THE SIEGE OF ANTIOCH
Baghasihan, the Turkish Prince, or Emir of Antioch, had under his command an Armenian of the name of Phirouz, whom he had entrusted with the defence of a tower on that part of the city wall which overlooked the passes of the mountains. Bohemund, by means of a spy, who had embraced the Christian religion, and to whom he had given his own name at baptism, kept up a daily communication with this captain, and made him the most magnificent promises of reward if he would deliver up his post to the Crusaders. Whether the proposal was first made by Bohemund or by the Armenian, is uncertain, but that a good understanding soon existed between them is undoubted; and a night was fixed for the execution of the project. Bohemund communicated the scheme to Godfrey and the Count of Toulouse, with the stipulation that, if the city were won, he, as the soul of the enterprise, should enjoy the dignity of Prince of Antioch. The other leaders hesitated: ambition and jealousy prompted them to refuse their aid in furthering the views of the intriguer. More mature consideration decided them to acquiesce, and seven hundred of the bravest knights were chosen for the expedition, the real object of which, for fear of spies, was kept a profound secret from the rest of the army.
Everything favoured the treacherous project of the Armenian captain, who, on his solitary watch-tower, received due intimation of the approach of the Crusaders. The night was dark and stormy: not a star was visible above; and the wind howled so furiously as to overpower all other sounds. The rain fell in torrents, and the watchers on the towers adjoining to that of Phirouz could not hear the tramp of the armed knights for the wind, nor see them for the obscurity of the night and the dismalness of the weather. When within bow-shot of the walls, Bohemund sent forward an interpreter to confer with the Armenian. The latter urged them to make haste and seize the favourable interval, as armed men, with lighted torches, patrolled the battlements every half-hour, and at that instant they had just passed. The chiefs were instantly at the foot of the wall. Phirouz let down a rope; Bohemund attached to it a ladder of hides, which was then raised by the Armenian, and held while the knights mounted. A momentary fear came over the spirits of the adventurers, and every one hesitated; at last Bohemund, encouraged by Phirouz from above, ascended a few steps on the ladder, and was followed by Godfrey, Count Robert of Flanders, and a number of other knights. As they advanced, others pressed forward, until their weight became too great for the ladder, which, breaking, precipitated about a dozen of them to the ground, where they fell one upon the other, making a great clatter with their heavy coats of mail. For a moment they thought all was lost; but the wind made so loud a howling, as it swept in fierce gusts through the mountain gorges, and the Orontes, swollen by the rain, rushed so noisily along, that the guards heard nothing. The ladder was easily repaired, and the knights ascended, two at a time, and reached the platform in safety. When sixty of them had thus ascended, the torch of the coming patrol was seen to gleam at the angle of the wall. Hiding themselves behind a buttress, they awaited his coming in breathless silence. As soon as he arrived at arm's length, he was suddenly seized; and before he could open his lips to raise an alarm, the silence of death closed them up for ever. They next descended rapidly the spiral staircase of the tower, and, opening the portal, admitted the whole of their companions. Raymond of Toulouse, who, cognizant of the whole plan, had been left behind with the main body of the army, heard at this instant the signal horn, which announced that an entry had been effected, and advancing with his legions, the town was attacked from within and from without.
Imagination cannot conceive a scene more dreadful than that presented by the devoted city of Antioch on that night of horror. The Crusaders fought with a blind fury, which fanaticism and suffering alike incited. Men, women, and children were indiscriminately slaughtered, till the streets ran in gore. Darkness increased the destruction; for, when the morning dawned the Crusaders found themselves with their swords at the breasts of their fellow-soldiers, whom they had mistaken to be foes. The Turkish commander fled, first to the citadel, and, that becoming insecure, to the mountains, whither he was pursued and slain, and his gory head brought back to Antioch as a trophy. At daylight the massacre ceased, and the Crusaders gave themselves up to plunder.
Popular Delusions.
ANGLING
Go, take thine angle, and with practised line,
Light as the gossamer, the current sweep;
And if thou failest in the calm, still deep,
In the rough eddy may a prize be thine.
Say thou'rt unlucky where the sunbeams shine;
Beneath the shadow where the waters creep
Perchance the monarch of the brook shall leap—
For Fate is ever better than Design.
Still persevere; the giddiest breeze that blows
For thee may blow with fame and fortune rife.
Be prosperous; and what reck if it arose
Out of some pebble with the stream at strife,
Or that the light wind dallied with the boughs:
Thou art successful—such is human life.
Doubleday.
MARIANA
Mariana in the moated grange.—Measure for Measure
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all;
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the peach to the garden wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange—
Uplifted was the clinking latch,
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch,
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary—
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!"
Her tears fell with the dews at even—
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary—
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!"
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking, she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light;
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her. Without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!"
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept;
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by, a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark;
For leagues, no other tree did dark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary—
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!"
And ever, when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away
In the white curtain, to and fro
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary—
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!"
All day, within the dreary house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue-fly sang i' the pane; the mouse
Behind the mould'ring wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd through the doors;
Old footsteps trod the upper floors;
Old voices called her from without:
She only said, "My life is dreary—
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!"
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moated sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping towards his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary—
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, weary,
I would that I were dead!"
Tennyson.
RISE OF POETRY AMONG THE ROMANS
The Romans, in the infancy of their state, were entirely rude and unpolished. They came from shepherds; they were increased from the refuse of the nations around them; and their manners agreed with their original. As they lived wholly on tilling their ground at home, or on plunder from their neighbours, war was their business, and agriculture the chief art they followed. Long after this, when they had spread their conquests over a great part of Italy, and began to make a considerable figure in the world—even their great men retained a roughness, which they raised into a virtue, by calling it Roman spirit; and which might often much better have been called Roman barbarity. It seems to me, that there was more of austerity than justice, and more of insolence than courage, in some of their most celebrated actions. However that be, this is certain, that they were at first a nation of soldiers and husbandmen: roughness was long an applauded character among them; and a sort of rusticity reigned, even in their senate-house.
In a nation originally of such a temper as this, taken up almost always in extending their territories, very often in settling the balance of power among themselves, and not unfrequently in both these at the same time, it was long before the politer arts made any appearance; and very long before they took root or flourished to any degree. Poetry was the first that did so; but such a poetry as one might expect among a warlike, busied, unpolished people.
Not to enquire about the songs of triumph mentioned even in Romulus's time, there was certainly something of poetry among them in the next reign, under Numa; a Prince who pretended to converse with the Muses as well as with Egeria, and who might possibly himself have made the verses which the Salian priests sang in his time. Pythagoras, either in the same reign, or if you please some time after, gave the Romans a tincture of poetry as well as of philosophy; for Cicero assures us that the Pythagoreans made great use of poetry and music; and probably they, like our old Druids, delivered most of their precepts in verse. Indeed, the chief employment of poetry in that and the following ages, among the Romans, was of a religious kind. Their very prayers, and perhaps their whole liturgy, was poetical. They had also a sort of prophetic or sacred writers, who seem to have written generally in verse; and were so numerous that there were above two thousand of their volumes remaining even to Augustus's time. They had a kind of plays too, in these early times, derived from what they had seen of the Tuscan actors when sent for to Rome to expiate a plague that raged in the city. These seem to have been either like our dumb-shows, or else a kind of extempore farces—a thing to this day a good deal in use all over Italy and in Tuscany. In a more particular manner, add to these that extempore kind of jesting dialogues begun at their harvest and vintage feasts, and carried on so rudely and abusively afterwards as to occasion a very severe law to restrain their licentiousness; and those lovers of poetry and good eating, who seem to have attended the tables of the richer sort, much like the old provincial poets, or our own British bards, and sang there to some instrument of music the achievements of their ancestors, and the noble deeds of those who had gone before them, to inflame others to follow their great examples.
The names of almost all these poets sleep in peace with all their works; and, if we may take the word of the other Roman writers of a better age, it is no great loss to us. One of their best poets represents them as very obscure and very contemptible; one of their best historians avoids quoting them as too barbarous for politer ears; and one of their most judicious emperors ordered the greatest part of their writings to be burnt, that the world might be troubled with them no longer.
All these poets, therefore, may very well be dropped in the account, there being nothing remaining of their works, and probably no merit to be found in them if they had remained. And so we may date the beginning of the Roman poetry from Livius Andronicus, the first of their poets of whom anything does remain to us; and from whom the Romans themselves seem to have dated the beginning of their poetry, even in the Augustan age.
The first kind of poetry that was followed with any success among the Romans, was that for the stage. They were a very religious people; and stage plays in those times made no inconsiderable part in their public devotions; it is hence, perhaps, that the greatest number of their oldest poets, of whom we have any remains, and, indeed, almost all of them, are dramatic poets.
Spence.
CHARACTER OF JULIUS CAESAR
Caesar was endowed with every great and noble quality that could exalt human nature, and give a man the ascendant in society. Formed to excel in peace as well as war; provident in council; fearless in action, and executing what he had resolved with an amazing celerity; generous beyond measure to his friends; placable to his enemies; and for parts, learning, and eloquence, scarce inferior to any man. His orations were admired for two qualities, which are seldom found together, strength and elegance: Cicero ranks him among the greatest orators that Rome ever bred; and Quintilian says, that he spoke with the same force with which he fought; and if he had devoted himself to the bar, would have been the only man capable of rivalling Cicero. Nor was he a master only of the politer arts; but conversant also with the most abstruse and critical parts of learning; and, among other works which he published, addressed two books to Cicero on the analogy of language, or the art of speaking and writing correctly. He was a most liberal patron of wit and learning, wheresoever they were found; and out of his love of those talents, would readily pardon those who had employed them against himself; rightly judging, that by making such men his friends, he should draw praises from the same fountain from which he had been aspersed. His capital passions were ambition and love of pleasure, which he indulged in their turns to the greatest excess; yet the first was always predominant—to which he could easily sacrifice all the charms of the second, and draw pleasure even from toils and dangers, when they ministered to his glory. For he thought Tyranny, as Cicero says, the greatest of goddesses; and had frequently in his mouth a verse of Euripides, which expressed the image of his soul, that if right and justice were ever to be violated, they were to be violated for the sake of reigning. This was the chief end and purpose of his life—the scheme that he had formed from his early youth; so that, as Cato truly declared of him, he came with sobriety and meditation to the subversion of the republic. He used to say, that there were two things necessary to acquire and to support power—soldiers and money; which yet depended mutually upon each other: with money, therefore, he provided soldiers, and with soldiers extorted money, and was, of all men, the most rapacious in plundering both friends and foes; sparing neither prince, nor state, nor temple, nor even private persons who were known to possess any share of treasure. His great abilities would necessarily have made him one of the first citizens of Rome; but, disdaining the condition of a subject, he could never rest till he made himself a Monarch. In acting this last part, his usual prudence seemed to fail him; as if the height to which he was mounted had turned his head and made him giddy; for, by a vain ostentation of his power, he destroyed the stability of it; and, as men shorten life by living too fast, so by an intemperance of reigning he brought his reign to a violent end.
Middleton.
SIEGE OF TYRE
It appeared to Alexander a matter of great importance, before he went further, to gain the maritime powers. Upon application, the Kings of Cyprus and Phoenicea made their submission; only Tyre held out. He besieged that city seven months, during which time he erected vast mounds of earth, plied it with his engines, and invested it on the side next the sea with two hundred gallies. He had a dream in which he saw Hercules offering him his hand from the wall, and inviting him to enter; and many of the Tyrians dreamt "that Apollo declared he would go over to Alexander, because he was displeased with their behaviour in the town," Hereupon, the Tyrians, as if the God had been a deserter taken in the fact, loaded his statue with chains, and nailed the feet to the pedestal, not scrupling to call him an Alexandrist. In another dream, Alexander thought he saw a satyr playing before him at some distance, and when he advanced to take him, the savage eluded his grasp. However, at last, after much coaxing and taking many circuits round him, be prevailed with him to surrender himself. The interpreters, plausibly enough, divided the Greek name for satyr into two, Sa Tyros, which signifies Tyre is thine. They still show us a fountain near which Alexander is said to have seen that vision.
About the middle of the siege, he made an excursion against the Arabians who dwelt about Anti-Libanus. Here he ran a great risk of his life, on account of his preceptor Lysimachus, who insisted on attending him—being, as he alleged, neither older nor less valiant than Phoenix; but when they came to the hills and quitted their horses to march up on foot, the rest of the party got far before Alexander and Lysimachus. Night came on, and, as the enemy was at no great distance, the King would not leave his preceptor, borne down with fatigue and with the weight of years. Therefore, while he was encouraging and helping him forward, he was insensibly separated from the troop, and had a cold and dark night to pass in an exposed and dismal situation. In this perplexity, he observed at a distance a number of scattered fires which the enemy had lighted; and depending upon his swiftness and activity as well as being accustomed to extricate the Macedonians out of every difficulty, by taking a share in the labour and danger, he ran to the next fire. After having killed two of the barbarians who watched it, he seized a lighted brand and hastened with it to his party, who soon kindled a great fire. The sight of this so intimidated the enemy, that many of them fled, and those who ventured to attack him were repulsed with considerable slaughter. By this means he passed the night in safety, according to the account we have from Charis.
As for the siege, it was brought to a termination in this manner: Alexander had permitted his main body to repose themselves after the long and severe fatigues they had undergone, and ordered only some small parties to keep the Tyrians in play. In the meantime, Aristander, his principal soothsayer, offered sacrifices; and one day, upon inspecting the entrails of the victim, he boldly asserted among those around him that the city would certainly be taken that month. As it happened to be the last day of that month, his assertion was received with ridicule and scorn. The King perceiving he was disconcerted, and making it a point to bring the prophecies of his minister to completion, gave orders that the day should not be called the 30th, but the 28th of the month; at the same time he called out his forces by sound of trumpet, and made a much more vigorous assault than he at first intended. The attack was violent, and those who were left behind in the camp quitted it, to have a share in it and to support their fellow-soldiers, insomuch that the Tyrians were forced to give out, and the city was taken that very day.
Langhorne's Plutarch.
THE FALLS OF NIAGARA
The river Niagara takes its rise in the western extremity of Lake Erie, and, after flowing about thirty-four miles, empties itself into Lake Ontario. It is from half a mile to three miles broad; its course is very smooth, and its depth considerable. The sides above the cataract are nearly level; but below the falls, the stream rushes between very lofty rocks, crowned by gigantic trees. The great body of water does not fall in one complete sheet, but is separated by islands, and forms three distinct falls. One of these, called the Great Fall, or, from its shape, the Horse-shoe Fall, is on the Canadian side. Its beauty is considered to surpass that of the others, although its height is considerably less. It is said to have a fall of 165 feet; and in the inn, which is about 300 yards from the fall, the concussion of air caused by this immense cataract is so great, that the window-frames, and, indeed, the whole house, are continually in a tremulous motion, and in winter, when the wind drives the spray in the direction of the buildings, the whole scene is coated with sheets of ice.
The great cataract is seen by few travellers in its winter garb. I had seen it several years before in all the glories of autumn, its encircling woods, happily spared by the remorseless hatchet, and tinted with the brilliant hues peculiar to the American "Fall." Now the glory had departed; the woods were still there, but were generally black, with occasional green pines; beneath the grey trunks was spread a thick mantle of snow, and from the brown rocks inclosing the deep channel of the Niagara River hung huge clusters of icicles, twenty feet in length, like silver pipes of giant organs. The tumultuous rapids appeared to descend more regularly than formerly over the steps which distinctly extended across the wide river. The portions of the British, or Horse-shoe Fall, where the waters descend in masses of snowy whiteness, were unchanged by the season, except that vast sheets of ice and icicles hung on their margin; but where the deep waves of sea-green water roll majestically over the steep, large pieces of descending ice were frequently descried on its surface. No rainbows were now observed on the great vapour-cloud which shrouds for ever the bottom of the Fall; but we were extremely fortunate to see now plainly what I had looked for in vain at my last visit, the water-rockets, first described by Captain Hall, which shot up with a train of vapour singly, and in flights of a dozen, from the abyss near Table Rock, curved towards the east, and burst and fell in front of the cataract. Vast masses of descending fluid produce this singular effect, by means of condensed air acting on portions of the vapour into which the water is comminuted below. Altogether the appearance was most startling. It was observed at 1 P.M. from the gallery of Mr. Barnett's museum. The broad sheet of the American Fall presented the appearance of light-green water and feathery spray, also margined by huge icicles. As in summer, the water rushing from under the vapour-cloud of the two Falls was of a milky whiteness as far as the ferry, when it became dark and interspersed with floating masses of ice. Here, the year before, from the pieces of ice being heaped and crushed together in great quantities, was formed a thick and high bridge of ice, completely across the river, safe for passengers for some time; and in the middle of it a Yankee speculator had erected a shanty for refreshments. Lately, at a dinner party, I heard a staff-officer of talent, but who was fond of exciting wonder by his narratives, propose to the company a singular wager,—a bet of one hundred pounds that he would go over the Falls of Niagara and come out alive at the bottom! No one being inclined to take him up, after a good deal of discussion as to how this perilous feat was to be accomplished, the plan was disclosed. To place on Table Rock a crane, with a long arm reaching over the water of the Horse-shoe Fall; from this arm would hang, by a stout rope, a large bucket or cask; this would be taken up some distance above the Fall, where the mill-race slowly glides towards the cataract; here the adventurer would get into the cask, men stationed on the Table Rock would haul in the slack of the rope as he descended, and the crane would swing him clear from the cataract as he passed over. Here is a chance for any gentleman sportsman to immortalize himself!
Sir James Alexander.