Millions of musket-bullets, and thousands of cannon

balls

But ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.

VII.

Hark cannonade, fusillade! is it true what was told by the scout,

Outram and Havelock breaking their way through the fell mutineers?

Surely the pibroch of Europe is ringing again in our ears! All on a sudden the garrison utter a jubilant shout, Havelock's glorious Highlanders answer with conquering cheers,

Sick from the hospital echo them, women and children come out,

Blessing the wholesome white faces of Havelock's good

fusileers,

Kissing the war-harden'd hand of the Highlander wet with their tears!

Dance to the pibroch !—saved! we are saved!—is it you? is it you?

Saved by the valour of Havelock, saved by the blessing of Heaven!

"Hold it for fifteen days!" we have held it for eighty

seven !

And ever aloft on the palace roof the old banner of

England blew.

TENNYSON.

K

XLIX.

ALBERT THE GOOD.

*

AND indeed He seems to me

Scarce other than my own ideal knight,
"Who reverenced his conscience as his king;
Whose glory was, redressing human wrong:
Who spake no slander, no, nor listen'd to it ;
Who loved one only and who clave to her—”
Her-over all whose realms to their last isle,
Commingled with the gloom of imminent war,
The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse,

Darkening the world. We have lost him he is gone:
We know him now: all narrow jealousies
Are silent; and we see him as he moved,
How modest, kindly, all-accomplish'd, wise,
With what sublime repression of himself,
And in what limits, and how tenderly;
Not swaying to this faction or to that;
Not making his high place the lawless perch
Of wing'd ambitions, nor a vantage-ground
For pleasure; but thro' all this tract of years
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life,
Before a thousand peering littlenesses,
In that fierce light which beats upon a throne,

And blackens every blot : for where is he,
Who dares foreshadow for an only son

A lovelier life, a more unstain'd, than his?
Or how should England dreaming of his sons
Hope more for these than some inheritance
Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine,
Thou noble Father of her Kings to be,
Laborious for her people and her poor-
Voice in the rich dawn of an ampler day--
Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste
To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace-
Sweet nature gilded by the gracious gleam
Of letters, dear to Science, dear to Art,
Dear to thy land and ours, a Prince indeed,
Beyond all titles, and a household name,
Hereafter thro' all times, Albert the Good.

NOTES.

I. "Constantinus, King of the Scots, after having sworn allegiance to Athelstan, allied himself with the Danes of Ireland under Anlaf, and invading England, was defeated by Athelstan and his brother Edmund with great slaughter at Brunanburh in the year 937." Brunanburh was somewhere in Northumberland, but no one knows exactly where.-Dyflen = Dublin.

II. In the reign of Athelred "the Unready" (979-1013) there was a great invasion of the Danes, or, more truly, Norwegians, in the eastern part of England. They harried Ipswich, and then went into Essex, and sailed up the river Panta, or Blackwater, to Maldon. But then Brihtnoth, the Alderman of the East Saxons, came against them, and there was a battle (A.D. 991), in which Brihtnoth, after fighting very bravely, was killed. It was a great pity there was so few men like him, who refused to pay money to the invaders. Scarcely was he passed away, when Danegelt began to be paid. This Brihtnoth was very bountiful to the monks, and helped to found the famous abbey of Ely, afterwards made a bishopric. There he was buried, and there his wife Athelflaed offered a piece of tapestry, on which she had worked the picture of all her husband's great actions. This is the longest and