a few mechanics; it respects the honor of the English nationit respects the glory of my Edward, my husband, my king, You think you have sentenced six of your enemies to death. No, my lord, they have sentenced themselves; and their execution would be the execution of their own orders, not the orders of Edward.

7. "The stage on which they would suffer would be to them a stage of honor; but a stage of shame to Edward, a reproach to his conquests, an indelible disgrace to his name. Let us rather disappoint these haughty burghers, who wish to invest themselves with glory at our expense. We cannot wholly deprive them of the merit of a sacrifice so nobly intended; but we may cut them short of their desires. In the place of that death by which their glory would be consummate, let us bury them under gifts; let us put them to confusion with applauses. We shall thereby defeat them of that popular opinion which never fails to attend those who suffer in the cause of virtue."

Be it so," re

8. "I am convinced; you have prevailed. plied Edward; "prevent the execution; have them instantly before us." They came; when the Queen, with an aspect and accents diffusing sweetness, thus bespoke them :

9. "Natives of France, and inhabitants of Calais, ye have put us to a vast expense of blood and treasure, in the recovery of our just and natural inheritance; but you have acted up to the best of an erroneous judgment, and we admire and honor in you that valor and virtue, by which we are so long kept out of our rightful possessions. You noble burghers! you excellent citizens! though you were tenfold the enemies of our person and our throne, we can feel nothing on our part save respect and affection for you. You have been sufficiently tested.

10. "We loose your chains; we snatch you from the scaffold; and we thank you for that lesson of humiliation which you teach us, when you show us, that excellence is not of blood, title, or station; that virtue gives a dignity superior to that of kings; and that those whom the Almighty forms

with sentiments like yours, are justly and eminently raised above all human distinctions. You are now free to depart to your kinsfolk, your countrymen; to all those whose lives and liberties you have so nobly defended; provided you refuse not the tokens of our esteem. Yet we would rather bind you to ourselves by every endearing obligation; and, for this purpose, we offer to you your choice of the gifts and honors that Edward has to bestow. Rivals for fame, but always friends to virtue, we wish that England were entitled to call you her sons." Ah, my country!" exclaimed Pierre; "it is now that I tremble for you. Edward only wins our cities; but Philippa conquers our hearts."

LESSON XLV.

RURAL LIFE IN ENGLAND.

IRVING.

1. THE taste of the English in the cultivation of land, and in what is called landscape gardening, is unrivaled. They have studied Nature intently, and discovered an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms and harmonious combinations. Those charms which, in other countries, she lavishes in wild solitudes, are here assembled round the haunts of domestic life. They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces, and spread them, like witchery, about their rural abodes.

2. Nothing can be more imposing than the magnificence of English park scenery. Vast lawns, that extend like sheets of vivid green, with here and there clumps of gigantic trees, heaping up rich piles of foliage; the solemn pomp of groves and woodland glades, with the deer trooping in silent herds across them; the hare bounding away to the cover; or the pheasant suddenly bursting upon the wing.

3. The brook, taught to wind in natural meanderings, or expand into a glassy lake; the sequestered pool, reflecting the quivering trees, with the yellow leaf sleeping on its

a Philippa; the name of the Queen, and wife of Edward.

bosom; and the trout roaming fearlessly about its limpid waters; while some rustic temple, or sylvan statue, grown green and dank with age, gives an air of classic sanctity to the seclusion.

4. These are but a few of the features of park scenery · but what most delights me, is the creative talent with which the English decorate the unostentatious abodes of middle life. The rudest habitation, the most unpromising and scanty portion of land, in the hands of an Englishman of taste, becomes a little paradise. With a nicely discriminating eye, he seizes at once upon its capabilities, and pictures in his mind the future landscape.

5. The sterile spot grows into loveliness under his hand; and yet the operations of art which produce the effect are scarcely to be perceived. The cherishing and training of some trees; the cautious pruning of others; the nice distribution of flowers and plants of tender and graceful foliage; the introduction of a green slope of velvet turf; the partial opening to a peep of blue distance, or silver gleam of water; all these are managed with a delicate tact, a pervading yet quiet assiduity, like the magic touchings with which a painter finishes up a favorite picture."

6. The residence of people of fortune and refinement in the country, has diffused a degree of taste and elegance in rural economy that descends to the lowest class. The very laborer, with his thatched cottage and narrow slip of ground, attends to their embellishment.

7. The trim hedge, the grass-plot before the door, the little flower-bed bordered with snug box, the woodbine trained up against the wall, and hanging its blossoms about the lattice; the pot of flowers in the window; the holly, providently planted about the house to cheat winter of its dreariness, and to throw in a semblance of green summer to cheer the fireside; all these bespeak the influence of taste, flowing down from high sources, and pervading the lowest levels of the public mind. If ever Love, as poets sing, delights to visit a cottage, it must be the cottage of an English peasant.

8. In rural occupation there is nothing mean or debasing

It leads a man forth among scenes of natural grandeur and beauty; it leaves him to the workings of his own mind, operated upon by the purest and most elevating of external influences. Such a man may be simple and rough, but he cannot be vulgar.

9. The man of refinement, therefore, finds nothing revolting in an intercourse with the lower orders in rural life, as he does when he casually mingles with the lower orders of cities. He lays aside his distance and reserve, and is glad to waive the distinctions of rank, and to enter into the honest, heartfelt enjoyments of common life. Indeed, the very amusements of the country bring men more and more together; and the sound of the hound and horn blend all feelings into harmony.

10. To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society, may also be attributed the rural feeling that runs through British literature; the frequent use of illustrations from rural life; those incomparable descriptions of Nature, that abound in the British poets; that have continued down from "the Flower and the Leaf” of Chaucer, and have brought into our closets all the freshness and fragrance of the dewy landscape.

b

11. The pastoral writers of other countries appear as if they had paid Nature an occasional visit, and become acquainted with her general charms; but the British poets have lived and reveled with her; they have wooed her in her most secret haunts; they have watched her minutest caprices.

12. A spray could not tremble in the breeze, a leaf could not rustle to the ground, a diamond drop could not patter in the stream, a fragrance could not exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the morning, but it has been noticed by these impassioned and delicate observ. ers and wrought up into some beautiful morality.

13. The effect of this devotion of elegant minds to rural occupations has been wonderful on the face of the country. A great part of the island is rather level, and would be monot

Flower and Leaf; the title of a poem by Chaucer, (Chaw'ser.) b Chaucer; an early English poet, sometimes styled the father of English poetry.

onous were it not for the charms of culture; but it is studded and gemmed, as it were, with castles and palaces, and embroidered with parks and gardens.

14. It does not abound in grand and sublime prospects, but rather in little home scenes of rural repose and sheltered quiet. Every antique farm-house and moss-grown cottage is a picture; and as the roads are continually winding, and the view is shut in by groves and hedges, the eye is delighted by a continual succession of small landscapes of captivating loveli

ness.

15. The great charm, however, of English scenery, is the moral feeling that seems to pervade it. It is associated in the mind with ideas of order, of quiet, of sober, well-established principles, of hoary usage and reverend custom. Every thing seems to be the growth of ages" of regular and peaceful exist

ence.

16. The old church, of remote architecture, with its low, massive portal; its gothic tower; its windows, rich with tracery and painted glass, in scrupulous preservation; its stately monuments of warriors and worthies of the olden time, ancestors of the present lords of the soil; its tombstones, recording successive generations of sturdy yeomanry, whose progeny still plow the same fields, and kneel at the same altar.

17. The neighboring village, with its venerable cottages, its public green, sheltered by trees, under which the forefathers of the present race have sported; the antique family mansion, standing apart in some little rural domain, but looking down with a protecting air on the surrounding scene; all these common features of English landscape evince a calm and settled security, a hereditary transmission of home-bred virtues and local attachments, that speak deeply and touchingly for the moral character of the nation.

a Civilization, in England, probably commenced at the invasion of Julius Cæsar, about nineteen hundred years ago.