The knight is left alone, his steel-cap cleft
in twain,
His good buff jerkin crimsoned o'er with many
a gory stain;
Yet still he waves his banner, and cries amid
the rout,
"For Church and King, fair gentlemen! spur on,
and fight it out!"
And now he wards a Roundhead's pike, and now he
hums a stave,
And now he quotes a stage-play, and now he
fells a knave.
God aid thee now, Sir Nicholas! thou hast no
thought of fear;
God aid thee now, Sir Nicholas! for fearful odds
are here!
The rebels hem thee in, and at every cut and thrust,
"Down, down," they cry, "with Belial! down with
him to the dust."
"I would," quoth grim old Oliver, "that Belial's
trusty sword
This day were doing battle for the Saints and
for the Lord!"
The Lady Alice sits with her maidens in her bower,
The gray-haired warder watches from the castle's
topmost tower;
"What news? what news, old Hubert?"—"The battle's
lost and won;
The royal troops are melting, like mists before
the sun!
And a wounded man approaches;—I'm blind, and
cannot see,
Yet sure I am that sturdy step my master's step
must be!"
"I've brought thee back thy banner, wench, from
as rude and red a fray,
As e'er was proof of soldier's thew or theme for
minstrel's lay!
Here, Hubert, bring the silver bowl, and liquor
quantum suff.,
I'll make a shift to drain it yet, ere I part with
boots and buff;—
Though Guy through many a gaping wound is breathing
forth his life,
And I come to thee a landless man, my fond and
faithful wife!
"Sweet! we will fill our money-bags, and freight
a ship for France,
And mourn in merry Paris for this poor land's
mischance:
For if the worst befall me, why, better axe
and rope,
Than life with Lenthal for a king, and Peters
for a pope!
Alas! alas! my gallant Guy!—curse on the
crop-eared boor,
Who sent me with my standard, on foot from
Marston Moor!"
W. M. Praed
LONDON
The huge city perhaps never impressed the imagination more than when approaching it by night on the top of a coach you saw its numberless lights flaring, as Tennyson says "like a dreary dawn." The most impressive approach is now by the river through the infinitude of docks, quays, and shipping. London is not a city, but a province of brick and stone. Hardly even from the top of St. Paul's or of the Monument can anything like a view of the city as a whole be obtained. It is indispensable, however, to make one or the other of those ascents when a clear day can be found, not so much because the view is fine, as because you will get a sensation of vastness and multitude not easily to be forgotten. There is or was, not long ago, a point on the ridge that connects Hampstead with Highgate from which, as you looked over London to the Surrey Hills beyond, the modern Babylon presented something like the aspect of a city. The ancient Babylon may have vied with London in circumference, but the greater part of its area was occupied by open spaces; the modern Babylon is a dense mass of humanity. London with its suburbs has five millions of inhabitants, and still it grows. It grows through the passion which seems to be seizing mankind everywhere, on this continent as well as in Europe, for emigration from the country into the town, not only as the centre of wealth and employment, but as the centre of excitement, and, as the people fondly fancy, of enjoyment. The Empire and the commercial relations of England draw representatives of trading communities or subject races from all parts of the globe, and the faces and costumes of the Hindoo, the Parsi, the Lascar, and the ubiquitous Chinaman, mingle in the motley crowd with the merchants of Europe and America. The streets of London are, in this respect, to the modern, what the great Place of Tyre must have been to the ancient world. But pile Carthage on Tyre, Venice on Carthage, Amsterdam on Venice, and you will not make the equal, or anything near the equal, of London. Here is the great mart of the world, to which the best and richest products are brought from every land and clime, so that if you have put money in your purse you may command every object of utility or fancy which grows or is made anywhere, without going beyond the circuit of the great cosmopolitan city. Parisian, German, Russian, Hindoo, Japanese, Chinese industry is as much at your service here, if you have the all-compelling talisman in your pocket, as in Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Benares, Yokohama or Pekin. That London is the great distributing centre of the world is shown by the fleets of the carrying trade of which the countless masts rise along her wharves and in her docks. She is also the bank of the world. But we are reminded of the vicissitudes of commerce and the precarious tenure by which its empire is held when we consider that the bank of the world in the middle of the last century was Amsterdam.
The first and perhaps the greatest marvel of London is the commissariat. How can the five millions be regularly supplied with food, and everything needful to life, even with such things as milk and those kinds of fruit which can hardly be left beyond a day? Here again we see reason for concluding that though there may be fraud and scamping in the industrial world, genuine production, faithful service, disciplined energy, and skill in organization cannot wholly have departed from the earth. London is not only well fed, but well supplied with water and well drained. Vastly and densely peopled as it is, it is a healthy city. Yet the limit of practicable extension seems to be nearly reached. It becomes a question how the increasing multitude shall be supplied not only with food and water but with air.