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Ealdred, Archbishop of York, the prelate who crowned William. Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, afterwards deposed by William.

Te Deum, the first words of a hymn usually ascribed to St. Ambrose.

Coutances (Koo-tān-s), a seaport town in the department of Manche, in the north-west of France.

those rites in the camp at Hastings;—The battle of Senlac -a low spur of the Sussex Downs near Hastings—was fought on Saturday the 14th of October, 1066. The Friday night, it is said, was spent by the English in drinking and singing, by the Normans in prayer and confession of their sins. “ Under the pious care of the two bishops” (Geoffrey and Odo), “and of the other clergy, the Norman host seems to have been wrought up to a kind of paroxysm of devotion.” Odo, the Duke's half-brother, “received from every man a special vow that those who outlived the struggle of the coming Saturday, would never again eat flesh on any Saturday that was to come.”

the day of Saint Calixtus, Saturday the 14th of October.


[This splendid description of England is from King Richard 11. It is supposed to be spoken, on his deathbed, by John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and uncle to Richard.] 1. Methinks I am a prophet new inspired;

And thus, expiring, do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,

Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
2. This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise;
This fortress, built by Nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands; 3. This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
(For Christian service and true chivalry,)
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son:
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, (I die pronouncing it,)

Like to a tenement, or pelting farm:
4. England, bound in with the triumphant sea,

Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

William Shakespeare (1564–1616).

Questions on the lesson :-To whom does John of Gaunt compare himself? What prophecy does he utter regarding Richard's riotous conduct? By what four comparisons does he illustrate that it will be short-lived? What are the various things said of England? How are they respectively to be explained?

new inspired, newly inspired; note the play on the words inspired and expiring ;-inspired, having something breathed into one, expiring, parting with breath.

Consuming means, vanity using up the means it has for indulging itself.

Mars, the god of war among the Romans. Neptune, the god of the sea. less happier, a double comparative

less happy. the sepulchre of the world's ransom, the sepulchre of Christ in Jerusalem. Jewry, the land of the Jews, Judea.

inky blots and rotten parchment bonds, blank charters presented to the king, which he sealed and in which the officers of the king afterwards wrote what they pleased. The common report was that the king had farmed the revenues of the realm to a few individuals.

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1. The plumage of the mocking-bird, though none of the homeliest, has nothing gaudy or brilliant in it, and, had he nothing else to recommend him, would scarcely entitle him to notice; but his figure is well-proportioned and even handsome. The ease, elegance, and rapidity of his movements, the animation of his eye, and the intelligence he displays in listening and laying up lessons from almost every species of the feathered creation within his hearing, are really surprising, and mark the peculiarity of his genius.

2. To these qualities we may add that of a voice full, strong, and musical, and capable of almost every modulation, from the clear mellow tones of the wood-thrush to the savage screams of the bald eagle. In measure and accent he faithfully follows his originals; in force and sweetness of expression he greatly improves upon them. In his native groves, mounted upon the top of a tall bush or half-grown tree, in the dawn of dewy morning, while the woods are already vocal with a multitude of warblers, his admirable song rises pre-eminent over every competitor.


3. Neither is this strain altogether imitative. His own native notes, which are easily distinguishable by such as are well acquainted with those of our various birds of song, are bold and full, and varied seemingly beyond all limits. They consist of short expressions of two, three, or at the most five or six syllables, generally interspersed with imitations, and all of them uttered with great emphasis and rapidity, and continued with undiminished ardour for half an hour or an hour at a time.

4. His expanded wings and tail, glistening with white, and the buoyant gaiety of his action, arrest the eye, as his song most irresistibly does the ear. He sweeps round with enthusiastic ecstasy, he mounts and descends as his song swells or dies away, and, as one has beautifully expressed it," he bounds aloft with the celerity of an arrow, as if to recall his very soul which expired in the last elevated strain."

5. While thus exerting himself, a bystander destitute of sight would suppose that the whole feathered tribes had assembled together on a trial of skill, each striving to produce his utmost effect,—so perfect are his imitations. He many times deceives the sportsman, and sends him in search of birds that perhaps are not within miles of him, but whose notes he exactly imitates. Even birds themselves are frequently imposed on by this admirable mimic and are decoyed by the fancied calls of their mates, or dive with precipitation into the depths of thickets at the scream of what they suppose to be the sparrow-hawk.

6. The mocking-bird loses little of the power and energy of his song by confinement. In his domesticated state, when he commences his career of song, it is impossible to stand by uninterested. He whistles for the dog; Cæsar starts up, wags his tail, and runs to meet his master. He squeaks out like a hurt chicken, and the hen hurries about with hanging wings and bristled feathers, clucking, to

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protect her injured brood. He runs over the quaverings of the canary, and the clear whistlings of the Virginia nightingale or red-bird with such superior execution and effect that the mortified songsters feel their own inferiority and become altogether silent, while he seems to triumph in their defeat by redoubling his exertions.

7. This excessive fondness for variety, however, in the opinion of some injures his song. His elevated imitations of the brown thrush are frequently interrupted by the crowing of cocks; and the warblings of the blue-bird, which he exquisitely manages, are mingled with the

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