clared that his route now lay in a different direction. I offered him the charge of a little farm in Touraine if he would let me know where to find him. He was evidently grateful for my sympathy, but declined the offer, saying "It can't be; I must live as the rest do. To manage a farm properly I must have a wife, and I could not think of that. Man must labour in the quietness and the peace of his heart and of his life, and that I cannot do. I should never see a gendarme without thinking that he was seeking me!" "You are dead for the gendarmes, Guillaume, and for all the world except Loubette and me,' I replied, half-jestingly. But the words made a painful impression on him. "It were perhaps the best thing that could happen for me if it were true," he rejoined gloomily. But recovering himself quickly, he imparted to me his plan, which was to seek a home with some friends in the Talmond country. I made some inquiries as to his means of subsistence; but he was shy, and broke off the conversation abruptly, saying that he had still far to travel, and that people were coming in sight along the road from Marans. He was right; and we had scarcely time for a brief farewell, and a hearty grasp of each other's hand, when he was lost in the thicket, and I saw him no more. But among the bodies of those who were shot by the gendarmerie in the slight rising that soon afterwards took place in La Vendée, on the appearance there of the Duchess de Berri, that of Guillaume Blaisot was recognized. SONG. Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, And this same flower that smiles to-day, The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, That age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer; But being spent, the worse and worst Times still succeed the former. Then be not coy, but use your time, HERRICK. THE SLEEP. [Elizabeth Barrett Browning, born in London, 1809; died in Florence, 29th June, 1861. She was equally distinguished by her genius and her scholarship. At the age of seventeen she published her Essay on Mind, with other poems; and that volume was followed by The Sraphim, 1838; The Romaunt of the Page, 1839; The Drama of Exile: Isobel's Child: Casa Guidi Windows, 1851; Aurora Leigh, and numerous miscellaneous poems. She also translated into English the Prometheus Bound of Eschylus, which in after years she pronounced an "early failure." Having come to that conclusion, she produced a new translation, which is published in the collected edition of her works (five volumes, Smith, Elder & Co) Leigh Hunt calls her, in one of his poems, "The sister of Tennyson;" another writer claims her as "Shakspeare's daughter;" and all critics, whilst admitting with regret the occasional obscurity of her language, agree in acknowledging her marvellous poetic power. Miss Mitford's tribute to her friend will interest every admirer of the poet: "Such is the influ ence of her manners, her conversation, her temper, her thousand sweet and attaching qualities, that they who know her best are apt to lose sight altogether of her learning and of her genius, and to think of her only as 1846 Miss Barrett was married to Mr. Robert Browning.] the most charming person they have ever met." In "He giveth His beloved sleep" (Psalm cxxvii. 2). What would we give to our beloved? God strikes a silence through you all, His dews drop mutely on the hill, Ay, men may wonder while they scan For me, my heart that erst did go And friends, dear friends, when it shall be ALFRED THE TRUTH-TELLER. [Charlotte Mary Yonge, born 1823. As a novelist and writer for the young she is perhaps the most popular of living writers. The Heir of Redclyfe has passed through numerous editions, and her many other works are only second to it in general esteem. Miss Yonge writes simply and earnestly, and she has a special gift for reproducing the most interesting passages of history with a vigour and spirit which gives them all the attraction of novelty. Her Cameos from English History-from which we take the following narrativeis an example of this power. Her works are published by Macmillan & Co., London, and the most notable of them, besides those already mentioned, are-The Caged Lion: The Chaplet of Pearls-a story of the Huguenot times; The Daisy Chain; Heartsease; A Book of Golden Deeds; The Danvers Papers, &c.] It seems as if each Christian state had possessed a royal ancestor, for whose sake, as for that of David, the throne was established, and his seed borne with and made to prosper. Such were St. Louis in France, St. Stephen of Hungary, Rodolph of Hapsburg in Germany, and in England our own Alfred. Of these kings the wise and true observer, Schlegel, says, "that a lively sketch of such men and rulers, who acted and governed well and greatly, according to Christian principles and views, would furnish a far more complete idea of the Christian state than any laboured .or artificial development." How beautiful, that men have so lived on this earth as to "prove what is that good and perfect will of God," better than any fancied dreamland or system that our imagination could frame! how it shows what the Holy Spirit, working through frail weak men, can effect even in this world, and what encouragement to us to work on cheerfully and do our best in the present state of things rather than indulge in day-dreams of what we might be if all around were different. Alfred well maintains, even a thousand years after his death, his right to his old Saxon title of England's Darling; for hardly an English child who has received any education does not delight to think of the disguised king in the swineherd's cottage; and from the first moment of hearing that pretty story each subsequent return to Alfred's history increases our honour and love for him. Even men who would not honour him for his goodness have been forced to admire his ability, and for his victories and his wisdom have given him the surname of their worldly heroes, "the Great," and have thus caused to be forgotten his more beautiful names, the Truth-Teller, England's Darling, the Shepherd of his People. Because Solomon chose wisdom, riches, honour, long life were added unto him; Alfred sought first the one thing needful, and received all these things, excepting long life, which to a Christian was not the same boon as to an Israelite of old. Alfred was the fifth son of King Ethelwolf, who was the first to make the payment of tenths to the clergy a part of the law of the land. He was born at Wantage, in Berkshire, where great pride is still taken in him, and where, in 1848, his thousandth birth-day was celebrated in the way he would probably have most preferred, by services of thanksgiving; by clearing the old Saxon white horse on the chalk down, and by the foundation of a grammar-school. Little could Alfred have guessed when he struggled to earn the precious manuscriptbook how easy and cheap of attainment the instruction would be which cost him so many efforts. It is another question whether all we learn or seek to learn is what Alfred would have chosen and have valued; and certainly the mere acquiring of knowledge will not make us wiser than he was. At seven years old Alfred went with his father on pilgrimage to Rome, where it is recorded that he was anointed by the pope. This might either be at his confirmation, or his father might have designed for him one of the divisions of England, which was not as yet regarded as a single kingdom. It was shortly after his return that the incident of the book of poetry occurred, and occasioned him to learn to read. It seems as if he might have been more inclined to study by the delicacy of his health, for he had never been strong from his infancy, and often was quite disabled by illness. When he was about fifteen or sixteen he, however, suddenly recovered, and, as he considered, in answer to his prayers in a church in Cornwall, where he had entreated that if chastisement was to be sent to him it might come in such a manner as might not disable him from actively serving his country. From this time he took his full share in all the active and manly exercises by which young men were trained for war. Still he strove hard for all the learning that could be attained, and deep and sacred truths were impressed on his mind by St. Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, and chancellor, and by St. Neot, a hermit of Cornwall. There is strong reason to believe the latter was his elder brother Ethelstane, who, after governing his father's kingdom of Kent for some years, retired from the world, and spent a life of devotion. The sons of Ethelwolf, as it is well known, each reigned for a few years, and then died, leaving sons so young that the Saxon laws appointed the grown-up brother to succeed in their stead. In the reign of his last brother, Ethelred, Alfred in his twentieth year was married to Elswitha, the daughter of Ethelred Muckle (or the Great), an elderman of Mercia. The festivities lasted three days; but in the midst of one of the great banquets, to the dismay of all the guests, the bridegroom suddenly gave a lond cry of agony. It was the first attack of a malady, the cause of which was never discovered, and from which he suffered all the rest of his life, never passing a day without fits of pain, often so violent that he could hardly enjoy the intervals of repose. He endured it meekly, looking on it as an answer to his prayer, since it did not render him incapable of exertion; and such was his selfcommand, that he never seems again to have betrayed how much he underwent. And how little he indulged or spared himself on this account is shown by his allotting himself, in his division of the day, only eight hours altogether for repose, recreation, and for meals. His activity and high spirit were not impaired; and when his brother Ethelred mustered his forces to repel the Danes, after their conquest of East Anglia, Alfred joined him, and fought by his side in the battle of Reading. At Ashdown Alfred committed one of the few faulty actions which show how much he must have had to conquer in himself. He saw the Danes marshalled on the opposite hill, and rushing into the tent, where his brother was hearing the mass (or communion service), interrupted the priest by calling him to the battle. Ethelred knelt on, without moving, and desired the priest to proceed, refusing to go forth till he had prayed the God of hosts to bless his endeavours. Angry and impatient, Alfred hurried away, hastened to his own division of the army, and at their head fiercely attacked the enemy; but he was surrounded, his men slain on all sides, and himself in extreme danger, when Ethelred, with the rest of the forces, made in to his rescue, and gained the battle. Ethelred received a wound, of which he died after lingering a few weeks, and Alfred, bitterly repenting of his faithless impatience, found himself at twenty-two the king of a realm desolated by a foreign enemy, and shaken by the disaffection of the rude, ignorant, turbulent natives. Alfred was not of a temper to conciliate them. He was weakly and delicate, and they were likely to despise him for his want of personal strength, as well as for the love of learning, which they must have thought fitter for a clerk than a king. He was more refined than they, disliking the riotous festivities in which alone they took pleasure; and young as he was, and conscious of his own superiority, he openly showed his contempt and disgust. He was also thought proud and harsh; his administration of justice, always strict, was at this early period so severe as to be almost cruel: and he was so taken up with his own pursuits as to be difficult of access, so that the poor were unable to complain to him of their grievances. His brother, St. Neot, came from his hermitage in Cornwall to warn him of the perils of the reserve and haughtiness with which he treated his people. He did not speak of its inexpediency and of the danger of making himself unpopular, but he rebuked him for the sin of pride, and told him that punishment would surely follow. Punishment did follow, as the hermit had foretold, and after seven years of constant warfare, the Saxons, discouraged and disaffected, fell away from him, and he became a homeless wanderer. It was at this time that his bestknown adventures took place, his abode in the swincherd's cottage, and his patient endurance of his hostess' violence of temper. His brother's rebuke must have often recurred to the mind of the disguised king, thus trained in humility and lowliness, who, after showing hastiness and contempt for the nobles of his court, was obliged to become the companion of an ignorant serf, and submit to the insolence of a peasant woman. Few have so profited by the lessons of adversity, and regarded them as loving correction. How wonderful the guest must have appeared to his host, Dunulf, the swineherd, who, as is proved by his subsequent history, was a man untaught indeed, but of great piety and natural ability, and able to appreciate the words which fell from the lips of the stranger, not only his king, but the wisest man then living! How much must he have learned of deep and sacred things in the long evenings of that winter spent in the low hut of the marshy isle of Athelney. The victory of Ethandune was gained, and was made more glorious by Alfred's treatment of the captive Guthrum, whom he brought to embrace the Christian religion, and then granted him the kingdom of East Anglia. This was the turning-point; and though other bodies of Danes under Hasting and other chieftains made one or two descents on the coast, they were always speedily defeated and driven back. Alfred was the first English prince who built ships, by which means he kept back many of the attempted incursions of the enemy; and though always obliged to be on his guard, and seldom passing a year without a sudden summons to the coast, the remainder of his reign was spent in comparative peace and prosperity. It is strange to observe how many of our best institutions are ascribed to King Alfred. Our navy, the trial by jury, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the division of the kingdom into counties, hundreds, and tithings, the study of the English as a language, all on more or less authority are dated from his time, and are believed to have been devised by his wisdom. He was one of the strictest and most just of judges, the wisest of statesmen, the most carnest of scholars, the most Then followed the spring, when the sight of some peasants flying before the Danes caused the king to seize his weapons, and put himself at the head of the fugitives, who, encouraged by his presence, turned and drove back the enemy beyond the rivers Thone and Parret, which, with the surrounding morasses, pro-active of warriors, the most devout of Christected the so-called island. There he raised a little fort, where he was joined by his wife and children, together with a few faithful warriors, and there it was that in the midst of their poverty he and Elswitha gave half their last loaf to the beggar. In this place was found a golden ornament, bearing the name of Alfred, which perhaps was taken off when he assumed this disguise. Seven months had passed in this manner, while more and more the Saxons were rallying round him in his retreat, and at length the encouraging tidings came that Cynwith, Elderman of Devon, had, in defending his castle, routed a great body of Danes, and taken the famous Raven standard. On this Alfred resolved to show himself openly, and when he had, in his minstrel disguise, reconnoitred the camp of Guthrum, he sent forth a summons to all his West Saxon subjects to come round him once more. The red dragon which marked the presence of the King of Wessex was again uplifted on the high green hill of Stourhead, in Wiltshire, commanding no less than three counties, and where a tower still marks the spot where the standard was planted, and where there gathered round it many an honest Saxon heart, prepared to make up by courage and firmness for their late desertion and faintness of spirit? tians, performing each duty so thoroughly, that it is hard to believe that his whole life, and that a long one, was not devoted to that one singly; instead of which all these together were effected by one man, in the course of a life of but fifty-two years, and constantly suffering from ill health. His apportionment of his time is well known, and only occasions more wonder at all he succeeded in doing. He is said to have been the inventor of the candles marked by coloured rings, by which the Saxons measured their time; and though it was his wonderful talent that enabled him to accomplish so much, yet this strict regard to the employment of time as a duty is one of the great lessons in his life. He found time, after the great defeat of the Danes, for his long-cherished desire of learning Latin. Asser, a learned Welsh monk, and a Scot named Erigena, both of whom he invited to his court, and Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, were his chief instructors; and Plegmund was even able to teach him a little Greek. In fact, the palace seems to have been a sort of college for good and holy teaching, where the king was at once the first scholar and the best master. There were educated his three sons—the promising and short-lived Etheling, Edmund, with Edward and Ethelwold, the youngest of whom was afterwards one of the first Oxford students; his daughters, | of whom Ethelfled, the eldest, was thought the most like her father of all his children; and Ethelstan, Prince Edward's little son. There, too, studied the young thanes and sons of eldermen, whom Alfred wished to train in good learning, and even sundry of their fathers, gray old warriors, who had once laughed at the king's learning, but were now obliged to submit, at his especial desire, to hear good books read to them if they would not, or could not, learn to read themselves. There, too, was brought up a foundling, whom, according to the story, the king had been caused to adopt by a strange adventure. While hunting near some wild rocks he heard the cry of a child, and causing search to be made, there was discovered in an eyrie, amongst the young caglets, a living infant of about a year old, which the old birds must have carried thither to prey upon. Its scarlet dress and gold collar proved the little boy to be of noble birth, but his parents were never discovered. The name of Nestingum was given to him; he was brought up in King Alfred's household, and became an earl, high in the king's favour. There, too, studied the king's old friend the swineherd, Dunulf, whom he had brought from Athelney, and so instructed, that he became noted for his learning as well as his goodness, and was in time appointed Bishop of Winchester. Asser declares that the king took great pleasure in relating the incidents of his wandering life. The books used in this palace-school were chiefly Alfred's own providing; for excepting Bishop Aldhelm's translation of the Psalms, there was scarcely one book in the Saxon tongue until Alfred translated the venerable Bede's history, the philosophy of Boethius, the pastoral letter of St. Gregory the Great, the history of Orosius, to which he added a geography of his own. He also wrote a book of fables, and another of falconry, with several poems; and he always carried with him in his bosom a hand-book, in which he wrote down any extract or meditation that struck him. He had even begun a version of the Bible, but he did not live to complete it. The palace-school seems to have been the only safe place for the masters, for Erigena, while attempting to bring a monastery into order, was killed by his unruly scholars with the points of their iron pens. Much was also done by Alfred to improve the condition of the church, which had fallen into a state of great ignorance and laxity of discipline during the Danish invasions. He kept up a close intercourse with Rome, where he sent gifts to the Saxon school and house for pilgrims, founded by King Ina, though at the same time he resisted the pretensions, and showed his disapprobation of the conduct of some of the wicked popes at that time reigning; for which reason, as it is believed, it was that the title of Saint was not given to him. He likewise sent letters and presents to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and to the Christians of St. Thomas, in India, who sent him in return gifts of precious stones and spices. Truly Alfred did not forget that he was a member of the Holy Catholic Church. It is as impossible to display all the varied shades and beauties of Alfred's mind as to cut a cameo into perfect resemblance of the original gem. One word more of the disposal of his money, which was, like his time, divided into two portions, half for the immediate service of God, the other for His service likewise, through that of his neighbour; and when we look at the scanty possessions of the kings of Wessex, and at the great works which he effected with it, it shows most clearly and fully how blessings and increase follow wealth bestowed in such a manner with so free a hand, and so entirely for God's glory. Alfred died in the year 901, and was buried at Hyde Abbey, at Winchester, which he had himself founded to be the burial-place of his family. After the dissolution of the monastery Hyde was pulled down and desecrated, the bones of the princes there buried were collected together and placed in chests, which at present stand on the top of the side-screens of the choir of Winchester Cathedral, the church of Alfred's tutor, St. Swithun. About seventy years ago, when a bridewell was built on the site of Hyde Abbey, a stone coffin was found, but not exciting much interest at the time, it was soon lost or destroyed, and there is no especial reason to think it was that of Alfred. The following verses, embodying some of Alfred's own poetry, are taken from Lectures on English History : "To Sifford came many thanes, For the king a court did call; And bishops and knights, with their noble trains, Assembled one and all. "Then Alfred, to England dear, Did these holy proverbs say, "Would you love your Lord and Head, |