The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book Part 32

But the mountain-walls of this profound valley are closing gloomily together, as if they would forbid even the indignant river to force its wild way betwixt them. _Is_ there a path through the frowning gorge other than that rocky way which is fiercely held by the current? Yes, there is a narrow road, painfully grooved by the hand of man out of the mountain side, now running along like a gallery, now dropping down to the brink of the stream. But the glittering array winds on. There is the heavy tread of the foot-soldiers, the trampling of horse, the dull rumble of the guns, the waving and flapping of the colours, and the angry remonstrance of the Inn. But all else is still as a midnight sleep, except, indeed, when the eagles of the crag, startled from their eyries, raise their shrill cry as they spread their living wings above the gilded eagles of France.

Suddenly a voice is heard far up amid the mists of the heights--not the eagle's cry _this_ time--not the freak of a wayward echo--but human words, which say "_Shall we begin?_" Silence! It is a host that holds its breath and listens. Was it a spirit of the upper air parleying with its kind? If so, it has its answer countersigned across the dark gulf.

"_Noch nicht!_"--"_Not yet!_" The whole invading army pause: there is a wavering and writhing in the glittering serpent-length of that mighty force which is helplessly uncoiled along the base of the mountain. But hark! the voice of the hills is heard again, and it says "_Now!_"

_Now_, then, descends the wild avalanche of destruction, and all is tumult, dismay, and death. The very crags of the mountain side, loosened in preparation, come bounding, thundering down. Trunks and roots of pine trees, gathering speed on their headlong way, are launched down upon the powerless foe, mingled with the deadly hail of the Tyrolese rifles. And this fearful storm descends along the whole line at once. No marvel that two-thirds of all that brilliant invading army are crushed to death along the grooved pathway, or are tumbled, horse and man, into the choked and swollen river.

Enough of horrors! Who would willingly linger on the hideous details of such a scene? Sorrowful that man should come, with his evil ambitions and his fierce revenges, to stain and to spoil such wonders of beauty as the hand of the Creator has here moulded. Sorrowful that man, in league with the serpent, should writhe into such scenes as these, and poison them with the virus of sin.

Richter

Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail Against her beauty? May she mix With men and prosper! Who shall fix Her pillars? Let her work prevail.

... Let her know her place; She is the second, not the first, A higher hand must make her mild, If all be not in vain; and guide Her footsteps, moving side by side With wisdom, like the younger child.

Tennyson

MARSTON MOOR

(A Cavalier Song)

To horse! to horse! Sir Nicholas, the clarion's note is high!

To horse! to horse! Sir Nicholas, the big drum makes reply!

Ere this hath Lucas marched, with his gallant cavaliers, And the bray of Rupert's trumpets grows fainter in our ears.

To horse! to horse! Sir Nicholas! White Guy is at the door, And the raven whets his beak o'er the field of Marston Moor.

Up rose the Lady Alice, from her brief and broken prayer, And she brought a silken banner down the narrow turret-stair, Oh! many were the tears that those radiant eyes had shed, As she traced the bright word "Glory" in the gay and glancing thread; And mournful was the smile which o'er those lovely features ran As she said, "It is your lady's gift, unfurl it in the van!"

"It shall flutter, n.o.ble wench, where the best and boldest ride, Midst the steel-clad files of Skippon, the black dragoons of Pride; The recreant heart of Fairfax shall feel a sicklier qualm, And the rebel lips of Oliver give out a louder psalm, When they see my lady's gewgaw flaunt proudly on their wing, And hear her loyal soldier's shout, 'For G.o.d and for the King.'"

'Tis noon. The ranks are broken, along the royal line They fly, the braggarts of the court! the bullies of the Rhine!

Stout Langdale's cheer is heard no more, and Astley's helm is down, And Rupert sheathes his rapier, with a curse and with a frown, And cold Newcastle mutters, as he follows in their flight, "The German boor had better far have supped in York to-night."

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.

G.o.d aid thee now, Sir Nicholas! thou hast no thought of fear; G.o.d 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 st.u.r.dy 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+pping. 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 mult.i.tude 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 circ.u.mference, but the greater part of its area was occupied by open s.p.a.ces; the modern Babylon is a dense ma.s.s of humanity. London with its suburbs has five millions of inhabitants, and still it grows. It grows through the pa.s.sion 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, j.a.panese, 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 mult.i.tude shall be supplied not only with food and water but with air.

There is something very impressive in the roar of the vast city. It is a sound of a Niagara of human life. It ceases not except during the hour or two before dawn, when the last carriages have rolled away from the b.a.l.l.s and the market carts have hardly begun to come in. Only in returning from a very late ball is the visitor likely to have a chance of seeing what Wordsworth saw from Westminster Bridge:

"Earth has not anything to show more fair; Dull would he be of soul who could pa.s.s by A sight so touching in its majesty; This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, s.h.i.+ps, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the open air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear G.o.d! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!"

Goldwin Smith: "A Trip to England."

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near Lokeren, the c.o.c.ks crew, and twilight dawned clear; At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see; At Duffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be; And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime, So, Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"

At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, And against him the cattle stood black every one, To stare thro' the mist at us galloping past, And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, With resolute shoulders, each b.u.t.ting away The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back For my voice, and the other p.r.i.c.ked out on his track; And one eye's black intelligence--ever that glance O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!

And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.

By Ha.s.selt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur!

Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her, We'll remember at Aix"--for one heard the quick wheeze Of her chest, saw the stretched neck, and staggering knees, And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.