tinued; twelve hundred knights and two thousand foot-soldiers fell, and Châtillon had to ride for his life.

Everything now was at stake. These men of Bruges had flown at the French power. Could the popular rising become a national resistance? They marched at once to Ghent to get that city's alliance; but the wretched jealousy between the towns, and the factions in each city besides, made Ghent cold, and she would not join Bruges. A few towns took the part of Bruges, either from choice or from compulsion, Ypres, Nieuport, Berghes, Furnes and Gravelines. At the head of the forces was one of the sons of the Count of Flanders, for common wrongs had reconciled the people and Guy, and one of his grandsons.

Philip sent an army to chastise these insolent workmen, an army that held the flower of French knighthood and nobility. They marched and met the Flemings before the town of Courtrai. The battle-field was a large plain, and it seemed as if the odds were fearfully against the men of Bruges, for their enemy was cavalry, heavily clad in mail, and almost irresistible in an onset upon infantry; and the Flemings were on foot, even the few knights that led them dismissed their horses

and bravely stood in the ranks along with the tradesmen. They were armed with pikes shod 'with iron; good-day was the name they gave to them, and a terrible welcome they proved to the French knights. Each man held his pike fixed in the ground before him, awaiting the attack. Before the battle, mass, as usual, was celebrated; that is, the communion was partaken of by these men who were expecting death; but as they could not all take it for want of time, each stooped down and raised to his lips a morsel of the turf he trod upon. Their country was sacred to them.

The French, despising their vulgar enemy, would not try the stratagems of war, although the Constable of France, their general, proposed at first to flank them. The proud knights, thinking it almost disgraceful to be fighting at all with these low tradesmen, followed their general in an impetuous charge. Headlong they rode, the hindmost pushing close upon the forward until they were mingled in confused array. And now, coming upon the sturdy ranks of the Flemings, they came also on what they had not before seen, a long canalditch, such as cross and recross that country in every direction. Into this ditch plunged headlong the foremost riders; after them

came those behind, and the Flemings rushing forward with their "good-days" fell upon the entangled horsemen, and plied their iron-tipped staves lustily. Thirty feet wide was this ditch, and swept around in the form of a crescent, so that it held out open arms, as it were, to receive these knights. Smothered in their iron armor, a very prison-house to them when off their steeds, the mass of helpless knights were at the mercy of the weavers and smiths. They were literally beaten to death, and the victorious Flemings, gathering together their spoils, found that such havoc had been wrought amongst these nobles and knights, that seven hundred gilt spurs, the insignia of French nobility, were their trophies, and were hung up by them in the chapel of the counts in the Cathedral at Courtrai. Eighteen hundred knights and twenty-seven thousand soldiers, it is said, were lost by the French in the battle, the men of Bruges numbering twenty thousand fighting men in the ranks. Eighty years afterward, when the French defeated the Flemings in another battle, they were eager to take down these trophies of their former disgrace.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

WALTER SCOTT, the most celebrated storyteller of modern times, was born August 15, 1771, at Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. When eighteen months old, he had a sickness which left him unable to use his right leg, and for a few years the chief care which his parents had for him, was directed toward preserving his health and restoring the withered limb. Accordingly, he spent his childhood, not in the city, but at his grandfather's farm, Sandy Knowe, not very far from the English boundary, and in the very heart of the country which he has made so famous by song and by story. He was a hearty, active child, and growing impatient of his forced quiet, he began to try the withered leg, to stand upon it, then to walk, and finally, to run; and so, although he was lame all his days, and carried a stout stick whenever he went out, yet he went where he wanted to; and just because there was a difficulty to overcome, he cared more, in his school-days, to outstrip his fellows in

agility, than to lead them in the class, where he had no such disadvantage to contend with.

His school-days were passed, partly at Sandy Knowe, partly in Edinburgh; but his companions at first were chiefly older people on his grandfather's farm, and his lameness made him a favorite, and secured him little indulgences which, perhaps, he would have missed, if he had been entirely strong. The Scottish people love to tell stories, and down to the time of Walter's grandmother, the wild mountain country, with its ravines and passes, had been the scene of perpetual conflict between neighboring people; besides, in that rocky, stormy country, men and women had grown sturdy and self-willed, hard to persuade, and ready to cling till death to what they believed right, or loved; and the tumultuous life of the country had made people who felt alike, to hold together, and to suffer for one another, if need be. So there was an endless store of adventure and romance, deeds of daring, and acts of generous love, which every hearty Scotsman or Scotswoman could draw from, for the amusement and instruction of children. One could not take his stand anywhere in field or on hilltop, without having his eye fall on some spot which had its story, told in the homely, pictur