and etymology, and perfectly at home in all the details of architecture, music, and law. He was well acquainted, too, with most of the modern languages, and familiar with their most recent literature. Nor was it at all extraordinary to hear the great mechanician and engineer detailing and expounding for hours together the metaphysical theories of the German logicians, or criticising the measures or the matter of the German poetry.

LORD JEFFREY: Essays from the Edinburgh Review.

ap-pre-hen-sion, grasping a thought. | meth-o-diz-ing, arranging; ordering. con-triv-ance, plan; device. de-i-fied, worshipped as gods. duc-til-i-ty, obedience; tractableness. ex-traor-di-na-ry, uncommon. mag-nif-i-cent-ly, splendidly. met-a-phys-ics, the science of mind.

ob-du-rate, hard; stubborn.
promp-ti-tude, quickness; readiness.
rec-ti-fy-ing, correcting; controlling.
reg-u-lat-ed, ruled; controlled.
struc-ture, make; formation.
stu-pen-dous, amazing.

13.-WATERLOO.
JUNE 18, 1815.

[The Battle of Waterloo decided the fate of Napoleon. After his defeat in 1814, he had abdicated his crown and retired to Elba. In the end of that year a Congress met at Vienna to settle the affairs of Europe. Before its work was completed, news arrived that Napoleon had left Elba, and was again surrounded by his troops. War was declared. Wellington occupied Belgium with 80,000 men, prepared to invade France. Blücher with a large army of Prussians marched to join him. Napoleon hastily crossed the frontier, his object being to force an engagement with Wellington before Blücher could come up. In this he was only partly successful. At Waterloo the English held their ground all day till the Prussians came in sight, and then the whole line advanced and drove the French in confusion from the field. Byron's poem refers to a ball given in Brussels by the Duchess of Richmond on the night of June 15th. It was attended by many officers of the allied armies. During the evening news arrived that Napoleon was marching on Brussels. The officers were summoned from the ball-room, and marched before daybreak. Next day, June 16, engagements at Quatre-Bras and Ligny were fought. Waterloo was not fought till two days later.]

1. There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital1 had gathered then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men:
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when

Music arose with its 'voluptuous swell,

Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell :

But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising 'knell!

2. Did ye not hear it? No; 'twas but the wind,

Or the car rattling o'er the stony street:

On with the dance; let joy be 'unconfined;

No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet:
But, hark! that heavy sound breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echoes would repeat;
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before!
Arm! arm !—it is—it is—the cannon's opening roar !

3. Within a windowed 'niche of that high hall
Sate Brunswick's fated Chieftain :2 he did hear
That sound the first amidst the festival,
And caught its tone with Death's 'prophetic ear;
And when they smiled because he deemed it near,
His heart more truly knew that peal too well
Which stretched his father on a bloody bier;
And roused the 'vengeance blood alone could quell;
He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.3

4. Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress;
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago
Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness:
And there were sudden partings, such as press
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
Which ne'er might be repeated; who could guess
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,1
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise?

5. And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with 'impetuous speed,
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
And the deep thunder peal on peal afar ;

And near, the beat of the alarming drum

Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;

While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,

Or whispering, with white lips, "The foe!--they come! they come !"

6. And wild and high the "Camerons' gathering”5 rose,
The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills 6
Have heard-and heard, too, have her Saxon foes :
How in the noon of night that 'pibroch thrills
Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills
Their mountain-pipe, so fill the 'mountaineers
With the fierce native daring which instils

The stirring memory of a thousand years,

And Evan's, Donald's' fame rings in each clansman's ears.

8

7. And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,
Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass,

Grieving, if aught 'inanimate e'er grieves,

Over the unreturning brave-alas !

Ere evening to be trodden like the grass

Which now beneath them, but above shall grow

In its next verdure, when this fiery mass

Of living valour, rolling on the foe,

And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low!

8. Last noon beheld them full of lusty life

Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay;

The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife-
The morn, the 'marshalling in arms—the day,
Battle's magnificently stern array!

The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which,9 when rent,
The earth is covered thick with other clay,

Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,

Rider and horse-friend, foe-in one red burial ⚫blent!

blent, miñ'gled.

im-pet-u-ous, headlong.

in-an-i-mate, lifeless.

knell, death-signal.

mar-shall-ing, arraying.

moun-tain-eers', Highlanders.

LORD BYRON: Childe Harold.

| mus-ter-ing, gathering together.
niche, recess.

pi-broch, war note; the music of the
bag-pipe or "mountain-pipe."
pro-phet-ic, predicting; ominous.
rev-el-ry, noisy feasting; festivity.

un-con-fined', unbounded; not re- | ver-dure, greenness, therefore growth

strained.

ven-geance, desire for revenge.

1 Belgium's capital, Brussels. 2 Brunswick's fated chieftain. William-Frederick, Duke of Brunswick, fell at Quatre-Bras, when leading the advanced guard of Wellington's army. His father, to whom allusion is made in this stanza, was a great general, killed at the battle of Auerstädt in 1806.

3 Field, and, foremost fighting, fell.-The repetition of the "f" sound is an example of head-rhyme or alliteration.

4 Mutual eyes, eyes exchanging loving or sympathetic looks.

or crop.

| vo-lup-tu-ous, delicious.

7 Evan's, Donald's fame. - Sir Evan Cameron of Lochiel, who was remarkable for his personal valour and his integrity, fought under Claverhouse at Killiecrankie (1689). On his death in 1719, he was succeeded by his grandson Donald. The latter was the first to join the standard of the young Pretender in 1745. He was severely wounded at Culloden (1746). He afterwards escaped to France with Prince Charles Edward, entered the French service, and died abroad in 1748.

8 Ar'dennes.-The wood of Soignies, which lies between Waterloo and Brussels, is supposed to be a remnant of the Forest of Ardennes, which traversed the hilly region so called in the south of Belgium.

5 "Camerons' gathering," the pibroch or war-note of the Cameron Highlanders (79th Regiment), raised by Allan Cameron of Erroch in 1793. It is called "The war-note of Lochiel," because the Camerons of Lochiel were 9 Which.-This word has no gramthe chiefs of their clan.-The reference matical connection with the rest of the in "Heard, too, have her Saxon foes," sentence. The phrase is plainly an is made to the part taken by the imitation of the Latin construction Camerons on more than one occasion called the ablative absolute; but the in support of the Stuarts. English equivalent of that is, which 6 Albyn's hills, the Highlands of being rent." The prose paraphrase would Scotland. and, when they are rent,'

be,

14. THE REFORM BILL.

1832 A.D.

[The French Revolution and the Peninsular War delayed reform in Englandthe former by exciting mistrust of all changes, the latter by absorbing the national interest. The peace hastened reform, as it was followed by great distress arising from dear food, low wages, and burdensome taxation. Popular discontent was wide-spread; but the people looked in vain to Parliament for relief, because the House of Commons as then constituted did not really represent the nation.]

1. It was in those days of misery and violence that the demand for reform in our system of Parliamentary representation first became formidable. Prominent among

those who created and directed public opinion on this subject was William Cobbett.1 His writings were read beside every cottage hearth in England, and exercised an

authority immediate and powerful. Cobbett never ceased to urge that misgovernment was the source of all the misery which the people endured, and that Parliamentary reform was its natural and its only cure. His words sank deep into the public heart. Clubs to promote reform sprang up all over the country, and before the end of 1816 the demand even for universal suffrage2 was loud and urgent.

2. The great work of the next sixteen years was this agitation for reform of the representative system. Had governments of greater wisdom or of inferior strength been in office, much evil would have been spared. But the right of the people to interfere in politics had been for many years disused;3 and a government, powerful by right of triumph over the greatest of all military despotisms,1 was not prepared to suffer its revival.

3. The contest was a 'singularly bitter one. The government had no foundation in national choice; the relations between rulers and people were not friendly, but hostile. The people looked upon the government as a power high above them, of opposing interests, oppressive, 'contemptuous, cruel. The government believed that the new impulse which had seized the masses threatened danger to the institutions of the country; that every popular leader was a traitor; that every demand for political privileges was seditious. They spurned the thought of concession, and prepared to carry out 'inflexibly to its bitter end the policy of forcible suppression.

4. In this unhappy spirit the greatest of our domestic battles was fought. Many of the years across which the contest stretched were years of acute national suffering, for it was long before the country recovered from the exhaustion of the war. The resumption of specie payments5 in 1819 intensified the general distress. Money became very scarce; exports fell away; prices of nearly all commodities sank about one half. Wide-spread ruin