275. FIELD.

OPERATIONS BEFORE THE BATTLE OF FLODDEN

But no satisfactory answer being given to this, and the heralds being returned on either side, the Earl removes with his army to such a place, that, if the Scotishmen would not leave the advantage of their site, he might cut off their victuals, and consequently draw them down. James IV. hereupon, firing his huts, dislodges covertly, by the benefit of the smoke, and keeping still on the high ground, at last he commands a stay. Presently after, the Earl also, traversing some bogs and marishes, till he arrived to the bottom of this bank, found the ascent not very steep, and thereupon encourageth his men to fight. This done, he marcheth up; the vantguard was led by his two sons, the battel by himself, and the rere by Sir Edward Stanley. The Lord Dacres, with his horse, being appointed as a reserve on all occasions. The king observing this well, and judging that it was not without much disadvantage that the English came to fight, exhorts his men to behave themselves like brave soldiers, and thereupon joyns battel.

LORD HERBERT

276. PLEASURE ARISING FROM THE PROSPECT OF DEATH TO THE RIGHTEOUS. The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living, which are to be desired when dying.—For the death of the righteous is like the descending of ripe and wholesome fruits from a pleasant and florid tree. With our intellect and all our other senses entire, our limbs unbroken, without horrid tortures, after provision made for our children, with a blessing entailed upon our posterity, in the presence of our friends, our dearest relative closing our eyes, leaving a good name behind us,-surely the prospect of. death under such circumstances, is as pleasing as the prospect of land to the mariner at sea, when he hopes at length to get into harbour after a wearisome voyage.

277. PREPARATION FOR DEATH. Since God hath not told us we shall not die suddenly, is it not certain He intended we should prepare for sudden death, as well as against death clothed in any other circumstances? For as soon as a man is born, that which in nature only remains to him is to die; and if we differ in the style of our temporary abode, or in the manner of our exit, yet we are even at last.

And since it is not determined by any natural cause, in what way we shall go, or at what age, a wise man will suppose himself always upon his death-bed; and such supposition is like making his will, he is not nearer death for making it, but he is the readier for it, when it comes.

278.

EAGERNESS FOR EMIGRATION IN AMERICA. It would be difficult to describe the eagerness with which the American throws himself upon the vast prize, thus offered him by fortune. In pursuit of it, he braves without fear the arrow of the Indian and the diseases of the wilderness. The silence of the forests does not awe him; the attacks of wild beasts do not alarm him. Passion, stronger than the love of life, is for ever goading him on. Before him there is spread out an almost boundless continent, and it might be said that fearing even now that there will not be room in it, he is hastening lest he should arrive too late. Sometimes the Emigrants advance so fast, that the wilderness reappears behind them. The Forest has but bent beneath their feet: the moment they are passed by, it rises again. It is not uncommon to meet with dwellings abandoned in the midst of woods. The ruins of a hut are often discovered in the very heart of a wilderness, and we are surprised at many attempts at clearing the ground, which attest at once the power and the fickleness of man. On these ruins of a day the ancient forest soon throws out new suckers, and Nature comes with a smile to cover with flowers and leaves the traces of man, and to do away with every vestige of his brief occupation.

W. ROBERTSON

279. CHARACTER OF AN HYPERBOLICAL FOP BY SENECA. Senecio was a man of a turbid and confused wit, who could not endure to speak any but mighty words and sentences, till this humour grew at last into so notorious a habit, or rather a disease, as became the sport of the whole town: he would have no servants but huge massy fellows, no plate or houshold stuff, but thrice as big as the fashion : you may believe me, for I speak it without railery, his extravagancy came at last into such a madness, that he would not put on a pair of shooes, each of which was not big enough for both his feet: he would eat nothing but what was great, nor touch any fruit but Horse-plums and Pound-pears: till at last

he got the surname of Senecio Grandio, which Messala said was not his Cognomen but his Cognomentum: when he declaimed for the three hundred Lacedæmonians, who alone opposed Xerxes his army, of above three hundred thousand, he stretched out his Arms, and stood on tiptoes, that he might appear the taller, and cryed out in a very loud voice; I rejoyce, I rejoyce. We wondred, I remember, what new great fortune had befallen his Eminence. Xerxes (says he) is all mine own. He who took away the sight of the Sea with canvas vails of so many ships and then he goes on so, as I know not what to make of the rest, whether it be the fault of the Edition or the Orator's own burley way of non

sense.

A. COWLEY

280. DEVASTATION OF THE CARNATIC BY HYDER ALI KHAN.. When at length Hyder Ali found that he had to do with men who would either sign no convention, or whom no treaty and no signature could bind, and who were the determined enemies of human intercourse itself, he decreed to make the country possessed by these incorrigible criminals a memorable example to mankind. He resolved to leave the whole Carnatic an everlasting monument of vengeance. He became at length so confident of his force, so collected in his might, that he made no secret whatsoever of his dreadful resolution. Having terminated his disputes with every enemy and every rival, he drew from every quarter whatever a savage ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction, and compounding all the materials of fury, havoc and desolation into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains. While the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic.

281. Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. All the horrors of war before known or heard of, were mercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants, flying from their flaming villages, in part were slaughtered; others, without regard to sex, to age, to the respect of rank, or sacredness of function, fathers torn from children, husbands from wives,

enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amidst the goading spears of drivers and the trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity in an unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to evade this tempest fled to the walled cities. But escaping from fire, sword and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine. For months together these creatures of sufferance, whose very excess and luxury in their most plenteous days had fallen short of the allowance of our austerest fasts-silent, patient, resigned, without sedition or disturbance, almost without complaint, perished by a hundred a day in the streets of Madras, or on the glacis of Tangore, and expired of famine in the granary of India.

282 I was going to awaken your justice towards this unhappy part of our fellow-citizens, by bringing before you some of the circumstances of this plague of hunger. Of all the calamities which beset and waylay the life of man, this comes the nearest to our heart, and is that wherein the proudest of us all feels himself to be nothing more than he is. But I find myself unable to manage it with decorum. These details are of a species of horror so nauseous and disgusting; they are so degrading to the sufferers and to the hearers; they are so humiliating to human nature itself, that on better thoughts, I find it more advisable to throw a pall over this hideous object, and to leave it to your general conceptions.

E. BURKE

283. ELOQUENCE, HOW IT DIFFERS FROM THE OTHER FINE ARTS. Eloquence differs in one very remarkable respect from the other fine Arts. The Poet may execute a thousand rude sketches in the solitude of his study; he may commit them to the flames, and he need not appear before the public till he has attained the perfection of his Art. His friends may boast—

nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre.

But it is otherwise with the Orator. He must expose his first rude exercises to the malignant curiosity of men. It is only by practice before them that he can form his Art. Whatever his genius may be, it has a mechanical part, which every man but Pitt has acquired by use; and this is the very part of which nine-tenths of his hearers can best judge. He is like the General, who learns to fight by fight

ing, and whose only School is real war. This is a reason for indulgence towards the first attempts of the Speaker, which applies neither to those of the Poet nor of the Painter. As far as I can judge, a man must be an every day speaker to become popular. The eloquent speeches or passages of such a speaker seem to rise naturally on great occasions above his usual level. On the contrary, occasional speakers are apt to be thought rhetoricians and haranguers. When it is otherwise, they have more weight than popularity; and they generally require the aid of age or station or previous fame, or of a very peculiar character, which will sometimes supply the place of all the rest.

284. CHRISTIANS OUGHT TO LIVE AS THEY WOULD die. Saint Jerome said well: 'he deserves not the name of a Christian, who will live in that state of life, in which he would not die:' and indeed it is a great venture to be in an evil state of life; because every minute of it hath a danger. And therefore a succession of actions, in every one of which a man may as well perish as escape, is a boldness that hath no mixture of wisdom or probable

venture.

285. THE GONFALONIERE DI JUSTICIA AT FLORENCE. The Guelfs had been so long at the head of the Republic, that their noble families, whose wealth had immensely increased, placed themselves above all law. To put an end to this insubordination of the nobility, the Government determined that nobility itself should be a title of exclusion, and a commencement of punishment: a rigorous edict, bearing the title of Ordinances of Justice first designated thirty-seven Guelf families of Florence, whom it declared Noble and Great, and on this account excluded for ever from the Signoria, refusing them at the same time the privilege of renouncing their nobility in order to place themselves on a footing with the other citizens. The execution of this edict was confined to a new civil officer, the Gonfaloniere of Justice. The citizens divided into companies had each their own standard, and a particular place was assigned for each company to assemble in arms when called upon to do so. When the Gonfaloniere of Justice displayed the Gonfalon or standard of state before the public palace, the citizens were