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Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing, Down all our line, a deafening shout, "God save our Lord the King ;"

"And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,

For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,

Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of

war,

And be your Oriflamme1 to-day the helmet of Navarre."

Hurrah! the foes are moving! Hark to the mingled din,
Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin.
The fiery Duke is pricking fast across Saint André's plain,
With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne.3
Now by the lips of those ye love, fair Gentlemen of France,
Charge for the Golden Lilies, upon them with the lance.
A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest,
A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white
crest;

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And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star, Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre.

Now, God be praised! the day is ours-Mayenne hath turned his rein

D'Aumale hath cried for quarter-the Flemish Count is slain.
Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale;
The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven
mail.

And then we thought on vengeance, and, all along our van,
"Remember Saint Bartholomew," was passed from man to man.
But out spake gentle Henry, "No Frenchman is my foe:
Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go."
Oh! was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war,
As our Sovereign Lord, King Henry, the Soldier of Navarre?

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Ho! maidens of Vienna; Ho! matrons of Lucerne ;
Weep, weep and rend your hair for those who never shall return.

1 See note 3, p. 400.-The Oriflamme (golden-flame) was "a red taffeta banner cut into three points, each adorned with a green silk tassel." It was always displayed in the crisis of the battle. The proper royal standard of France was white with embroidered lilies; used immemorially, till Charles VI. substituted a blue flag with a white cross; this banner was employed till Charles IX. resumed the White and Lilies. The revolutionary Tricolor united these three historical colours, red, blue, and white red was the Burgundian, Parisian, and Oriflamme colour: blue was the colour of the "Chape" of St. Martin of Tours: white the royal colour, and that of "Our Lady." The white was resumed by the Bourbons in 1815. Fouche's remark to Louis XVIII. has been verified by subsequent history: "The Tricolor Flag," said he "is to your majesty what the Mass was to King Henry IV.;" implying that anything like a return to the ancient regime, even in symbols of the old monarchy, would cause a second expulsion of the Bourbon race from the throne.

2 The name of the battle-field.

The Catholic German powers, and especially Austria, from her Spanish connections, supported the League. Almayne (Germany), from the ancient confederacy of tribes, Allemanni.

Ho! Philip, send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles,

That Antwerp1 monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearmen's souls.

Ho! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright;

Ho! burghers of saint Genevieve,2 keep watch and ward to-night, For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave!

And mocked the counsel of the wise, and the valour of the brave.
Then glory to his holy name, from whom all glories are;
And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of Navarre.

FROM HORATIUS (LAYS OF ROME).

THE MUSTER OF THE TUSCAN ARMY.

Lars Porsena of Clusium by the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it, and named a trysting day,
And bade his messengers ride forth,
East and west and south and north,
To summon his array.

East and west and south and north the messengers ride fast,
And tower and town and cottage have heard the trumpet's blast.
Shame on the false Etruscan who lingers in his home,
When Porsena of Clusium is on the march for Rome.

The horsemen and the footmen are pouring in amain

From many a stately market-place—from many a fruitful plain;
From many a lonely hamlet, which, hid by beech and pine,
Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest of purple Apennine;

1 See note 3, p. 502.

5

2 St. Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris; the citizens were warm partisans of the Guise faction.

3 The last Roman king Tarquin, expelled in the year of the city 245 for the insolence and tyranny of his family, among other auxiliaries was promised the aid of the Etrurian Lucumo, Lars Porsena of Clusium, who seems, however, to have rather been influenced by ambitious views. The tale of this legendary war abounds in traditions of Roman magnanimity and courage (See Livy, ii. 10, 12); among these was the defence of the Sublician bridge almost single-handed, by Horatius (surnamed Cocles, the "One-eyed"), against the whole Tuscan army. When his resistance had given time to his countrymen to cut down the bridge behind him, he swam the Tiber amidst the darts of the enemy. This tradition is the subject of Macaulay's first "Lay:" it is supposed to be sung about the period of the Gallic sack of Rome (B. C. 390), when the state was rent between contending factions, and when the "honest citizen" author might pine after "good old times," of which there were traditionary reminiscences.-Lars (plur. Lartes), perhaps equivalent to the dignity Lord; Lares was applied to the Roman domestic tutelary deities. Clusium (Čhiusi, in the vale of the Clanis (Chiana), at this period the chief of the northern cities of Etruria: see Dennis' Etruria, vol. ii. p. 384, et seq.

4 The Novensiles, the nine "Lightning-shedding" gods of the Etrurians.-Dennis i. 52.

5 Comp. "Celsae nidum Acherontiae." Hor. Odes, iii. 4, 14. According to Dennis, this description is not applicable to the Etruscan cities.-Dennis, i. p. xxx.

FROM HORATIUS.

From lordly Volaterræ,1 where scowls the far-famed hold
Piled by the hands of giants for god-like kings of old;
From sea-girt Populonia,2 whose sentinels descry
Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops fringing the southern sky;

505

From the proud mart of Pisæ,3 queen of the western waves, Where ride Massilia's triremes, heavy with fair-haired slaves; From where sweet Clanis wanders through corn and vines and flowers;

From where Cortona lifts to heaven her diadem of towers.

Tall are the oaks whose acorns drop in dark Auser's rill;
Fat are the stags that champ the boughs of the Ciminian hill;
Beyond all streams Clitumnus is to the herdsman dear;
Best of all pools the fowler loves the great Volsinian mere.

But now no stroke of woodman is heard by Auser's rill;
No hunter tracks the stag's green path up the Ciminian hill;
Unwatched along Clitumnus grazes the milk-white steer;
Unharmed the waterfowl may dip in the Volsinian mere.

The harvests of Arretium, this year old men shall reap; This year, young boys in Umbro shall plunge the struggling sheep:

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1 Dennis describes the situation of Volaterra as peculiarly meriting the epithet lordly," ," "as it crowns the summit of a steep and lonely height." Volaterra was a city of first importance, with a larger territory than belonged to any other city of the (Etruscan) Confederation;" "we now see but the skeleton of her Titanic form.'"Dennis, ii. 141, etc.

2 Populonia, a colony of Volaterra, derived its consequence from its commerce and the strength of its semi-insulated position. The Sardinian mountains Dennis declares to be invisible from its heights.-Dennis, ii. 39.

3 Pisa (Pisa) was a splendid Pelasgian city, at the confluence of the Arnus (Arno) and Auser (Serchio), colonized by Rome about B.C. 180, on account of its excellent haven and facilities for shipbuilding. "The commercial Pisa of the middle ages is so bright a vision as to throw into the shade the glories of her remoter antiquity:" it still retains its importance, and smiles in "the garlands of ever-flourishing youth."-Dennis, ii. 87. Gallic and German slaves from Massilia (Marseilles) were imported in great numbers into Italy.

The Clanis (la Chiana) originally fell into the Tiber, but its current has been di verted into the Arno; and the valley now watered by it, once a pestilential swamp, is as fertile and salubrious a region as ever was the proverbially rich soil which it formerly intersected. "It stretches northward to the walls of Arezzo and the towercrowned height of Cortona," or Corythus,-a Pelasgian, before it became an Etruscan city, whose origin is hid in the mist of legendary antiquity.-See Dennis, ii. pp. 414, 432-440.

415,4 Auser (the Serchio), formerly a tributary of the Arno-Ciminian kill; “the Ciminian forest," says Dennis, "still with its majestic oaks and chestnuts, vindicates its ancient reputation."-Dennis, i. 191. Umbro (Ombrone), southward, another tributary of the Arno.

Clitumnus, in which the bulls sacrificed to Jupiter were bathed; its sulphureous waters were supposed to render them of snowy whiteness: Virg. Georg. ii. 146.Volsinian Mere, the Lake of Bolsena, of which Dennis says, "the fish and wild fowl which abounded here of old have still undisturbed possession of its waters. Strabo, v. 226; Colum. R. R. viii. 16."-Dennis, i. 515.

7 Arretium seems to have been more renowned for its vineyards than its graincrops.-Plin. xiv. 4, 7. It was one of the "twelve cities" of the confederation. Its modern representative, Arezzo, the birth-place of Petrarch, as the old one was of Mæcenas, is supposed to occupy a different site.-Dennis, ii. pp. 417-431.

X

And in the vats of Luna,1 this year, the must shall foam Round the white feet of laughing girls, whose sires have marched to Rome.

There be thirty chosen prophets, the wisest of the land,
Who always by Lars Porsena both morn and evening stand;
Evening and morn the Thirty have turned the verses o'er,
Traced from the right on linen white by mighty seers of yore.

And with one voice the Thirty have their glad answer given :"Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena-go forth beloved of heaven! Go, and return in glory to Clusium's royal dome;

And hang round Nurscia's3 altars the golden shields of Rome."

FROM VIRGINIA.

ICILIUS ROUSES THE PLEBEIANS AGAINST APPIUS CLAUDIUS.*

Now, by your children's cradles, now, by your fathers' graves, Be men to-day, Quirites," or be for ever slaves!

For this did Servius give us laws? For this did Lucrece bleed? For this was the great vengeance done on Tarquin's evil seed? For this did those false sons make red the axes of their sire? For this did Scævola's right hand hiss in the Tuscan fire?

1 Luna (Luni) produced the best wine in Etruria (Plin. xiv. 8, 5), as well as what we call the Carrara marble.

2 It does not appear that "thirty" was a regulating number in the ritual or polity of the Etruscans, though it, as being = 10 X 3, was adhered to in the distribution of the Latin townships, and at Rome, in respect to both the plebeian tribus, and the patrician curiae.-The sacred books of the Tuscan diviners, which are often mentioned by ancient authors, might be, like some among the Romans, libri lintei (linen books), before the use of parchment or papyrus.-Their alphabet, which is closely allied to those of the other old peoples of Italy and Greece, preserved the direction from right to left which characterised the Phenician prototype; and the symbols, both alphabetical and numerical, inverted the shape taken by them when running from left to right. -See Dennis, i. pp. lvii., xlvi.

3 Nortia, Nutia, Nursia, or, as here, Nurscia, an Etruscan goddess, who has been represented as analogous to Fortuna, to Minerva, and to Atropos, had a shrine at Volsinii, into which, as into one in the Roman Capitol, a nail was annually driven with religious solemnity, to serve the pupose of a kalendar-yet not without a reference to the fixedness of fate.-See Liv. vii. 3; Juven. x. 74; Horat. Carm. i. 35, 17-20, iii. 24, 5-7. Compare Dennis, pp. li. 509, 510.

4 The infamous claim to the daughter of the centurion Virginius by the minion of Appius Claudius, the most tyrannical of the Decemviri, being determined against the father by that corrupt magistrate, Virginius, to save his daughter from infamy, publicly stabbed her in the forum before the very tribunal of the Decemvir (B.C. 447). The death of Virginia resembled in its consequences that of Lucretia in a former age; a universal insurrection overthrew the Decemviri.

5 From Cures or Quirium (hence Quirinal the hill, and Quirinus the name of the deified Romulus), one of the cities that ultimately coalesced into Rome. In later times the designation was restricted to citizens, as distinguished from soldiers; Cæsar once quelled a mutiny in one of his legions by stigmatizing the soldiers as Quirites.

The sixth Roman king, the promulgator of a constitution favourable to the commonalty; he fell a victim to his patriotism, being cut off by a conspiracy among the patricians headed by his son-in-law Tarquinius (Superbus). The Romans looked back on the laws of Servius, as did our Saxon forefathers on those of "the sainted Confessor" after the Norman conquest.

7 Mucius, who, taken in the attempt to assassinate Lars Porsena, thrust his hand

FROM VIRGINIA.

507

Shall the vile fox-earth awe the race that stormed the lion's den?1
Shall we who could not brook one lord, crouch to the wicked Ten?
Oh for that ancient spirit which curbed the Senate's will!
Oh for the tents which in old time whitened the Sacred Hill!2
In those brave days our fathers stood firmly side by side,-
They faced the Marcian3 fury; they tamed the Fabian pride;
They drove the fiercest Quinctius an outcast forth from Rome;
They sent the haughtiest Claudius with shivered fasces home.
But what their care bequeathed us our madness flung away;
All the ripe fruit of threescore years was blighted in a day.
Exult, ye proud Patricians! The hard-fought fight is o'er.
We strove for honour-'twas in vain: for freedom-'tis no more.
No crier to the polling summons the eager throng;

No Tribune breathes the word of might that guards the weak from wrong.

Our very hearts, that were so high, sink down beneath your will. Riches, and lands, and power, and state-ye have them ;-keep them still.

Still keep the holy fillets; still keep the purple gown,'

The axes, and the curule chair, the car, and laurel crown;
Still press us for your cohorts, and, when the fight is done,
Still fill your garners from the soil which our good swords have
won,

Still, like a spreading ulcer, which leech-craft may not cure
Let your foul usance eat away the substance of the poor.

into the altar fire and held it there till consumed, to shew the king that dread of painful punishment would not protect him from the daggers of the Roman youth; he bore the surname Scævola, the left-handed.

1 An adaptation from the celebrated pamphlet against Cromwell, by Colonel Titus, "Killing no Murder "-"Shall we who would not suffer the lion to invade us, tamely stand to be devoured by the wolf?"

2 The Mons Sacer, three miles from Rome, stood in the angle formed by the Anio and Tiber, consecrated to Jupiter. In B.C. 494, the Plebeians, goaded by their oppressions, "seceded" to this hill, and refused to return to the city, till the inviolability of their tribunes was secured by a treaty.-Livy, ii. 33.

8 Caius Marcius Coriolanus. See Livy, ii. 34, 35.-On the long-sustained "pride" or aristrocratic feeling of the Gens Fabia, their humiliation, and their subsequent services in reconciling the two estates of their countrymen, see Livy, i. 42-48.-Kæso Quinctius, son of L. Quinctius Cincinnatus, when about to be tried in the Comitia for a murder and other flagrant crimes, forfeited his bail and fled into Etruria; Livy, iii. 11, 12, 13. Of the patrician Claudii, see Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 599. The second Ap. Claudius, father of the Decemvir, was so detested by the soldiers under his command, that they threw away their arms, and fled before the Equian and Volscian foes, so that he returned to Rome in disgrace: he is said to have committed suicide in the following year, Livy, ii. 58, 59, 61.

By their submission to the Decemviri.

5 The Comitia.

6 VETO; when the Tribunes wrote this word on any senatorial decree it was annulled.

7 The Priesthood and the Consular offices, denoted by the fillets and the purple, were exclusively in the patrician families; the purple was a stripe (clavis) down the border of the toga (gown). The tribunal chair was called curule, an epithet either derived from currus, the car in which it was placed, or connected with Greek kuros, authority. The laurel, the triumphal crown, could be earned only by Imperatores, who at this period were exclusively patricians.

8 Two of the chief causes of heart-burning between the Roman orders were the refusal of the Patricians to apportion tracts of conquered land to the plebeian infantry, and the law of Debtor and Creditor. See Livy, ii. 23, and passim.

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