their right; on the left, the most exposed part of the position, the hus-carls or body-guard of Harold, men in full armour and wielding huge axes, were grouped round the Golden Dragon of Wessex and the 5 Standard of the King. The rest of the ground was covered by thick masses of half-armed rustics who had flocked at Harold's summons to the fight with the stranger. It was against the centre of this formidable position that William arrayed his Norman Io knighthood, while the mercenary force he had gathered in France and Brittany were ordered to attacks its flanks. A general charge of the Norman foot opened the battle; in front rode the minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air, and catching it 15 again while he chaunted the Song of Roland. He was the first of the host who struck a blow, and he was the first to fall. The charge broke vainly on the stout stockade behind which the English warriors plied axe and javelin with fierce cries of "Out, out," 20 and the repulse of the Norman footmen was followed by a repulse of the Norman horse. Again and again the Duke rallied and led them to the fatal stockade. All the fury of fight that glowed in his Norseman's blood, all the headlong valour that had spurred him 25 over the slopes of Val-ès-dunes, mingled that day with the coolness of head, the dogged perseverance, the inexhaustible faculty of recourse which had shown at Mortemer and Varaville. His Breton troops, entangled in the marshy ground on his left, 30 broke in disorder, and as panic spread through the army a cry arose that the Duke was slain. "I live," shouted William, as he tore off his helmet," and by

God's help will conquer yet." Maddened by repulse, the Duke spurred right at the Standard; unhorsed, his terrible mace struck down Gyrth, the King's brother; again dismounted, a blow from his hand hurled to the ground an unmannerly rider who would not lend him 5 his steed. Amidst the roar and tumult of the battle he turned the flight he had arrested into a means of victory. Broken as was the stockade by his desperate onset, the shield-wall of the warriors behind it still held the Normans at bay till William by a feint of 10 flight drew a part of the English force from their post of vantage. Turning on his disorderly pursuers, the Duke cut them to pieces, broke through the abandoned line, and made himself master of the central ground. Meanwhile the French and Bretons 15 made good their ascent on either flank. At three the hill seemed won, at six the fight still raged around the Standard, where Harold's hus-carls stood stubbornly at bay on a spot marked afterward by the high altar of Battle Abbey. An order from the Duke 20 at last brought his archers to the front, and their arrow-flight told heavily on the dense masses crowded around the King. As the sun went down a shaft pierced Harold's right eye; he fell between the royal ensigns, and the battle closed with a desperate melly 25 over his corpse. While night covered the flight of the English, the Conqueror pitched his tent on the very spot where his rival had fallen, and "sate down to eat and drink among the dead."

Securing Romney and Dover, the Duke marched by 30 Canterbury upon London. Faction and intrigue were doing his work for him as he advanced. Harold's

brothers had fallen with the King on the field of Senlac, and there was none of the house of Godwine to contest the crown; while of the old royal line there remained but a single boy, Eadgar the Ætheling, son 5 of the eldest of Eadmund Ironside's children, who had fled before Cnut's persecution as far as Hungary for shelter. Boy as he was, he was chosen king; but the choice gave little strength to the national cause. The widow of the Confessor surrendered Winchester to the 10 Duke. The bishops gathered at London inclined to submission. The citizens themselves faltered as William, passing by their walls, gave Southwark to the flames. The throne of the boy-king really rested for support on the Earls of Mercia and Northumbria, 15 Eadwine and Morkere; and William, crossing the Thames at Wallingford and marching into Hertfordshire, threatened to cut them off from their earldoms. The masterly movement brought about an instant submission. Eadwine and Morkere retreated hastily 20 home from London, and the city gave way at once. Eadgar himself was at the head of the deputation who came to offer the crown to the Norman Duke. "They bowed to him," says the English annalist pathetically, "for need." They bowed to the Norman as they 25 had bowed to the Dane, and William accepted the crown in the spirit of Cnut. London indeed was secured by the erection of a fortress which afterward grew into the Tower, but William desired to reign not as a conqueror but as a lawful king. He received the 30 crown at Westminster from the hands of Archbishop Ealdred, amid shouts of "Yea, yea," from his new English subjects. Fines from the greater landowners

atoned for a resistance which was now counted as rebellion; but with this exception every measure of the new sovereign indicated his desire of ruling as a successor of Eadward or Ælfred. As yet indeed the greater part of England remained quietly aloof from 5 him, and he can hardly be said to have been recognized as king by Northumberland or the greater part of Mercia. But to the east of a line which stretched from Norwich to Dorsetshire his rule was unquestioned, and over this portion he ruled as an English king. 10 His soldiers were kept in strict order. No change was made in law or custom. The privileges of London were recognized by a royal writ which still remains, the most venerable of its muniments among the city's archives. Peace and order were restored. William 15 even attempted, though in vain, to learn the English tongue that he might personally administer justice to the suitors in his court. The kingdom seemed so tranquil that only a few months had passed after the battle of Senlac when William, leaving England in 201 charge of his brother, Odo Bishop of Bayeux, and his minister, William Fitz-Osborn, returned for a while to Normandy.

FROM Emma, CHAPTER XXXVIII.

[Emma (1816), like all of Miss Austen's novels, is a good representative of the so-called novel of manners. Aiming, as do narratives of this kind, to sketch life, their chief interest lies in the scenes which they depict and the characters which they portray. There is very little incident in them and only enough plot to make the character sketching coherent. Examples of this kind of narration predominate in the stories of Miss Burney, Miss Ferrier, Mrs. Edgeworth; in Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford, in the novels of Thackeray and of Mr. Thomas Hardy; and the so-called realistic school may be considered as a modern development of this type (see note at the end of the selection and Introduction, page xxvi).

Throughout the selection, the style, except in the two speeches of Miss Bates, the diffuseness of which has rendered her the type of feminine garrulity, is remarkably concise in expression and even in tone. There is no parade of language, no ostentation of phrase, but each word makes its point. There is almost no description either of place or of person; the entire interest lies in the words of the characters and in their acts. Throughout there is the touch of humor and the slight tendency to caricature which constitute one of the chief charms of Miss Austen's work. The text, except for a few slight changes in punctuation, is that of the Steventon edition of 1882.

As there is little interest in plot, no explanation of the situation is necessary.]

No misfortune occurred, again to prevent the ball. The day approached, the day arrived; and, after a morning of some anxious watching, Frank Churchill,