was. He said, "I am a nobleman, Godfrey by name, the son of Gilbert de l'Aigle, and you?" said he. “I am Berold, a poor butcher of Rouen," was the answer; then they said together, "Lord, be merciful to us both!" and tried to encourage one another as they drifted in the cold benumbing sea on that unfortunate November night.

By-and-by another man came swimming toward them, whom they knew, when he pushed aside his long wet hair, to be Fitz-Stephen. "Where is the prince?" said he. "Gone! gone!" the two cried together. "Neither he, nor his brother, nor his sister, nor the King's niece, nor her brother, nor any one of the brave three hundred, noble or commoner, except we three, has risen above the water!" Fitz-Stephen, with a ghastly face, cried Woe, woe to me!" and sank to the bottom.

The other two clung to the yard for some hours. At length the young noble said faintly, "I am exhausted, and chilled with the cold, and can hold no longer. Farewell, good friend! God preserve you!" So he dropped and sank, and of all the brilliant crowd, the poor butcher of Rouen alone was saved. In the morning some fishermen saw him floating in his sheepskin coat, and got him into their boat, the sole relater of the dismal tale.

For three days no one dared to carry the intelligence to the King; at length they sent into his presence a little boy, who, weeping bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told him that the White Ship was lost with all on board. The King fell to the ground like a dead man, never afterwards was seen to smile.

and

Dickens.

PRUSSIA.

While the frenzy of the Crusades possessed all Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, several orders of religious knighthood were founded in defence of the Christian faith against Heathens and Infidels. Among these the Teutonic order in Germany was one

of the most illustrious, the knights of which distinguished themselves greatly in all the enterprises carried on in the Holy Land. Being driven at last from their settlements in the East, they were obliged to return to their native country. Their zeal and valour were too imThey invaded, on

petuous to remain long inactive. very slight pretences, the province of Prussia, the inhabitants of which were still idolaters; and having completed the conquest of it about the middle of the thirteenth century, held it many years as a fief depending on the Crown of Poland. Fierce contests arose during this period, between the Grand-masters of the order and the Kings of Poland; the former struggling for independence, while the latter asserted their right of sovereignty with great firmness. Albert, a prince of the house of Brandenburg, who was elected Grandmaster in the year one thousand five hundred and eleven, engaging keenly in this quarrel, maintained a long war with Sigismund, King of Poland; but having become an early convert to Luther's doctrines, this gradually lessened his zeal for the interests of his fraternity, so that he took the opportunity of the confusions in the empire, and the absence of the Emperor, to conclude a treaty with Sigismund, greatly to his own private emolument. By it that part of Prussia which belonged to the Teutonic order was erected into a secular and hereditary duchy, and the investiture of it granted to Albert, who, in return, bound himself to do homage for it to the Kings of Poland as their vassal. Immediately after this, he made public profession of the reformed religion, and married a Princess of Denmark. The Teutonic knights exclaimed so loudly against the treachery of their Grand-master, that he was put under the ban of the empire; but he still kept possession of the province which he had usurped, and transmitted it to his posterity. In process of time, this rich inheritance fell to the electoral branch of the family, all dependence on the crown of Poland was shaken off, and the Margraves of Brandenburg, having assumed the title of Kings of Prussia, have not only

risen to an equality with the first Princes in Germany, but take their rank among the great Monarchs of Europe. Robertson.

CRITICAL EXTRACTS: THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH; HOMER.

With all the great and essential faculties of the poet, Wordsworth possesses the calm and self-commanding powers of the philosopher. He looks over human life with a steady and serene eye: he listens with a fine ear "to the still sad music of humanity." His faith is unshaken in the prevalence of virtue over vice, and of happiness over misery, and in the existence of a heavenly law operating on earth, and, in spite of transitory defects, always visibly triumphant in the grand field of human warfare. Hence he looks over the world of life and man with a sublime benignity; and hence, delighting in all the gracious dispensations of God, his great mind can wholly deliver itself up to the love of a flower budding in the field, or of a child asleep in its cradle; nor, in doing so, feels that poetry can be said to stoop or to descend, much less to be degraded, when she embodies, in words of music, the purest and most delightful fancies and affections of the human heart. This love of the nature to which he belongs, and which is in him the fruit of wisdom and experience, gives to all his poetry a very peculiar, a very endearing, and, at the same time, a very lofty character. His poetry is little coloured by the artificial distinctions of society. In his delineations of passion or character, he is not so much guided by the varieties produced by customs, institutions, professions, or modes of life, as by those great elementary laws of our nature which are unchangeable and the same; and therefore the pathos and the truth of his most felicitous poetry are more profound than of any other, not unlike the most touching and beautiful passages in the sacred page. The same spirit of love, and benignity, and ethereal purity which breathes over all his pictures

of the virtues and the happiness of man, pervades those too of external nature. Indeed, all the poets of the age-and none can dispute that they must likewise be the best critics-have given up to him the palm in that poetry which commerces with the forms, and hues, and odours, and sounds of the material world. He has brightened the earth we inhabit to our eyes; he has made it more musical to our ears; he has rendered it more creative to our imaginations.

We are no great Greek scholars, but we can force our way through the Iliad. What we do not clearly.. we dimly understand, and are happy in the glorious glimpses; in the full unbroken light we bask like an eagle in the sunshine that emblazons his eyrie; in the gloom that sometimes falls suddenly down on his inspired rhapsodies, as if from a tower of clouds, we are for a time eyeless "as blind Mæonides," while with him we enjoy the "darkness that may be felt;" as the lightnings of his genius flash, lo! before our wide imagination ascends "stately-structured Troy," expand tented shore and masted sea; and in that thunder we dream of the nod that shuddered Olympus. Some people believe in twenty Homers-we in one. Nature is not so prodigal of her great poets. Heaven only knows the number of her own stars-no astronomer may ever count them; but the soul-stars of earth are but few, and with this Perryan pen could we name them all. Who ever heard of two Miltons-of two Shaksperes? That there should even have been one of each is a mystery, when we look at what are called men. Who, then, after considering that argument, will believe that Greece of old was glorified by a numerous brotherhood of coeval genii of mortal birth, all "building up the lofty rhyme," till, beneath their harmonious hands, arose, in its perfect proportions, immortal in its beauty and magnificence, "the tale of Troy divine?"

The Iliad was written by Homer. Will Wolf and Knight tell us how it happened that all the heroic

strains about the war before Troy, poured forth, as they opine, by many bards, regarded but one period of the siege? By what divine felicity was it that all those sons of song, though apart in time and place, united in chanting the wrath of Achilles? The poem is one, like a great wood, whose simultaneous growth overspreads a mountain. Indeed, one mighty poem, in process of time, moulded into form out of separate fragments, composed by a brotherhood of bards-not even coeval-may be safely pronounced an impossibility in nature. Achilles was not the son of many sires; was the part he played written for him by a succession of " 'eminent hands," all striving to find

nor

fit work for their common hero. He is not a creature of collected traditions. He stands there a single conception-in character and in achievement; his absence is felt like that of a thunder-cloud withdrawn behind a hill, leaving the air still sultry; his presence is as the lightning, in sudden illumination, glorifying the whole field of battle. Kill, bury, and forget him, and the Iliad is no more an Epic.

Wilson.

THE BATTLE OF CRESSY.

Edward III. intended crossing the Seine at Poissy, but found the French army encamped on the opposite bank, and the bridge there, as well as all others over the Seine, broken down by the orders of King Philip. Now as it was impossible for the soldiers to cross a deep and wide river without à bridge, and with the enemy on the other side waiting to attack them, Edward found himself in rather a perilous position, for he saw it was the intention of the French to shut him in their country and then surround him on all sides. But the undaunted Edward only smiled at their plans, and then crossed the river by a stratagem. He desired his army to leave Poissy, and advance further up the Seine; they did so, and the French on the opposite side followed his example: but Edward im