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5. Alone with destruction! alone on the sea!
Great Father of Mercy, our hope is in Thee!
They prayed for the light; and at noontide about,
The sun o'er the waters shone joyously out.

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"A sail!" and they turned their glad eyes o'er the sea. "They see us! They see us! The signal is waved! They bear down upon us! Thank Heaven! We are saved!"

Charles Mackay.

LESSON LXXI.

HOME AND ITS MEMORIES.

1. Home is a genuine Saxon word, — a word kindred to Saxon speech, but with an import common to the race of man. Perhaps there is no other word in any language that clusters within it so many and so stirring meanings, — that calls into play, and powerfully excites, so many feelings, so many faculties of our being.

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2. "Home," say but the word, and the child that was your merry guest begins to weep. Home," - play but its tunes, and the bearded soldier, who blenched not in the breach, droops and sickens and dies. "Home," but its name, and memories start around it that put fire into the brain, and affections that almost suffocate or break the heart, and pictures that bewilder the fancy, presenting scenes in which joy and sorrow strive for possession of the spirit.

3. "Home," what does it not stand for, of the strongest and most moving associations! for childhood's grief and gladness; for youth's sports, and hopes, and sufferings, and passions, and sins; for all that brightened or dimmed the eyes; for all that convulsed or tranquilized the breast; for a father's embrace, or for his death-bed; for a mother's kiss, or for her grave; for a sister's love, or a brother's friendship; for hours wasted, or hours blest; for peace in the light of life, or fears in the shadows of the grave.

4. Home, when it is all that nature and grace can make it, has a blessedness and beauty of reality that imagination, in its fairest pictures, would find nothing to excel. But in many a spot called home, neither nature nor grace is found. A collection of home histories, honestly set down, would be a rich contribution to materials for the philosophy of character.

5. Not gay, not pleasant, not innocent, would all of these home histories be. Not a few of them would be sad, dreary, wretched; and within the earliest dwelling of man would be discovered the appropriate opening of many a tragic life. And yet nothing can humanity worse spare than the pleasing and gracious memories of home.

6. There is no mist of guilt so thick that it can always exclude the light of such remembrance; no tempest of passion so furious as always to silence its voices. During a lull in the hurricane of revelry, the peal of the sabbath bell may come along the track of wasted years, and, though loaded heavily, will be not unkindly in its tones. Through the reekings of luxury, faces that beamed on the prodigal in youth may seem to start in trouble from the tomb, and, though marred with grief, though pallid with affliction, turn mildly toward him, not in anger, but in sorrow.

7. Under the loud carousals that rage above the brain of the debauchee, deep down and lonely in his heart, there may come to him the whisper of parental exhortation, the murmur of household prayer, and the music of domestic hymns. The very criminal in his cell will often have these visitations, —— ministers to exhort, not enemies to accuse; angels to beseech, not demons to scoff.

8. The sentenced culprit, during even his last night on earth, must sleep, and perchance may dream; and seldom will that dream be all in the present and in the prison; not all of it, if any, will be of chains and blood, of shapeless terrors and pale-faced avengers, of the scaffold and the shroud.

9. Far other things will be in the dream. He once was honest, and spent his childhood, it may be, in a rustic home, and grew to youth amidst laborious men and with simple nature. Out of imagery thus derived will his dream be formed. In such dreams will be the green field and the wooded land; the boat sleeping on the stream; the rock mirrored in the lake;

the shadow, watched expectingly from the school-room window, as it shortened to the noontide hour.

10. Then there will be parents, blessed in their unbroken circle; there will be young companions, laughing in their play; there will be bright harvest evenings, after days of healthful toil; there will be family greetings, thanksgiving feasts; there will be the grasp of friendship, there will be the kiss of love. Then in dreams will be reproduced, on the brink of eternity, the freshness of emotion, hope, and desire with which existence on earth began. What is put into the first of life is put into the whole of life. forgotten.

This should never be

Henry Giles.

LESSON LXXII.

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

1. Harold was crowned King of England on the very day of the maudlin Confessor's funeral. He had good need to be quick about it. When the news reached the Norman Duke William, hunting in his park at Rouen, he dropped his bow, returned to his palace, called his nobles to council, and presently sent ambassadors to Harold, calling on him to keep his oath, and resign the crown. Harold would do no such thing. The barons of France leagued together round Duke William for the invasion of England. Duke William promised freely to distribute English wealth and English lands among them.

2. King Harold had a rebel brother in Flanders who was a vassal of Harold Hardrada, King of Norway. This brother and this Norwegian king, joining their forces against England, with Duke William's help, won a fight in which the English were commanded by two nobles, and then besieged York. Harold, who was waiting for the Normans on the coast at

Hastings, with his army marched to Stamford Bridge, upon the river Derwent, to give them instant battle.

3. He found them drawn up in a hollow circle, marked out by their shining spears. Riding round this circle at a distance, to survey it, he saw a brave figure on horseback, in a blue mantle and a bright helmet, whose horse suddenly stumbled and threw him. "Who is that man who has fallen ?" Harold asked of one of his captains. "The King of Norway," he replied. "He is a tall and stately king," said Harold; "but his end is near."

4. He added in a little while, "Go yonder to my brother, and tell him, if he withdraw his troops he shall be Earl of Northumberland, and rich and powerful in England." The captain rode away and gave the message. "What will he give to my friend, the King of Norway?" asked the brother. Seven feet of earth for a grave," replied the captain. "No more?" returned the brother with a smile. "The King of Norway being a tall man, perhaps a little more,” replied the captain. “Ride back!" said the brother, "and tell King Harold to make ready for the fight."

5. He did so very soon. And such a fight King Harold led against that force, that his brother, and the Norwegian king, and every chief of note in all their host, except the Norwegian king's son, Olave, to whom he gave honorable dismissal, were left dead upon the field. The victorious army marched to York. As King Harold sat there at the feast, in the midst of all his company, a stir was heard at the doors; and messengers, all covered with mire, from riding far and fast through broken ground, came hurrying in to report that the Normans had landed in England.

6. The intelligence was true. They had been tossed about by contrary winds, and some of their ships had been wrecked. A part of their own shore, to which they had been driven back, was strewn with Norman bodies. But they had once more

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