with rosy light. Twofold from the zenith, east and west, flames a fiery sword; and a broad band passes athwart the heavens like a summer sunset. Soft purple clouds come sailing over the sky, and through their vapoury folds the winking stars shine white as silver. With such pomp as this is merry Christmas ushered in, though only a single star heralded the first Christmas. And in memory of that day the Swedish peasants dance on straw, and the peasant-girls throw straws at the timbered roof of the hall, and for every one that sticks in a crack shall a groomsman come to their wedding. Merry Christmas indeed! For pious souls there shall be churchsongs and sermons, but for Swedish peasants brandy and nutbrown ale in wooden bowls; and the great Yulecake crowned with a cheese, and garlanded with apples, and upholding a three-armed candlestick over the Christmas feast. And now the glad leafy midsummer, full of blossoms and the song of nightingales, is come! St. John has taken the flowers and festival of heathen Balder; and in every village there is a maypole fifty feet high, with wreaths and roses, and ribands streaming in the wind, and a noisy weathercock on top, to tell the village whence the wind cometh and whither it goeth. The sun does not set till ten o'clock at night, and the children are at play in the streets an hour later. The window3 and doors are all open, and you may sit and read till midnight without a candle. Oh, how beautiful is the summer night, which is not night, but a sunless yet unclouded day, descending upon earth with dews and shadows and refreshing coolness! How beautiful the long mild twilight, which, like a silver clasp, unites to-day with yesterday! How beautiful the silent hour, when morning and evening thus sit together, hand in hand, beneath the starless sky of midnight! From the churchtower in the public square the bell tolls the hour, with a soft musical chime; and the watchman, whose watchtower is the belfry, blows a blast on his horn for each stroke of the hammer; and four times, to the four corners of the heavens, in a sonorous voice he chants,— Ho! watchman, ho! From his swallow's-nest in the belfry he can see the sun all night long; and farther north the priest stands at his door in the warm midnight, and lights his pipe with a common burning-glass. (1) If VULGAR FRACTIONS. MISCELLANEOUS EXAMPLES. of 3 tons of coals cost £211, what will be the cost of of of 25 tons? (2) If 5 yards cost £1 16s. 114d., how much may be bought for £36 19s. 111d.? 40 of of and take the result from the sum of 4}, (3) Simplify of of 37, 911 (4) Divide 4 by 17; add to the quotient++; subtract from this sum 23; multiply the remainder by 34 of 41, and find what fraction the product is of 78. (5) If of of the value of a ship be £17,864, what would a person's interest be worth whose share was equal to 5 of 19 of the whole? (6) Find the cost of 23 acres 3 roods 14 perches, at £7 16s. 7d. per acre. MAGNA CHARTA, 1215. (From History of England,' by David Hume.) con'-fer-ence, a meeting for discussion congé-d'élire (Fr.), the king's permission to a dean and chapter to choose a bishop su-per-sede', to do away with, to set aside a-bate-ment, a lessening am-big-u-ous, of doubtful meaning scu'-tage, a tax levied upon those who prel'-ates, bishops and archbishops ar'-bi-tra-ry, without giving a reason con-cise, expressed by few words plen'-i-tude, fulness pri'-mate, an archbishop con-ven'-tion, an agreement, a treaty [The barons of England, as a measure of self-defence, compelled King John to sign Magna Charta, the foundation of all our liberties, June 1215. He, however, violated it shortly after.] A CONFERENCE between the king and the barons was appointed at Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines (June 15), a place which has ever since been extremely celebrated on account of this great event. The two parties encamped apart, like open enemies; and after a debate of a few days, the king, with a facility somewhat suspicious (June 19), signed and sealed the charter which was required of him. This famous deed, commonly called the Great Charter, either granted or secured very important liberties and privileges to every order of men in the kingdom-to the clergy, to the barons, and to the people. The freedom of elections was secured to the clergy; the former charter of the king was confirmed, by which the necessity of a royal congé-d'élire and confirmation was superseded; all check on appeals to Rome was removed, by the allowance granted every man to depart the kingdom at pleasure; and the fines to be imposed on the clergy for any offence, were ordained to be proportional to their lay estates, not to their ecclesiastical benefices. The privileges granted to the barons were either abatements in the rigour of the feudal law, or determinations in points which had been left by that law, or had become by practice arbitrary or ambiguous. The reliefs of heirs succeeding to a military fee were ascertained-an earl's and baron's at one hundred marks, a knight's at one hundred shillings. It was ordained by the charter that if the heir be a minor he shall, immediately on his majority, enter on his estate without paying any relief. The king shall not sell his wardship; he shall levy only reasonable profits on the estate, without committing waste or hurting the property; he shall uphold the castles, houses, mills, parks, and ponds; and if he commit the guardianship of the estate to the sheriff or any other, he shall previously oblige them to find surety to the same purpose. During the minority of a baron, while his lands are in wardship and are not in his own possession, no debt which he owes to the Jews shall bear any interest. Heirs shall be married without disparagement; and before the marriage be contracted, the nearest relations of the person shall be informed of it. A widow, without paying any relief, shall enter on her dower-the third part of her husband's rents. She shall not be compelled to marry so long as she chooses to continue single; she shall only give security never to marry without her lord's consent. The king shall not claim the wardship of any minor who holds lands by military tenure of a baron, on pretence that he also holds lands of the crown, by soccage or any other tenure. Scutages shall be estimated at the same rate as in the time of Henry I.; and no scutage or aid, except in the three general feudal casesthe king's captivity, the knighting of his eldest son, and the marrying of his eldest daughter-shall be imposed but by the great council of the kingdom; the prelates, earls, and great barons shall be called to this great council, each by a particular writ; the lesser barons by a general summons of the sheriff. The king shall not seize any baron's land for a debt to the crown, if the baron possesses as many goods and chattels as are sufficient to discharge the debt. No man shall be obliged to perform more service for his fee than he is bound to by his tenure. No governor or constable of a castle shall oblige any knight to give money for castle-guard, if the knight be willing to perform the service in person, or by another ablebodied man; and if the knight be in the field himself by the king's command, he shall be exempted from all other service of this nature. No vassal shall be allowed to sell so much of his land as to incapacitate himself from performing his service to his lord. These were the principal articles, calculated for the interest of the barons; and had the charter contained nothing further, national happiness and liberty had been very little promoted by it; as it would only have tended to increase the power and independence of an order of men who were already too powerful, and whose yoke might have become more heavy on the people than even that of an absolute monarch. But the barons, who alone drew and imposed on the prince this memorable charter, were necessitated to insert in it other clauses of a more extensive and more beneficent nature. They could not expect the concurrence of the people without comprehending, together with their own, the interests of inferior ranks of men; and all provisions which the barons for their own sake were obliged to make, in order to insure the free and equitable administration of justice, tended directly to the benefit of the whole community. The following were the principal clauses of this nature: It was ordained that all the privileges and immunities above mentioned, granted to the barons against the king, should be extended by the barons to their inferior vassals. The king bound himself not to grant any writ empowering a baron to levy aid from his vassals except in the three feudal cases. One weight and one measure shall be established throughout the kingdom. Merchants shall be allowed to transact all business without being exposed to any arbitrary tolls or impositions ; they and all freemen shall be allowed to go out of the kingdom and return to it at pleasure. London, and all cities and boroughs, shall preserve their ancient liberties, immunities, and free customs; aids shall not be required of them but by the consent of the great council; no towns or individuals shall be obliged to make or support bridges but by ancient custom; the goods of every freeman shall be disposed of according to his will; if he die intestate, his heirs shall succeed to them. No officer of the crown shall take any horses, carts, or wood, without the consent of the owner. The king's courts of justice shall be stationary, and shall no longer follow his person; they shall be open to everyone, and justice shall no longer be sold, refused, or delayed by them. Circuits shall be regularly held every year; the inferior tribunals of justice, the county court, sheriff's turn, and court-leet shall meet at their appointed time and place; the sheriff shall be incapacitated to hold pleas of the crown, and shall not put any person on his trial for rumour or suspicion alone, but on the evidence of lawful witnesses. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or dispossessed of his free tenement and liberties, or outlawed, or banished, or anywise hurt or injured, unless by the legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land; and all who suffered otherwise, in this or the two former reigns, shall be restored to their rights and possessions. Every freeman shall be fined in proportion to his fault; and no fine shall be levied on him to his utter ruin ; even a villein or rustic shall not by any fine be bereaved of his carts, ploughs, and implements of husbandry. This was the only article calculated for the interests of this body of men, probably at that time the most numerous in the kingdom. It must be confessed that the former articles of the Great Charter contain such mitigations and explanations of the feudal law as are reasonable and equitable; and that the latter involve all the chief outlines of a legal government, and provide for the equal distribution of justice and free enjoyment of propertythe great objects for which political society was at first founded by men, which the people have a perpetual and inalienable right to recall, and which no time, nor precedent, nor statute, nor positive institution ought to deter them from keeping ever uppermost in their thoughts and attention. Though the provisions made by this charter might, conformably to the genius of the age, be esteemed too concise and too bare of circumstances to maintain the execution of its articles in opposition to the chicanery of lawyers, supported by the violence of power, time gradually ascertained the sense of all the ambiguous expressions; and those generous barons who first extorted this concession, still held their swords in their hands, and could turn them against those who dared, on any pretence, to depart from the original spirit and meaning of the grant. We may now, from the tenor of this charter, conjecture what those laws were of King Edward, which the English nation, during so many generations, still desired, with such an obstinate perseverance, to have recalled and established. They were chiefly these latter articles of Magna Charta; and the barons who, at the beginning of these commotions, demanded the revival of the Saxon laws, undoubtedly thought that they had sufficiently satisfied the people by procuring them this concession, which comprehended the principal objects to which they had so long aspired. But what we are most to admire is, the prudence and moderation of those haughty nobles themselves, who were enraged by injuries, inflamed by opposition, and elated by a total victory over their sovereign. They were content, even in this plenitude of power, to depart from some articles of Henry I.'s charter, which they made the foundation of their demands, particularly from the abolition of wardships, a matter of the greatest importance; and they seem to have been sufficiently careful not to diminish too far the power and revenue of the crown. If |