in open rebellion against his father, and the Duke of Brittany was preparing to throw off his obedience to his father-in-law, and against these, the foes of his own house, he had to Ruthless to the last, he inflicted make war. "This act of grudging, coerced, extorted forgiveness was his last. A night of somewhat diminished suffering ensued, when the troubled and expiring body takes a dull, painful, unrestful rest before its last earthly reof the rising sun were darting above the hopose. But as the cheerful, life-giving rays rizon, across the sad apartment, and shedding brightness on its walls, William was half awakened from his imperfect slumbers by the measured, mellow, reverberating, swelling tone of the great cathedral bell. with a heavy impost on the land, already suffering from storms and blight and pestilence, and then crossed over to Normandy, never to re turn. Still evil fortune pursued the king. He was compelled by defeat to make peace his son-in-law, while his own son incited the turbulent burgesses of Mantes to revolt. A dispute arose, too, with the King of France, and for the last time William braced on his mail. It was glorious autumn weather, "the harvest ripening, the grape swelling, the fruit reddening, when William entered the fertile land." As he advanced, the corn was trodden down, the vineyards rooted up, and the city wantonly set on fire. William, aged and unwieldly in body, yet fierce and active in mind, rejoiced with a horrid joy amid this desolation, as he spurred his steed through the burning ruins; but the steed stumbled and fell, and his rider received his death-blow. He was taken to Rouen, and from thence, for greater quiet, to St. Gervase; but his end, attended by much suffering, drew It was then that the cruel conqueror deplored his birth, his whole career of crime and bloodshed. "No tongue can tell," said he, "the deeds of wickedness I have perpetrated in my weary pilgrimage of toil and near. care." 'It is the hour of prime,' replied the attendants in hood welcoming with voices of thanksgiving answer to his inquiry. Then were the priestthe renewed gift of another day, and sending forth the choral prayer that the hours might flow on in holiness until blessed at their close. But his time of labor and struggle, of sin and repentance, was past. William lifted up his hands in prayer, and ex pired." All was now confusion; the men of high degree rushing to horse to secure their possessions, those of lower degree seizing whatever could be taken; while the wretches who hung about the court stripped the body even of its last garment, and left it on the floor. At length the clergy, roused from their consternation, began to offer up the prayers of the Church, and a knight of humble fortune, one Herlouin, took charge of the neglected king's obsequies, and, as sole mourner, reverently attended the coffin to Caen. At the gates the clergy came forth; but a fire broke out, and the procession passed through streets filled But his two younger sons are stand- with stifling smoke, and crowded with afing beside him, not to soothe his sufferings, frighted fugitives, to St. Stephen's Abbey, but anxious to know who is to be heir. where the grave was dug, and the service be"Let Robert take Normandy; for it has been gun; but even now the body was not to be assured to him; but England?"- "All lowered peaceably into its last resting-place. the wide-wasting wretchedness produced by Ascelin, a poor man, stood up, denounced the his ambition arose up before him, and he de-injustice of the king, and demanded payment clared he dared not bestow the realm he had for his grave. Inquiry was made; the land it thus fearfully won." But Rufus urged his was found had been violently wrested from petition, until the dying man directed a writ the rightful owner; so the price was paid, to be addressed to Lanfranc, commanding him the swollen body was lowered bursting into to place Rufus on the throne. Henry was the ground; and "thus was William the scantly quieted with a gift of five thousand Conqueror gathered to his fathers, with loathpounds of silver. So they kissed him, and ing, disgust, and horror." How must such hurried off. But his captives,-those kept a tale have addressed itself to the feelings of so many years in hard durance-not without a superstitious age? how must the Saxon much entreaty did William, although ago-peasant have dwelt with stern delight on each nized alike with pain and remorse, consent, for implacable was he to the last. At length he gave assent that all, even Odo, should be set free. revolting detail as he looked upon the daisystrewn mounds in the green churchyard where his father slept, for when had even the poorest tiller of the ground so deserted a death-bed, or so dishonored an obsequy, as Prayer translated by Pope Adrian in 1156, the victor of Hastings? has only a single word that can now he considered obsolete. Those changes which the English language has undergone, he considers, may rather be attributed to the blending of the various dialects which were in use among our forefathers into one prevailing form of speech. To the charge of abolishing the ancient laws of the land, Sir Francis Palgrave replies, that much can be traced still whole customary tenure of land over all the length and breadth of the island was, and indeed is, purely and sincerely English.” 66 to renew his holding under the Bishop of If any one of my readers should chance Worcester, it will be gebooked to him for three lives, exactly as if good Wulstane was to receive the fine. Of aldermen it is unne In what light shall we view the Conquest? It was a stern visitation, replies Sir Francis Palgrave, for "in the same manner as the sins of the European community demanded the visitation of the French Revolution, so did the English require the discipline of the Norman sword;" but while its immediate effects were disastrous, its after results, he maintains, were fraught with great and abiding in our political constitution, while "the benefits. The first benefit to which Sir Francis Palgrave points is one which we do not recollect seeing noticed before. This is, that by means of the conquest" England wae brought into a closer connection with the general affairs of the commonwealth of Western Christendom than had ever subsisted before." Constantly harassed by fears of the Danes, and yet more by internal feuds, Eng-cessary to speak, and throughout the whole of land, especially during the last hundred years, old English customs and constitution is truly our municipal institutions the vitality of the had been gradually more and inore severed wonderful. Bring an ejectment for lands from the feelings, thoughts, and interests of in the parish of Clapham or Chelsea, and Western Europe. Now this in an age when Judge Holt would at once have nonsuited facilities for learning were few, and learned you for not laying the venue in the Anglomen were widely scattered, had a most inju-Saxon town. If the lord of the manor has rious effect upon English literature; it had to vindicate his franchise, he presses into his an injurious effect upon the people, too, shut- servise, sac and soc, infangthef, and outting them out from many a source of interest-fangthef, and whatsoever else he can find in ing inquiry, from whatever had not immediate reference to their own narrow views. But from henceforward "the island and the firm land were compelled to be constantly in communication with each other, to be united by sympathies, or cognizant of each other by hostilities." May not the spirit of mercantile enterprise, which we can trace so clearly almost from the time of the Conquest, be assigned to this cause? Sir Francis Palgrave next examines the assertion that the conquest destroyed English nationality, by changing the language, and abolishing the old constitution. In answer to the first charge he remarks, that without any national conquest, the Danish language has undergone more changes than the English. Snorro Sturleson is obsolete; and if Regner Lodbrok were to chant his death-song in the streets of Copenhagen, nay, even at Drontheim, it would be as little intelligible to bis auditors as Caedmon's song, though accompanied by himself upon his harp, would be to an audience in Hanover Square. Indeed, so thoroughly is our language unchanged in its essential elements that the Lord's King Ethelred's charter. And if the Hlafod owner were to exert his rights, the inhabiwho now holds the possession of the Saxon tants of Manchester Square would be compelled to appear at the court of the Lite as in the earliest age." Thus, too, “the courts of the burgh, the hundred, the shire, have not changed even policy assumed, he never departed from the in name," for "whatever aspects William's principle that he had placed himself in the position of a legitimate sovereign, asserting legitimate rights. And even his great seal,” by which his will and pleasure, his grace and favor, or his enmity, were announced, far more power than words. proved this to an age in which symbol had "On the reverse, the Duke of Normandy, mounted on his war-steed, grasps the sword of Rollo, defended by shield and mail; but the throne of justice, wears the crown of Alon the obverse, the Rex Anglorum, seated on fred, and presents the sceptre surmounted by cruel, prudent, cunning, entirely unscruputhe peaceful dove. lous as to the means he used,-the sword, the axe, and, if universal rumor could be William was trusted, the poisoned cup,-but he made no | pride than to see "the host of adventurers, attempt to introduce a new religion, new most of whom had been rude and poor language, new customs, new laws. He never and despicable in their own country," take strove to Normanize the English." for their brides the fair and high-born Saxon maidens.* The Saxon, too, from his earliest settlement here, loved the untrammelled freedom of country life. It seems to have been only by very slow degrees that he became a voluntary dweller in towns. Now the Norman tendency was always strongly toward congregating the masses in burghs or cities; even their "castle life" accustomed their retainers to a control which the Saxon in his "toft," surrounded by his fields, could never have borne ; and thus arrangements, actually most beneficial to an advancing population were viewed as acts of enormous tyranny. Thus, that the hundred should be answerable for the murder, was pointed to as gross injustice; thus the compilation of "Domesdaybook," although an important boon to the smallest landholder, inasmuch as it secured to him all the rights he had hitherto enjoyed was denounced as unheard-of oppression; while the enactment respecting the curfew— although a regulation easily set at nought by the scattered upland population, but a valuable protection to the inhabitants of the walled town-has ever been viewed as the very cli Whence, then, the bitter memories called up in the popular mind, whenever the "Conquest" is spoken of? wherefore the implacable hatred with which even our latest chroniclers pursue the very name of the first William? One, and perhaps the chief reason, was, we think, that his first steps in England had been traced in Saxon blood. Although he came, not as the invader of a kingdom, but as the claimant of a crown bequeathed to him by his cousin, still, the remembrance of the field of Hastings rankled in the breasts of his new subjects and forbade their yielding him a willing homage. Had William from thenceforth reigned in peace, "the lake of blood" might have faded from their memories, and they might have been prepared to adopt, even if they did not welcome, his stern but most beneficial system of police. But the English were a haughty race, and they chafed against the rule of a foreigner, even as they always have done. The forefathers of those who almost drove their deliverer from his throne by their clamor against his "Dutch guards," who so foolishly played into the hands of the Jaco-max of "Norman William's," tyranny.† bites by their phrase of "the Hanover rats," were not likely quietly to see a foreign king, far less foreign adventurers, crowding over to share in the plunder of a land which had yet to be won. William seems to have thought that wide England was rich and helpless as his stately cousin. He soon found his mistake; and then the hard, remorseless character of the pitiless conqueror was fully shown.ence, and we should be inclined to add, in archThen followed confiscations, judicial murders, and a "razzia " along the whole north-eastern coast, such as Christendom had never before seen. Of what value was "the good peace he made, so that a man with his bosom full of gold" might pass along, when tallage after tallage was so unsparingly enforced, and a land wasted by such awful devastations? Of what avail that "no man durst slay another, though he had done ever so much evil against him," when Edwin, Morcar, and even Waltheof were sacrificed at the mere will of the ruler, and the Saxon churl hung on the gallows-tree for infraction of the forest code? And then," the Saxons seem to have had a very strong aristocratical feeling ;" and, therefore, nothing was more irritating to their *The reader who remembers Lord Macaulay's extravagant figure of the "white planter and the quadroon girl," must, under the far more reliable guidance of Sir Francis Palgrave, just reverse it; for the Norman adventurer marrying the Saxon maiden, was actually the quadroon man seeking the daughter of the white planter. As the author of "Revolutions in English History" truly remarks, except in military sci itecture,-the Normans were far inferior to the Saxons." "Their valor stood them in good stead, but their learning and refinement are almost wholly of a date subsequent to their settlement in England." +Strange misapprehensions, even among wellinformed writers, have prevailed on this subject. Forgetting the early hours of our forefathers, they have forgotten that eight o'clock precisely answers to midnight in the present day. The phrase couvre feu, obviously does not mean putting out the fire, but covering it up with a turf, or slow-burning coal, as is still in use in many parts of the country. That lights were prohibited after this time is a wholly unfounded assertion, and we could bring numberless proofs of chief proof that this dreaded curfew-bell was a But the this from contemporary chronicles. beneficial municipal regulation, is, that during the whole of the Middle Ages it continued to be rung in every town and city, and that even the London "prentices bold" were compelled to be "within doors by curfew-time." Now, after the lapse of eight hundred ing them in a more efficient organization.” years, need we echo these complaints? The main principles of our legal and political Rather let us inquire, In what light, as a constitution continue, as we have seen, unwhole, shall we view this conquest of Wil- changed; while the very insults and oppresliam's? Let no praise be given to him; for sions of the Conquest aroused that spirit of bitter oppression, cruel wrong, was the por- steadfast, persisting resistance, which, under tion he unrelentingly imposed on our fore- inflictions less galling, might have slumbered fathers, and under his iron sway a less ener- on. Once thoroughly aroused, the Saxon getic race might have been crushed hope- resumed his former energy; he once more lessly. But the evil, great and overwhelm-stood prepared to defend his rights, to fling ing, was but temporary, the benefits lasting. off his temporary yoke, and ere four gener"No permanent evil was inflicted on the ations had passed away, the Norman and great masses of society; the shattered and Normandy were lost sight of in the prouder decayed elements of old English policy were names of Englishman and England. preserved, and the means provided for reunit BONNIE DUNDEE. To the men of Dundee 'twas a bailie that spoke, So let a' in the toon, that love booing and me, Come fill up your cup, come fou' as ye can, the men; TO ALFRED TENNYSON. Come block up the causey, nor let them gang Written on reading "a Dedication” in “Enoch Ar free, Till they hae a guid surfeit o' bonnie Dundee." They're a' in the carriage, they drive to the To reach Broughty Ferry as settled before; Till they've seen a good deal o' the folk o' Dun- Come fill up your cup, etc. den, etc." "THE wise indifference of the wise " "To" critics' "blame " ."to" critics' Strange reads thy prayer unto our eyes, Oh, what hast thou to think of such? So the Camperdown spurs to the door of the By such was that far darkness vexed coach, And speaks with His Highness in humble re Who rolled in thunders Ilion's fall? As my heart read thee, what to me Thy page I hungered on to read! Write beauty and life's sad, sweet truth As thou writ'st here-make our eyes blind Let them be dumb or loud-who'll mind! CHAPTER VI. ERMINE'S RESOLUTION. "For as his hand the weather steers, And Violetta speedily had the honor of an introduction, very solemnly gone through, in due form; Ermine, in the languid sportiveness of enjoyment of his presence and his kindness to the child, inciting Rose to present Miss Violetta Williams to Colonel Keith, an introduction that he returned with a grand military salute, at the same time as he shook the doll's inseparable fingers." Well, Miss Violetta and Miss Rose, when you come to live with me, I shall hope for the pleasure of teaching you to make a noise." "What does he mean?" said Rose, turning round amazed upon her aunt. 66 I am afraid he does not quite know," said Ermine, sadly. 66 Nay, Ermine," said he, turning from the child, and bending over her, “ you are the last who should say that. Have I not told you that there is nothing now in our way,no one with a right to object, and means enough for all we should wish, including her? What is the matter?" he added, startled by her look. "Ah, Colin! I thought you knew ". "Knew what, Ermine?" with his brows drawn together. "Knew-what I am," she said; "knew the impossibility. What, they have not told you? I thought I was the invalid, the cripple, with every one." ALISON had not been wrong in her presentiment that the second interview would be more trying than the first. The exceeding brightness and animation of Ermine's countenance, her speaking eyes, unchanged complexion, and lively manner,-above all, the restoration of her real, substantial self,-had so sufficed and engrossed Colin Keith in the gladness of their first meeting that he had failed to comprehend her helpless state, and already knowing her to be an invalid, not entirely recovered from her accident, he was only agreeably surprised to see the beauty of face he had loved so long retaining all its vivacity of expression. And when he met Alison the next morning with a cordial brotherly greeting and inquiry for her sister, her "Very well," and "not at all the worse for the excitement, were so hearty and ready that he could not have guessed that "well' with Ermine meant something rather relative than positive. Alison brought him a playful message from her, that, since he was not going to Belfast, she should meet him with a freer conscience if he would first give her time for Rose's lessons, and, as he said, he had lived long enough with Messrs. Conrade and Co. to acknowledge the wisdom of the" message. But Rose had not long been at leisure to look out for him before he made his appearance, and walking in by right, as one at home, and sitting down in his yesterday's place, took the little maiden on his knee, and began to talk to her about the lessons he had been told to wait for. What would she have done without them? He knew some people who never could leave the house quiet enough to hear one's self speak if they were deprived of lessons. Was that the way with her? Rose laughed like a creature-her aunt said-"to whom the notion of noise at play was something strange and ridiculous; necessity has reduced her to Jacqueline Pascal's system with her pensionnaires, who were allowed to play one by one without any noise." "But I don't play all alone," said Rose; "I play with you, Aunt Ermine, and with Violetta." "I knew you had suffered cruelly; I knew you were lame," he said, breathlessly; but-what" "It is more than lame," she said. "I should be better off if the fiction of the Queens of Spain were truth with me. I could not move from this chair without help. Oh, Colin! poor Colin, it was very cruel not to have prepared you for this!" she added, as he gazed at her in grief and dismay, and made a vain attempt to find the voice that would not come. 'Yes, indeed, it is so," she said; "the explosion, rather than the fire, did mischief below the knee that poor nature could not repair, and I can but just stand and cannot walk at all." 66 "Has anything been done-advice?" he managed to utter. "Advice upon advice, so that I felt it at last almost a compensation to be out of the way of the doctors. No, nothing more can be done; and now that one is used to it, the snail is very comfortable in its shell. But I wish you could have known it sooner!" she |