Five hundred years had past since Jūlius Cēşar's first invāŝion of the Island, when the Rōmanş departed from it for ever. They had done much to improve the condition of the Britons; they had made roads and forts, and had refined the whole British way of living. Above all it was in Roman time and by means of Rōman ships that the Christian religion was brought, and the people first taught the great lesson that to be good in the sight of God they must love their neighbors as themselves and do unto others as they would be done by.

Little is known of these five hundred years; but some remains are found-rusty money that once belong'd to Romans; fragments of plate from which they ate, and goblets they drank from are still found in digging. Wells they sunk; roads they made; traces of Roman camps ōvergrown with grass, and mounds that are the burial-places of heaps of Britons are to be found in âlmōst âll pärts. Across the bleak moors of Northumberland, the great wâll of the Rōman emperor Sevērus, over-run with moss and weeds, still stretches a strong ruin; and the shepherds and their dogs lie sleeping on it in the summer weather. From "Dickens's Child's History of England."

HAROLD II.

Harold, son of Earl Godwin, waș crown'd King of England on the very day of the maudlin Confessor's funeral. He had good need to bē qüick about it. When the news reacht Norman William, hunting in his pärk at Rouen, (pr. Roo-ong) he dropt his bow, return'd to his palace, câll'd his nobles to council, and presently sent ambassadors to Harold, câlling on him to keep his oath to resign the Crown. Harold would do no such thing, and so the barons of France leagued together round Duke William for the invāŝion of England. Duke William promișed freely to distribute English wealth and English lands among them.

King Harold had a rebel brother in Fländers, who was a vassal of Harold Hardräda, King of Norway. This brother, and this Norwēgian king, joining their forces against England, with Duke William's help, won a fight in which the English were commanded by two nobles; and then besieged York. Harold, who was waiting for the Normans on the coast at Hastings, with his ärmy, märcht to Stamford Bridge upon the river Derwent to give them instant battle.

He found them drawn up in a hollow cîrcle,

märkt out by their shining spears. Riding round this cîrcle at a distance, to survey it, hē saw a brave figure on horseback, in a blue mantle and a bright helmet, whose horse suddenly stumbled and threw him.

"Who is that man who has fallen?" Harold askt of one of his captains.

"The King of Norway," he replied.

"He is a tall and stately king," said Harold, "but his end is near."

He added, in a little while, "Gō ÿonder to my brother, and tell him, if he withdraw his troops, he shall be Earl of Northumberland, and rich and pow-erfül in England."

The captain rōde a-way and gave the message.

"What will he give to my friend the King of Norway?" askt the brother.

"Seven feet of earth for a grave,” replied the captain.

"Nō more?" return'd the brother, with a smile.

"The King of Norway being a tâll man, perhaps a little more," replied the captain.

"Rīde back!" said the brother, "and tell King Harold to make ready for the fight!"

He did sō, very soon. And such a fight King Harold led against that force, that his

brother, and the Norwegian King, and every chief of nōte in all their host, except the Norwegian King's son, Olave, to whom hē gāve honorable dismissal, were left dead upon the field. The victorious ärmy märcht to York. Aş King Harold sat there at the feast, in the midst of all his company, a stir was heard at the doors; and messengers âll cover'd with mire from riding fär and fast through brōken ground came hurrying in, to report that the Normans had landed in England.

The intelligence was true. They had been tost about by contrary winds, and some of their ships had been wreckt. A part of their own shōre, to which they had been driven back, was strewn with Norman bodies. But they had once mōre made sail, led by the Duke's own galley, a present from his wife, upon the prow whereof the figure of a golden boy stood pointing towards England. By day, the banner of the three Lions of Normandy, the diverse color'd sails, the gilded vāneṣ, the many decorations of this gorgeous ship, had glitter'd in the sun and sunny wâter; by night, a light had sparkled like a stär at her mast-head. And now, encampt near Hastings, with their leader lying in the ōld Roman castle of Pevensey, the English retiring in all directions, the land for miles around scorcht and

smoking, fired and pillaged, was the whôle Norman pow-er, hōpefül and strong on English ground.

Harold broke up the feast and hurried to London. Within a week, hiş ärmy was ready. He sent out spies to ascertain the Norman strength. William took them, caused them to bē led through his whole camp, and then dismist. "The Normans," said these spies to Harold, "are not bearded on the upper lip as wē English are, but are shorn. They are priests." "My men," replied Harold, with a laugh, "will find those priests good soldiers!"

"The Saxons," reported Duke William's outposts of Norman soldiers, who were instructed to retire as King Harold's ärmy advanced, "rush on us through their pillaged country with the fury of madmen."

"Let them come, and come soon!" said Duke William.

Some proposals for a reconciliation were māde, but were soon abandon'd. In the middle of the month of October, in the year one thousand and sixty-six, the Normans and the English came front to front. All night the ärmies lay encampt before each other, in a part of the country then câll'd Senlac, now câll'd (in remembrance of them) Battle.

With the first