294 won." It was no wonder that, overwhelmed with apprehension, his son-in-law could not apprehend his meaning then, but afterward bethought him that he signified how he had conquered the world. The abbot of Westminster took him that same day into custody, on his refusal to "take the king as head of his Church;" and upon his repeating this refusal four days afterward, he was Then, indeed, these committed to the Tower. heretofore bowers of bliss echoed to the weak and wavering complaints of his proud wife, who disturbed him also in his prison by her desires, so vain and so worldly, when compared with the elevated feelings of his dear daughter Margaret. How did the fond, foolish woman seek to shake his purpose! "Seeing," she said, "you have a house at Chelsea, a right fair house, your library, your gallery, your garden, your orchard, and all other necessaries so handsome about you, where you might in company with me, your wife, your children, and household,, be merry, I marvel that you who have been always taken for so wise a man, can be content thus to be shut up among mice and rats, and, too, when you might be abroad at your liberty, and with the favor and good-will both of the king and his council, if you would but do as all the bishops and best learned men of the realm have done." And then not even angered by her folly, seeing how little was given her to understand, he asked her if the house in Chelsea was any nearer Heaven than the gloomy one he then occupied? ending his pleasant yet wise parleying with a simple question: "Tell me," he said, "good Mistress Alice, how long do you think might we live and enjoy that same house?" She answered, "Some twenty years." "Truly," he replied, "if you had said some thousand years, it might have been somewhat; and yet he were a very bad merchant who would put himself in danger to lose eternity for How much the rather if we a thousand years. are not sure to enjoy it one day to an end?" It is for the glory of women that his daughter Margaret, while she loved and honored him past all telling, strengthened his noble nature; for, writing him during his fifteen months' imprisonment in the Tower, she asks, in words not to be forgotten, "What do you think, most dear father, doth comfort us at Chelsey, in this your absence? Surely, the remembrance of your manner of life passed among us-your holy conversation-your wholesome counselsyour examples of virtue, of which there is hope that they do not only persevere with you, but that they are, by God's grace, much more increased." After the endurance of fifteen months' imprisonment, he was arraigned, tried, and found guilty of denying the king's supremacy. Alack! is there no painter of English history bold enough to immortalize himself by painting this trial? Sir Thomas More was beheaded on Tower Hill, in the bright sunshine of the month of July, on its fifth day, 1535, the king remitting the disgusting quartering of the quivering flesh, because of his "high office." When told of the king's "mercy," "Now, God forbid," he said, "the king should use any more such to any of my friends; and God bless all my posterity from such pardons." One man of all the crowd who wept at his More, nothing discomdeath, reproached him with a decision he had given in Chancery. posed, replied, that if it were still to do, he would give the same decision. This happened twelve months before. And, while the last scene was enacting on Tower-Hill, the king, who had walked in this very garden with his arm round the neck, which, by his command, the ax had severed, was playing at Tables in Whitehall, Queen Anne Bullen looking on; and when told that Sir Thomas More was dead, casting his eyes upon the pretty fool that had glittered in his pageants, he said, "Thou art the cause of this man's death." The COWARD! to seek to turn upon a thing so weak as that, the heavy sin which clung to his own soul! Some say the body lies in Chelsea Church, beneath the tomb we have sketched-the epitaph having been written by himself before he anticipated the manner of his death.* It is too *Wood and Weaver both affirm that the body of More was first deposited in the Tower Chapel, but was subse quently obtained by his devoted and accomplished daugh ter, Margaret Roper, and re-interred in Chelsea Church, he had surrendered the chancellorship, and resolved to in the tomb he had finished in 1532, the year in which abide the issue of his conscientious opposition to the king's wishes, as if he felt that the tomb should then be prepared. long to insert; but the lines at the conclusion | legend how that, when his head was upon Lonare very like the man. The epitaph and poetry are in Latin: we give the translation: "For Alice and for Thomas More's remains One lived with me, one lives in such sweet strife, was sought and preserved by that same daughter Margaret, who caused it to be buried in the family vault of the Ropers in St. Dunstan's Church, Canterbury; † and they add a pretty Faulkner, in his history of Chelsca, adheres to this opinion, and says that the tomb in that church is but "an empty cenotaph." His grandson, in his Life, says, "his body was buried in the Chapel of St. Peter, in the Tower, in the belfry, or, as some say, as one entereth into the vestry;" and he does not notice the story of his daughter's re-interment of it elsewhere. The Ropers lived at Canterbury, in St. Dunstan'sstreet. The house is destroyed, and a brewery occupies its site; but the picturesque old gateway, of red brick, still remains, and is engraved above. Margaret Roper, the noble-hearted, learned, and favorite daughter of More, resided here with her husband, until her death, in 1544, nine years after the execution of her father, when she was buried in the family vault at St. Dunstan's, where she had reverently placed the head of her father. The story of her piety is thus told by Cresacre More, in his life of his grandfather, Sir Thomas: "His head having don Bridge, Margaret would be rowed beneath it, and, nothing horrified at the sight, say aloud, "That head has layde many a time in my lappe; would to God, would to God, it would fall into my lappe as I pass under now," and the head did so fall, and she carried it in her "lappe" until she placed it in her husband's, "son Roper's" vault, at Canterbury. The king took possession of these fair grounds at Chelsea, and all the chancellor's other property, namely, Dunkington, Trenkford, and Benley Park, in Oxfordshire, allowing the widow he had made, twenty pounds per year for her life, and indulging his petty tyranny still more, by imprisoning Sir Thomas's daughter, Margaret, "both because she kept her father's head for a relic, and that she meant to set her father's works in print." We were calling to mind more minute particulars of the charities and good deeds of this great man, when, standing at the moment opposite a grave where some loving hand had planted two standard rose-trees, we suddenly heard a chant of children's voices, the infant scholars singing their little hymn; the tune, too, was a well-known and popular melody, and very sweet, yet sad of sound; it was just such music, as for its simplicity, would have been welcome to the mighty dead; and, as we entered among the little songsters, the past faded away, and we found ourselves speculating on the hopeful present. We close Mrs. Hall's pleasant sketches of Sir Thomas More and his localities, with a brief description of a scene in his prison, which the pencil of Mr. Herbert, of the Royal Academy, has beautifully depicted. It must be remembered that More was a zealous Roman Catholic. He was committed to the Tower in 1534, by the licentious Henry VIII., partly to punish him for refusing to assist that monremained about a month upon London Bridge, and being to be cast into the Thames, because room should be made for divers others, who, in plentiful sort, suffered martyrdom for the same supremacy, shortly after, it was bought by his daughter Margaret, lest, as she stoutly affirmed before the council, being called before them after for the matter, it should be food for fishes; which she buried, where she thought fittest." Anthony-a-Wood says, that she preserved it in a leaden box, and placed it in her tomb "with great devotion;" and in 1715, Dr. Rawlinson told Hearne the antiquary, that he had seen it there "inclosed in an iron grate." This was fully confirmed in 1835, when the chancel of the church being repaired, the Roper vault was opened, and several persons descended into it, and saw the skull in a leaden box, something like a bee-hive, open in the front, and which was placed in a square recess, in the wall, with an iron-grating before it. A drawing was made, which was engraved in the Gentleman's Magazine of May, 1837, which we have copied in our initial letter; Summerly, in his Handbook to Canterbury, says: "In the print there, however, the opening in the leaden box, inclosing the head, is made oval, whereas it should be in the form of a triangle." We have therefore so corrected our copy. [From Household Words.] EARTH'S HARVESTS. thickets. Isaac rode some hundred yards be- | me, on hearing of my success, snatched up their hind, and kept shouting to me to drop the pur- shields and assagais, and hastened to secure the suit, or I should be killed. At last the buffaloes flesh, nor did I see any more of them, with the suddenly pulled up, and stood at bay in a thick- exception of the two Baquaines, who remained et, within twenty yards of me. Springing from with me, being engaged in a plot with my inmy horse, I hastily loaded my two-grooved rifle, terpreter to prevent my penetrating to Bamangwhich I had scarcely completed when Isaac wato. Isaac did not soon forget his adventure rode up and inquired what had become of the with the buffaloes; and at night over the fire buffaloes, little dreaming that they were stand- he informed my men that I was mad, and that ing within twenty yards of him. I answered any man who followed me was going headlong by pointing my rifle across his horse's nose, to his own destruction. At an early hour on the and letting fly sharp right and left at the two 5th, I continued my march through a glorious buffaloes. A headlong charge, accompanied by country of hill and dale, throughout which water a muffled roar, was the result. In an instant was abundant. I was round a clump of tangled thorn-trees; but Isaac, by the violence of his efforts to get his horse in motion, lost his balance, and at the same instant, his girths giving way, himself, his saddle, and big Dutch rifle, all came to the ground together, with a heavy crash right in the path of the infuriated buffaloes. Two of the dogs, which had fortunately that moment joined us, met them in their charge, and, by diverting their attention, probably saved Isaac from instant destruction. The buffaloes now took up another position in an adjoining thicket. They were both badly wounded, blotches and pools of blood marking the ground where they had stood. The dogs rendered me assistance by taking up their attention, and in a few minutes these two noble bulls breathed their last beneath the shade of a mimosa grove. Each of them in dying repeatedly uttered a very striking, low, deep moan. This I subsequently ascertained the buffalo invariably utters when in the act of expiring. On going up to them I was astonished to behold their size and powerful appearance. Their horns reminded me of the rugged trunk of an oak-tree. Each horn was upward of a foot in breadth at the base, and together they effectually protected the skull with a massive and impenetrable shield. The horns, descending and spreading out horizontally, completely overshadowed the animal's eyes, imparting to him a look the most ferocious and sinister that can be imagined. On my way to the wagons I shot a stag sassay by, and while I was engaged in removing his head a troop of about thirty doe pallahs cantered past me, followed by one princely old buck. Snatching up my rifle, I made a fine shot, and rolled him over in the grass. Early in the afternoon I dispatched men with a pack-horse to bring the finer of the two buffalo-heads. It was so ponderous that two powerful men could with difficulty raise it from the ground. The Bechuanas who had accompanied "Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than War." MILTON'S Sonnet to Cromwell. WO hundred years ago, the moon TWO Shone on a battle plain; Cold through that glowing night of June Assumed that fatal night. Time past-but long, to tell the tale, Where high were heaped the dead, To-day-the sun looks laughing down The merry reapers' train; A battle-field it was, and is, For serried spears are there, Naseby, June 14, 1646. WHO 7. Jaylor [From a Daguerreotype by BRADY.] BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE LATE PRESIDENT. HO has not heard of the opening words with which the court preacher Massilon startled the titled throng who had gathered in Notre Dame to do the last honors to that monarch whose reign was the longest and most splendid in French annals, "God only is great!" How often does the knell of vanished power repeat the lesson! How constantly does the fleeting away of our own men of might teach us that The paths of glory lead but to the grave! Death has again asserted his supremacy by striking down the most exalted ruler of the land. The last sad cadence, dust to dust, has just been faltered over one who was our country's pride, and joy, and strength. The love, the gratitude. and the veneration of a nation could not save him. The crying need of an imperiled re public could not reprieve him. His mortal strife over, his appointed task finished, he went down into the cold embrace of the grave, and there, like a warrior taking his rest, he lies and will lie forever. But he has left behind him what can not die, the memory of noble aims and heroic deeds. The plain story of his life is his best eulogy. ZACHARY TAYLOR was born in Orange County Virginia, in November, 1784. He was the second son of Col. Richard Taylor, whose ancestors emigrated from England about two centuries ago, and settled in Eastern Virginia. The father, distinguished alike for patriotism and valor, served as colonel in the revolutionary war, and took part in many important engagements. About 1790 he left his Virginian farm. and emigrated with his family to Kentucky. He |