'whether we consider the straight stretches of walk or the square yards at the angles, in which the middle line goes half a yard in one direction and then turns a right angle and goes half a yard in another direction.' Spider Subjects. Or the Essays on Incompleteness, Bog-Oak is the most interesting; Bath-Brick very good; Cirro Cumulus is capital, especially on 'those who have the art of finishing without the "off"; March Hare is very good and striking-another time she should write only on one side of the paper (so should Vögelein); Titania, Mignonette, A Bee, Nightingale, Clover, good. It is difficult to choose out of the lives of David I. Vögelein, A Bee, Sintram, Titania, Clover, Mignonette, are all so good that Nightingale has the preference chiefly for the sake of the convenient length. UNFINISHED WORK, 'OH, how delightful!' said a young Spider, a few months ago, coming down to breakfast, 'the Monthly Packet has come.' 'I am so glad; I want to go on with the stories,' said her eldest sister, who being delicate and shut up during the winter, read a good deal of light literature. 'The stories are all you care about, Maggie,' returned the Spider. 'Now I look at the only sensible part, the Spider Subjects, first.' "Is one of your webs in this time?' 'No. I never finished that translation, if you remember; and indeed my answers hardly ever go in.' 'And what are the subjects?' Oh, such good ones. "The Men who have done most in spite of Blindness"-I shall answer that, of course. Milton.' There were Homer and 'And John, King of Bohemia,' put in her sister. 'Yes, and oh, I know, that Encyclopædia has such a list of great blind men in it. I dare say no one else will think of it. Oh, what an answer I will write!' 'And what is the other question?' 'Oh, nothing particular. "The Slothful Man wasteth not that which he took in Hunting"-to explain and illustrate that. What an odd question! Is that in Shakespeare, Maggie?' 'My dear Nettie !' 'Oh, the Bible, is it? Well, I can't think what it means. I am sure if I had taken all the trouble to catch my prey, I should not let it be wasted.' Breakfast was over. Nettie surrounded herself with Encyclopædias, biographies, and histories; worked out a very tolerable list, including Ziska, Scapinelli, the Comte de Pagau, Huber the naturalist, and the traveller Holman, all of whom she fondly hoped no other Spider would remember. She made a semi-poetical, semi-metaphysical beginning, and then was called off for a ride with her father, in the course of which she heard of a botanical prize to be given for the best set of botanical drawings of orchids. A mania for this spread through the ladies of the neighbourhood, and Nettie was the hottest of all. The prize was to be awarded at Christmas, and so it chanced that it was the new year before her notes on blind men came to light again, and then it was Maggie who held them up to her reproachfully, as she found them shut up in a book. 'Oh dear, yes; I wonder what Arachne will say! I quite meant to finish that, only the drawings came in the way; and after all, I never got the prize. But really now, weren't mine the best, as far as they went? And I had such lovely orchids to wind up with, if only I had finished the set; but it didn't seem worth while to go back to them, when once I had broken them off on account of the ball.' Maggie was less strong than she had been, and she lay and thought a good deal about her young sister's character, and the result of her cogitations was a few verses scribbled in pencil on an old letter and left in her blotting-case, where perhaps some day Nettie will find them, when they may seem like a voice from the dead : We watch our children at their play, The spire of Ulm Cathedral stands 'And what of many a mind?' we ask, 'With wasted powers in sloth's strong bands.' A little while we toil and spend, As builders of a temple fair, Oh, well for us that One hath wrought A perfect work, complete and dread, One battle to its end hath fought. Great tasks undone He will not own, BOG-OAK. THE HISTORY OF DAVID I. OF SCOTLAND. DAVID I. of Scotland is renowned in history as a truly good, noble, and virtuous king; kind and just to his subjects, sparing no trouble to redress their wrongs; in private life his conduct was irreproachable; religion was throughout life his guiding principle ;-in fact, Buchanan the historian, who can never be accused of flattery, describes him as 'the perfect exemplar of a good king.' No matter how much occupied he was, or how much engaged in any favourite pursuit, he would always listen to the complaint of one of his poor subjects, and would not rest until justice had been done. He must have had a difficult task indeed, in ruling a people so untaught and barbarous as the Scotch then were, and whom an unknown writer of the age describes as unclean and barbarous; neither hurt by excessive cold, nor by severe hunger; trusting to their swift feet and light armour; esteeming death as nothing among their own family; but exceeding every one in cruelty towards foreigners.' David I. was the son of Malcolm Canmore, and of the sainted Margaret, sister of Edgar Atheling. He succeeded his brother, Alexander I., in 1124. He had spent much of his previous life in Cumberland, that county having been bequeathed to him by his brother Edgar. The time he spent in England was of great use to him in after life, as it trained him for government, and also made him acquainted with a people more civilised than the Scotch then were. The country made wonderful progress during the twentynine years of his reign, both in civilisation and in learning. At the beginning of David's reign some trouble was caused by the struggle made by the Church for independence. David was contemporary with Henry I. and Stephen. He swore to acknowledge Maude as Queen of England on the death of her father, in consequence of which, when Henry died, and Stephen usurped the crown, David's conscience would not allow of his making no effort to resist Stephen, and he openly espoused the cause of Maude. His success was not however great; for after a desultory warfare of three years, matters came to a crisis, when he was defeated in the battle of the Standard, 1138 A.D. His army, and that of the English, encamped on Cuton Moor, near Northallerton, and prepared for battle the next morning. The English were drawn up into one battalion, in the midst of which S. Peter's Standard was displayed (this sacred banner having been brought for the occasion from Lincoln Cathedral) on a carriage mounted on wheels, from which the Bishop of Orkney roused the enthusiasm of the soldiers by declaring their cause a holy one, and promising Paradise to all who should fall in the battle. The Scotch army was drawn up in three lines the first line consisted of the men of Galloway, to whom David, at their earnest request, though much against his good sense, had reluctantly ceded the post; the second line was under the orders of David's eldest son Henry; the third line was commanded by David himself. The men of Galloway rushed forward, and for two hours maintained a desperate struggle with the English spearmen; but the arrows of the English archers beginning to tell on them they commenced a retreat; whereupon Prince Henry galloped forward to the rescue, and breaking through the line opposed to them, attacked the The men of Galloway rallied, and there is no knowing what might have been the issue, had not an English soldier caused a general panic among the Scotch, by holding a dead man's head aloft on a spear, and shouting that it was the head of David. Disorder became universal in the ill-assorted Scotch army, and in spite of all the remonstrances of the king, who rode bare-headed among them to show he was alive, they fled in confusion, and victory was secured to the English, the Scotch losing half their army of 27,000 men. After this defeat David concluded a peace with Stephen, but on terms not disadvantageous to the Scotch; the whole of Durham and Northumberland, with the exception of Newcastle and Bamborough, being ceded to them, on condition of fealty being sworn to Stephen by Prince Henry. The remainder of David's reign was peaceful and prosperous; he devoted himself to improving the condition of his people. Lord Hailes thus describes the beneficial government of David:-'During the course of his sage administration public buildings were erected, rear. |