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Pillage and Death have spread their wings! 'tis the hour to hie thee forth,

And with thy hoofs an echo wake to the trumpets of the North!

Nor gems nor gold do men behold upon thy saddle

tree;

But earth affords the wealth of lords for thy master and for thee.

Then fiercely neigh, my charger gray!-thy chest is proud and ample;

Thy hoofs shall prance o'er the fields of France, and the pride of her heroes trample!

2. Europe is weak-she hath grown old-her bulwarks are laid low;

She is loath to hear the blast of war-she shrinketh from a foe!

Come, in our turn, let us sojourn in her goodly haunts

of joy

In the pillared porch to wave the torch, and her palaces destroy!

Proud as when first thou slakedst thy thirst in the flow of conquered Seine,

Aye shalt thou lave, within that wave, thy blood-red flanks again.

Then fiercely neigh, my gallant gray!-thy chest is strong and ample!

Thy hoofs shall prance o'er the fields of France, and the pride of her heroes trample !

3. Kings are beleaguered on their thrones by their

own vassal crew;

And in their den quake noblemen, and priests are bearded too;

And loud they yelp for the Cossack's help to keep their bondsmen down,

And they think it meet, while they kiss our feet, to wear a tyrant's crown!

The sceptre now to my lance shall bow, and the crosier and the cross

Shall bend alike, when I lift my pike, and aloft THAT SCEPTRE toss !

Then proudly neigh, my gallant gray!-thy chest is broad and ample;

Thy hoofs shall prance o'er the fields of France, and the pride of her heroes trample!

4. In a night of storm I have seen a form!—and the

figure was a GIANT,

And his eye was bent on the Cossack's tent, and his look was all defiant;

Kingly his crest-and towards the West with his battle-axe he pointed;

And the "form" I saw was ATTILA! of this earth the

Scourge anointed.

From the Cossack's camp let the horseman's tramp the

coming crash announce ;

Let the vulture whet his beak sharp set, on the carrion

field to pounce;

And proudly neigh, my charger gray!-Oh! thy chest is broad and ample:

Thy hoofs shall prance o'er the fields of France, and the pride of her heroes trample!

5. What boots old Europe's boasted fame, on which she builds reliance,

When the North shall launch its avalanche on her

works of art and science?

Hath she not wept her cities swept by our hordes of trampling stallions?

And tower and arch crushed in the march of our bar

barous battalions?

Can we not wield our father's shield? the same war

hatchet handle?

Do our blades want length, or the reapers' strength, for the harvest of the Vandal?

Then proudly neigh, my gallant gray, for thy chest is strong and ample;

And thy hoofs shall prance o'er the fields of France and the pride of her heroes trample!

XCIL-ST. BERNARD.

MONTALEMBERT.

1. All acknowledge Saint Bernard to be a great man and a man of genius; he exercised over his age an influence that has no parallel in history; he reigned by

eloquence, courage, and virtue. More than once he decided the future of nations and of crowns. At one time he held, as it were, in his hands the destiny of the Church. He knew how to move Europe, and precipitate it upon the East; he completely vanquished Abelard, the precursor of modern Rationalism. All the world knows it; and all the world says it; all, with one voice, place him by the side of Ximenes, Richelieu, and Bossuet.

2. But this is not sufficient. If he was, and who can doubt it? a great orator, a great writer, and a great person, it was almost without his knowing it, and always in opposition to his own wish. He was, and above all wished to be, something else; he was a monk and he was a saint; he lived in a cloister and he worked miracles.

3. The Church has defined and canonized the sanctity of Bernard; history is charged with the mission of relating his life, and of explaining the wonderful influence he exercised over his contemporaries.

4. But in studying the life and epoch of this great man, who was a monk, we find that Popes, Bishops, and Saints, who were the bulwark and honor of Christian society, all, or almost all, like Bernard, came from the monastic orders. Who then were these monks, and whence did they come, and what had they done, up to this period, to make them occupy so high a place in the destiny of the world?

5. These questions we must solve before going farther. And we must do more; for in trying to judge of the age in which Saint Bernard lived, we find that it is impossible to explain or comprehend it, if we do not recognize that it was animated by the same breath which vivified an anterior epoch of which it is only the direct and faithful continuation.

6. If the twelfth century bowed before the genius and virtue of Saint Bernard, it was because the cleventh century had been regenerated and penetrated with the virtue and genius of another monk, Gregory VII.; and we could not comprehend either the epoch or the action of Bernard, when apart from the salutary crisis which the one had prepared and rendered possible for the other; and never would a simple monk have been heard and obeyed as Bernard was, if his uncontested greatness had not been preceded by the struggles and trials, and the posthumous victories of that other monk, who died six years before the birth of our Saint.

7. It must then be characterized, not only by a conscientious view of the pontificate of the greatest of the Popes, taken from the ranks of the monks, but also by passing in review the entire period which unites the last combats of Gregory with the first efforts of Bernard; and, while keeping this in view, describe the most important and most glorious struggle in which the monks were the first in sufferings as in honors.

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