read to speed the parting guest.)
Brave singer of the coming time,
Sweet minstrel of the joyous present,
Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme,
The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant,[4]
Good-bye! Good-bye!--Our hearts and hands,
Our lips in honest Saxon phrases,
Cry, God be with him, till he stands
His feet among the English daisies!
'Tis here we part;--for other eyes
The busy deck, the fluttering streamer,
The dripping arms that plunge and rise,
The waves in foam, the ship in tremor,
The kerchiefs waving from the pier,
The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him,
The deep blue desert, lone and drear,
With heaven above and home before him!
His home!--the Western giant smiles,
And twirls the spotty globe to find it;--
This little speck the British Isles?
'Tis but a freckle,--never mind it!
He laughs, and all his prairies roll,
Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles,
And ridges stretched from pole to pole
Heave till they crack their iron knuckles!
But Memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honour turns with frown defiant,
And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the laughing giant:
"An islet is a world," she said,
"When glory with its dust has blended,
And Britain keeps her noble dead
Till earth and seas and skies are rended!"
Beneath each swinging forest-bough
Some arm as stout in death reposes,--
From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow
Her valour's life-blood runs in roses;
Nay, let our brothers of the West
Write smiling in their florid pages,
One-half her soil has walked the rest
In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages!
Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp,
From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather,
The British oak with rooted grasp
Her slender handful holds together; With
cliffs of white and bowers of green,
And Ocean narrowing to caress her,
And hills and threaded streams between;--
Our little mother isle, God bless her!
Oliver Wendell Holmes
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Robert Burns
GOD IS OUR REFUGE
God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change,
And though the mountains be moved in the heart of the seas;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.
THE LORD OF HOSTS IS WITH US;
THE GOD OF JACOB IS OUR REFUGE.
There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved:
God shall help her at the dawn of morning.
The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved:
He uttered his voice, the earth melted.
THE LORD OF HOSTS IS WITH US;
THE GOD OF JACOB IS OUR REFUGE.