pursuing the apparently flying enemy. The Norman cavalry, and the troops of Maine, Brittany, France, and Aquitaine, suddenly wheeled and renewed the battle from the south-west, passing up through the narrow opening between the hills. The English were scattered in their wild haste and excitement when the horsemen surrounded them. They fought bravely, and sustained the charge like men who knew that to turn their backs was shame and death; but nothing could stand against the Norman horse, and the whole force was totally routed and driven back with slaughter across the plain. Some escaped into the woods, others were cut down as they ran, but the rest rallied, and taking advantage of the steepest part of the hill, and the many ditches intersecting it, made a gallant resistance against a general assault of the Normans; but their line was broken, and the battle was continued with unequal odds along the summit of the hill. Charge after charge with horse and foot was made upon them; across the valley they fell back towards the standard.

Thrice the duke had his charger killed under him. The issue of the day was uncertain, when he ordered his archers to shoot upward in the air. Sunset was coming on, but the outer line of intrenchments was forced. Thick as sleet poured down these showers of arrows, and one fell and struck King Harold in the left eye. In his agony he drew out the arrow, and in torture for a while leaned his head upon his shield, yet continued to issue his commands and direct the defence. In the thickest of the battle fought the men of Kent and Essex, holding the redoubts, until with one thousand knights, barons, and men-at-arms, the Normans, with their weight of armour and the force of their horses, forced their way through, whilst the English died fighting and rallying till they fell. The crest of the hill was stormed, and the inner line broken through. Twenty Norman knights devoted themselves to death or victory, and penetrated to the English standard. Harold, notwithstanding the exquisite torture of his wound, having broken off the shaft and wrenched out the point, made a heroic defence. A blow on his helmet felled him to the ground, and as he attempted to rise, a knight cut his thigh through to the bone. The golden standard was taken, and Harold, the king who loved his country, and sealed his affection with his blood, lay dead beneath a heap of his faithful soldiery, with his brothers Gurth and Leofric by his side, as the autumn twilight fell upon the field. The light-armed English fled, some on the horses on which their chiefs had ridden to the battle. The Norman cavalry leaped their N. S. 1867, VOL. III.

D

horses over the dead, and trampled on them in fierce detestation, as they pursued the rout until night concealed the fugitives, giving no quarter. But in the forest of Anderida a noble rally was made by the men of Kent and East-Anglia, and a large number of the enemy were cut off, it is said, in the broken parts of the valley, and along the frequent ditches, probably by the left wing, which, having scarcely been engaged, would retire along the valley and up Caldbeck Hill, where they could engage the Norman troops who were pursuing their comrades, who had formed the right and centre, along the site of the present High and Mount Streets. Like a hunted lion, they kept the enemy at bay, beaten but unsubdued.

If Harold had not been wounded in the afternoon, he would not have allowed his raw levies to have been deceived by the very ruse with which he had won the day at Stamford Bridge. If Gurth or Leofric had outlived him, the survivors of the English might have been rallied, the North would have recovered from their losses with the Danes, a new army might have been concentrated and destroyed the army in detail. As a general, a patriot, a gallant soldier, and a king, Harold's name is dear to us. As William of Jumièges describes him, he was "a man of great courage and honour, of great personal beauty, graceful in conversation, and courteous to every one." "Woe to thee, O England!" wailed the Monk of Ely, "fallen into strangers' hands, thy chiefs conquered, thy king lost, thy sons perished, thy counsellors dead or disinherited!" The consecrated Papal banner waved where the English standard had wavered and gone down before the furious Norman charge; and to the Pope, as a memorial of a hard-fought day, the latter was sent. The old tradition was long preserved, that when the heavens wept on the anniversary of that disastrous battle, the little Asten distilled drops as red as the blood that was shed upon it. The Normans bought their victory dear, at the cost of between 6000 and 10,000 lives; and their leader, in his vulgar enmity-when he had Harold wrapped in royal purple and buried, by Malet (an uncle of Queen Algitha), on the cliff of Hastings, with the scornful inscription, "By the Duke's commandbe still Warder of the land and sea,"-little thought how the old English spirit of Harold would breathe on in her sons centuries after, or that on this coast of Sussex the guns of France would roar their last, and, as old Fuller said, lose their voice ever after; or rather that the union of Norman and English blood would tend to make a nation which united the virtues of both, and corrected their national vices.

Religion, which had grown lifeless in England, warmed into new life; and it is remarkable that the enduring memorial of the conqueror and the conquered was in each case a stately church. Here we mourn the loss of the Norman offering for the battle won; but at Waltham Harold's memory is still preserved in a minster, which bears the name of his battle-cry, and perpetuates his hope in life and death; and, perhaps, his last words, "Holy Cross."

Harold's three sons found a shelter in Denmark among the gallant and generous Danes. It is said that Githa, his mother, purchased Harold's body for its weight in gold; and that Osgood and Alric, canons of Waltham, discovered it, mutilated and a sight of horror, and carried it home with them to repose under a marble slab inscribed: "Here lies Harold the Unhappy." But there is another tradition, long believed and carefully maintained, that the true Harold, revived by the faithful Canons, escaped to Dover Castle, and at length spent his last days as a hermit in a cave near Chester walls, where Henry I. spoke with him, an old man blind of the left eye. Still, we would rather believe that he fell as a gallant soldier-king, as the great Roland passed away, according to the song of Taillefer:

"With his face to the foe, so that they may say, 'He died as a conqueror,' when they find him; and he cried on God for mercy. And the memory of many things comes over him, such fair battles, his sweet country, his kindred and lineage; last his thoughts turn upon himself: My God, our true Father, Thou who never liest, Thou who drewest forth Lazarus from among the dead and Daniel from the teeth of the lion, save my soul, snatch it from the peril of those sins which I in my life have done! " b

Twice the tomb of William in the grand church of St. Stephen at Caen has been rifled and destroyed. The grave of Harold lies unknown under the turf at Waltham. On the spot where he fell the high altar of Battle Abbey was erected that also has disappeared, although we can point to the very site within a few inches. His line is gone, his throne was taken by another, his name only survives as that of one who had but a short reign of months; still, though his tomb has been destroyed, and his epitaph blotted out, while English hearts remain, his memory will find in them a dwellingplace; and who will dislodge it thence? The memory of one who

The song of Roland is supposed to have been written by "Therulde the trouvère," who, M. Genin thinks, was Turoldus, afterwards Abbot of Peterborough." Quarterly Review," No. 240, p. 284.

failed like Leonidas when the Persian arrows heaped themselves into a tomb above him in the pass of Thermopylæ,-one as noble a prince, and as stout a warrior as ever wore the crown of England, or led her troops to battle, one who died to give way to a new life, which ennobled our race and high-mettled our blood :

"Tis the home we hold sacred is laid to our trust,

God bless the green Isle of the Brave,

Should a conqueror tread on our forefathers' dust,
It would rouse the old Dead from their grave."

MACKENZIE E. C. WALCOTT, B.D.

THE SPORTSMAN ABROAD.

T would be difficult to name a pleasanter pursuit than is that of a naturalist; wander whithersoever he may, he sees, or he ought to see, chains of cause and effect,

harmonies, laws, and significancies, in every atom of organic or inorganic matter round about him. The tiniest insect, the mightiest beast, the strongest-winged eagle, or the most fragile humming-bird, display alike in their marvellous adaptation to their ways in life the finger-mark of God. Let us, for example's sake, suppose a naturalist in a new world, and that he is likewise a sportsman or hunter (employing the latter word in its Transatlantic sense), as he tramps and rides over the prairies, or loiters beneath the shadowy forest, or, like a water-bird, glides over inland lakes, or darts like a fish down rapid streams in his canoe,-such an one cannot help, if he does not shut his eyes, seeing all kinds of strange things well worth noting. Were he only a naturalist, it is probable that such remote parts as his love of sport induces him to visit, would remain unexplored.

There is a great charm to a naturalist in procuring a bird or an insect new to science, or some strange beast man's eye had never gazed on before; digging treasures, as it were, hitherto unknown, from nature's exhaustless mines; but combine the sportsman's love of the chase with these discoveries, and how immensely are they enhanced in value. As Kingsley writes, "I speak of the scenery, the weather, the geological formation of the country, its vegetation, and the living habits of its denizens." A sportsman out in all weathers, and often dependent for success on his knowledge of "what the sky is going to do," has opportunities for becoming a meteorologist, which no one beside but a sailor

possesses; and one has often longed for a scientific gamekeeper or huntsman, who, by discovering a law for the mysterious and seemingly capricious phenomena of "scent," might perhaps throw light on a hundred dark passages of hygrometry. The fisherman, too,-what an inexhaustible treasury of wonders lies at his feet in the subaqueous world of the commonest mountain burn! All the laws which mould a world are there busy if he but knew it, fattening his trout for him and making them rise to the fly, by strange electric influences, at one hour rather than another. Many a geognostic lesson, too, both as to the nature of a country's rocks and as to the laws by which strata are deposited, may an observing man learn as he wades up the bed of a trout-stream, not to mention the strange forms and habits of the tribes of water-insects.

The three books we have selected for notice in this article well merit careful perusal by all who feel interested in hunting adventures, as such; but over and above a goodly collection of hair-breadth escapes, wild scampers over rolling prairies, tough battles with wild beasts, together with the mass of detail which usually goes to make up the sum total of all hunters' narratives, the general reader will find a vast store of valuable material relating to the habits and habitats of birds, animals, and other living things, the like of which he does not probably know very much about, except some hazy ideas of the shapes of the creatures themselves, gathered from an inspection of stuffed monstrosities in a museum, or it may be-and this is better-from peeping at the prisoners in the Zoological Gardens.

It is by no means an usual occurrence to meet with three volumes, the titles of which would lead one to suppose their several contents bore reference only to sport and sporting in different parts of the world, but which nevertheless turn out on perusal stores wherein all classes of readers may find pleasant, instructive recitals of what the live tenants of these distant countries do in their native haunts. The authors-two of them, at any rate-are fortunately naturalists as well as hunters; hence the more than usual value possessed by their works.

By the Southern States,a (vide title-page), Captain Flack refers entirely to Texas, which must be, according to his account of it, a very Eden for any man imbued with hunting propensities and delicate lungs. Where is the roving, sport-loving Englishman that will not sigh for a ramble in the sunny South after reading the brisk anecdotes and ticklish adventures so racily put together in the Captain's book? Every chapter teems with picturesque touches that will delight the full-grown

"A Hunter's Experiences in the Southern States." By Captain Flack (The Ranger). Longmans, 1866.