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DEFINITIONS.-1. De viçe', an emblematic figure. 3. Jăve'lins, short steel-pointed spears. 4. Swerve, to turn aside. Bret'ons (brit ́uns), natives of Brittany, in France. 8. House'-cärleş, immediate followers. 11. De viç'eş, contrivances.

NOTE. The battle of Hastings was fought near the town of Hastings, on the English Channel, in the year 1066. In consequence of the victory gained there, William, Duke of Normandy, became king of England in place of Harold the Saxon.

11. THE RISING.

THOMAS BUCHANAN READ was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, March 12, 1822. He was a painter, a sculptor, and a poet. He published several volumes of original poems, which are clear, natural, vigorous, and beautiful. His Sheridan's Ride and Drifting are among the best known of his works. He died May 11, 1872. The extract given is from The Wagoner of the Alleghanies.

1. WITHIN its shade of elm and oak

The church of Berkley Manor stood;
There Sunday found the rural folk,
And some esteemed of gentle blood.
In vain their feet with loitering tread

Passed 'mid the graves where rank is naught :
All could not read the lesson taught

In that republic of the dead.

2. How sweet the hour of Sabbath talk,

The vale with peace and sunshine full,
Where all the happy people walk,

Decked in their homespun flax and wool,
Where youths' gay hats with blossoms bloom,
And every maid, with simple art,

Wears on her breast, like her own heart,

A bud whose depths are all perfume,
While every garment's gentle stir

Is breathing rose and lavender.

3. The pastor came; his snowy locks

Hallowed his brow of thought and care;
And calmly, as shepherds lead their flocks,
He led into the house of prayer.

Then soon he rose; the prayer was strong;
The psalm was warrior David's song;
The text, a few short words of might,-
"The Lord of hosts shall arm the right!"
He spoke of wrongs too long endured,—
Of sacred rights to be secured;
Then from his patriot tongue of flame
The startling words for freedom came.
The stirring sentences he spake
Compelled the heart to glow or quake,

And rising on his theme's broad wing,
And grasping in his nervous hand
The imaginary battle-brand,

In face of death he dared to fling
Defiance to a tyrant king.

4. Even as he spoke, his frame, renewed
In eloquence of attitude,

Rose, as it seemed, a shoulder higher;
Then swept his kindling glance of fire
From startled pew to breathless choir,
When suddenly his mantle wide
His hands impatient flung aside,
And, lo! he met their wondering eyes
Complete in all a warrior's guise.

5. A moment there was awful pause,

When Berkley cried, "Cease, traitor! cease
God's temple is the house of peace!"
The other shouted, "Nay, not so!

!

When God is with our righteous cause,
His holiest places then are ours;

His temples are our forts and towers,
That frown upon the tyrant foe.

In this the dawn of Freedom's day
There is a time to fight and pray."

6. And now, before the open door,

The warrior-priest had ordered so,—
The enlisting trumpet's sudden roar
Rang through the chapel, o'er and o'er,
Its long reverberating blow,

So loud and clear, it seemed the ear
Of dusty Death must wake and hear.

7. And there the startling drum and fife
Fired the living with fiercer life;
While overhead, with wild increase,
Forgetting its ancient toll of peace,

The great bell swung as ne'er before: .
It seemed as it would never cease;

And every word its ardor flung

From off its jubilant iron tongue
Was, "WAR! WAR! WAR!"

8. "Who dares"-this was the patriot's cry
As striding from the desk he came
"Come out with me, in Freedom's name,

For her to live, for her to die?"
A hundred hands flung up reply,

A hundred voices answered, "I!"

DEFINITIONS.-1. Măn'or, a landed estate. 3. Theme, subject of discourse. Nerv'oŭs, strong, vigorous. 4. Guīșe, dress. 6. Rever ber at îng, echoing. 7. Jū’bi lant, rejoicing.

NOTE.-6. Warrior-priest. The incident here referred to is mentioned by Lossing in his sketch of the life of General Muhlenberg, who, after his farewell sermon, laid aside his sacerdotal gown and stood before his congregation in the full regimental dress of a Virginia colonel.

12. OGG, THE SON OF BEORL.

MARIAN C. EVANS, an English novelist, was born in the North of England, November 22, 1820. She published, under the name of "George Eliot," many popular novels, among which are Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Romola, Middlemarch, Felix Holt, and Daniel Deronda. She was married a short time before her death to John Walter Cross. She died in 1881. Many critics consider George Eliot the foremost of English novelwriters. The following extract is from The Mill on the Floss.

1. WE must enter the town of St. Ogg's,—that venerable town with the red fluted roofs and the broad warehouse gables where the black ships unlade themselves of their burdens from the far North. It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants,-a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot, between the river and the low hill, from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hill-side, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land.

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2. It is a town "familiar with forgotten years.' The shadow of the Saxon hero-king still walks there fitfully, reviewing the scenes of his youth and love-time, and is met by the gloomier shadow of the dreadful heathen Dane who was stabbed in the midst of his warriors by the sword of an invisible avenger, and who rises on autumn evenings, like a white mist, from the tumulus on the hill, and hovers in the court of the old hall by the river-side,-the spot

where he was thus miraculously slain in the days before the old hall was built.

3. It was the Normans who began to build that fine old hall, which is like the town, telling of the thoughts and hands of widely sundered generations; but it is all so old that we look with loving pardon at its inconsistencies, and are well content that they who built the stone oriel, and they who built the Gothic façade and towers of finest small brickwork with the trefoil ornament, and the windows and battlements defined with stone, did not sacrilegiously pull down the ancient half-timbered body with its oak-roofed banqueting-hall.

4. But older even than this old hall is perhaps the bit of wall now built into the belfry of the parish church, and said to be a remnant of the original chapel dedicated to St. Ogg, the patron saint of this ancient town, of whose history I possess several manuscript versions. I incline to the briefest; since, if it should not be wholly true, it is at least likely to contain the least falsehood.

5. 66 Ogg, the son of Beorl," says my private hagiographer, “was a boatman who gained a scanty living by ferrying passengers across the river Floss. And it came to pass, one evening when the winds were high, that there sat moaning by the brink of the river a woman with a child in her arms; and she was clad in rags, and had a worn and withered look, and she craved to be rowed across the river. And the men thereabout questioned her, and said, 'Wherefore dost thou desire to cross the river? Tarry till the morning, and take shelter here for the night so shalt thou be wise, and not foolish.' : Still she went on to mourn and crave.

6. "But Ogg, the son of Beorl, came up, and said, 'I will ferry thee across; it is enough that thy heart needs it.'

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