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And in the still weaker hands of his son and successor, Charles I., the royal power was brought into collision with the parliament, and thus the whole nation plunged into a civil war. After many battles, in which the king was generally worsted, he was brought to trial, and being condemned for having waged war on the people, was beheaded at Whitehall, 1649. Thus did the English nation show how determined they were to be governed by constitutional, and not by arbitrary, authority.

Then, for eleven years, the country was governed without a sovereign, the supreme power being exercised first by the parliament, and then by the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. Shortly after the death of the latter, however, the crown was placed on the head of Charles II., who with a light and jaunty air wore it till he was succeeded by his brother, James II., who was not so successful. After a short struggle with the people, who invited over Prince William of Orange to become their champion and sovereign, he finally abandoned a cause that he had not the power to understand or control, and fled, leaving the throne to his son-in-law and rival, William of Orange.

The throne having been declared vacant by the abdication of James, William III. and Mary were installed as sovereigns of the realm. By this bloodless revolution, the nation obtained for itself a Protestant Succession, and those liberties for which it had so long struggled.

Returning to our review, we find our country before the time of Henry VII. undergoing a long period of civil war, during which the aristocracy was divided into rival factions contending for the royal dignity. These wars, known as Wars of the Roses, had their origin in the fact that Henry Bolingbroke, taking advantage of

the weakness of Richard II., settled himself upon the throne under the title of Henry IV. He was the eldest son of John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward III., and was the founder of the House of Lancaster. The House of York took its title from Edmund, Duke of York, the fifth son of Edward III., but its claim to the throne by marriage with Anne Mortimer, the heiress of Lionel, the third son. The result was that from 1399 to 1461 the Lancastrians held the upper hand, and reigned, in the persons of Henrys IV., V., and VI.; while from 1461 to 1485 the Yorkists held the uncertain throne, represented by Edward IV., his short-lived son, Edward V., and Richard III. In 1485, however, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, a descendant of John of Gaunt, united the rival houses by marrying Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV. He thus began a new line of princes, called after his father, the House of Tudor.

During this period of hard fighting which lasted during the greater part of the fifteenth century, the people were pretty much left to shift and struggle for themselves. The energy that might have developed the industrial resources of the country found vent in these internal conflicts, as well as in some equally hard fighting in France, to the throne of which country Henry V. and VI. laid claim.

Before these times of conflict, our country had for nearly a century and a half, namely, from the accession of Henry II. in 1154, to the deposition of Richard II. in 1399, been governed by the Plantagenet kings, most of whom were men, strong alike in fighting a foreign foe as in curbing the high spirits of their own powerful barons. John and Edward II., however, are notable

exceptions to this statement; for from the former was wrung by the barons the Great Charter of British freedom, in 1215; while the latter lost his throne and his life, partly through his own weakness, and partly by the treachery of his enemies.

It was during this "Edwardian period," as it is called, that our kingdom conquered both Wales and Scotland, the latter at the cost of many fierce battles. Our armies also won great renown by their conquests in France, whose king, John, was brought prisoner to England by Edward III.

These were the times of "chivalry," of baronial castles and feudal wars, of knightly encounters and gay tournaments, all of which were the outgrowth of the spirit and institutions of the Feudal System established by the Normans. During the early Plantagenet period, also, the Crusades took place, which had considerable effect on the progress of western Europe.

Passing beyond the Plantagenets, we come to the Norman kings, from William I. (the Conqueror) to Stephen, covering nearly a century, from 1066 to 1154. It was the first of these that fought his way to the English throne in opposition to the Saxon, or English, Harold, who fell at Hastings.

Before this great event the Anglo-Saxon monarchs had governed this country for about two centuries. The nation was then almost entirely an agricultural one; the people simple in habits, but with a well-arranged system of laws and political rights. To trace this people, our forefathers, back to their commencement would bring us to times when division and often anarchy ruled, and when the light of Christianity had not yet been seen. The fifth century witnessed their invasion from the Con

tinent, and finding here a land just deserted by the Romans, after a possession of nearly four centuries, they gradually drove the Britons, or original natives, westward to Wales, and so filled the land with a Teutonic race.

Of the Roman occupation that preceded this, few traces were left; and the still earlier Celtic race that Julius Cæsar found here, 55 B.C., was known to the ancient civilised world only as a distant and barbarous trading people.

EXERCISES.-I. Define,-Sovereign, successful, industrial, excep tion, chivalry, and barbarous. 2. Trace back the leading points of our history, from Elizabeth to the earliest times. 3. Put dates to the following:-Accession of Victoria, George I., William III., James I., Henry VII., Henry IV., Henry II., William I.

Fane, a temple.

THE VOICE OF SPRING.

MRS. HEMANS.

Larch, a species of the fir-tree.
Verdure, greenness.
Lyre, an ancient harp.
Vanished, passed quickly out of
sight.

Embrace, to enclose or take in.

Wreath, flowers formed into a
ring.

Hesperian, western.
Main, the open sea.

Domain, land held by right.
Glistening, sparkling with light.
Festal, relating to a feast.

I come, I come! ye have called me long;
I come o'er the mountains with light and song.
Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth,
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I pass.

I have breathed on the south, and the chestnut flowers,
By thousands, have burst from the forest bowers,

And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes

Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains.
-But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,
To speak of the ruin or the tomb!

I have passed o'er the hill of the stormy north,
And the larch has hung all his tassels forth;
The fisher is out on the sunny sea,

And the reindeer bounds through the pasture free,
And the pine has a fringe of softer green,

And the moss looks bright where my step has been.

I have sent through the wood-paths a gentle sigh,
And called out each voice of the deep-blue sky,
From the night-bird's lay through the starry-time,
In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime,
To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes,
When the dark fir-bough into verdure breaks.

From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain
They are sweeping on to the silvery main,

They are flashing down from the mountain-brows,
They are flinging spray on the forest boughs,
They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves,
And the earth resounds with the joy of waves.

Come forth, O ye children of gladness, come!
Where the violets lie may now be your home,
Ye of the rose-cheek and dew-bright eye
And the bounding footstep, to meet me fly;
With the lyre, and the wreath, and the joyous lay,
Come forth to the sunshine! I may not stay.
-Away from the dwellings of careworn men,
The waters are sparkling in wood and glen :
Away from the chamber and dusky hearth,
The young leaves are dancing in breezy mirth

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