"I never saw a human face that so closely resembles that of a bull-dog!" remarked one barrister to another in court.
"Let him get a grip of your throat, and you will find the resemblance still closer," was the reply.
These and a hundred others, their equals, instruments, and subordinates, may be supposed to represent the Irish "turnspit" element; it must be acknowledged, however, that in contradistinction to them, there were sounding examples of men of a different and far superior class, such as the Leinsters, Charlemonts, Plunketts, Currans, Ponsonbys, and so forth, who would have adorned any country, and who certainly contributed to relieve their own from the almost intolerable odium which the wholesale venal profligacy of a large number had brought upon it.
From Once a Week.
THE LEGEND OF THE LOCKHARTS.
I.
King Robert on his death-bed lay, wasted in every limb,
The priests had left, Black Douglas now alone was watching him;
The earl had wept to hear those words, "When I am gone to doom,
Take thou my heart and bear it straight unto the Holy Tomb."
II.
Douglas shed bitter tears of grief--he loved the buried man.
He bade farewell to home and wife, to brother and to clan;
And soon the Bruce's heart embalm'd, in silver casket lock'd,
Within a galley, white with sails, upon the blue waves rock'd.
III.
In Spain they rested, there the king besought the Scottish earl
To drive the Saracens from Spain, his galley sails to furl;
It was the brave knight's eagerness to quell the Paynim brood.
That made him then forget the oath he'd sworn upon the rood.
IV.
That was his sin; good angels frown'd upon him as he went
With vizor down and spear in rest, lips closed, and black brow bent:
Upon the turbans, fierce he spurr'd, the charger he bestrode
Was splash'd with blood, the robes and flags he trampled on the road.
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V.
The Moors came fast with cymbal clash and tossing javelin,
Ten thousand horsemen, at the least, on Castille closing in;
Quick as the deer's foot snaps the ice, the Douglas thundered through,
And struck with sword and smote with axe among the heathen crew.
VI.
The horse-tail banners beaten down, the mounted archers fled--
There came full many an Arab curse from faces smear'd with red,
The vizor fell, a Scottish spear had struck him on the breast;
Many a Moslem's frighten'd horse was bleeding head and chest.
VII.
But suddenly the caitiffs turn'd and gathered like a net,
In closed the tossing sabres fast, and they were crimson wet,
Steel jarr'd on steel--the hammers smote on helmet and on sword,
But Douglas never ceased to charge upon that heathen horde.
VIII.
Till all at once his eager eye discerned amid the fight
St. Clair of Roslyn, Bruce's friend, a brave and trusty knight.
Beset with Moors who hew'd at him with sabres dripping blood--
Twas in a rice-field where he stood close to an orange wood.
IX.
Then to the rescue of St. Clair Black Douglas spurred amain,
The Moslems circled him around, and shouting charged again;
Then took he from his neck the heart, and as the case he threw,
"Pass first in fight," he cried aloud, "as thou wert wont to do."
X.
They found him ere the sun had set upon that fatal day,
His body was above the case, that closely guarded lay.
His swarthy face was grim in death, his sable hair was stain'd
With the life-blood of a felon Moor, whom he had struck and brain*d.
XI.
Sir Simon Lockhart, knight of Lee, bore home the silver case.
To shrine it in a stately grave and in a holy place,
The Douglas deep in Spanish ground they left in royal tomb.
To wait in hope and patient trust the trumpet of the doom.
[ORIGINAL.]