for sich goin's on, in broad daylight, in | he had received some heavy "rib a little village like theirs was parfectly binders." His two captors had not had scand'lous." all the fun on their side either, for one of them had a lively 66 mouse " under each eye, and the other mate had his mouth so altered that his pronunciation was very much interfered with.

"So you are here again, you rascal, are you?" "Yes, I be, squire, but I wouldn't ha' come if I could ha' perwented it like."

"You told me the last time you were here I should not see you again, if you could help it." "I meant it, squire; 'tain't no fault o' mine as I'm here now."

I have no desire to defend the practice of poaching in any way, far from it; for those who rear large quantities of game have to pay a very heavy price for it. I have known some of the keenest game preservers of the past time, before driving, and other to my mind objectionable practices were in vogue; stern men they were in all matters concerning poaching, but they never suffered from it to the extent that some do now, not one quarter of it; and for this reason, their keepers were good men like their masters. If they found a poacher, one that they knew to be one, they never tried to implicate a man in a hurry, or, as we should express it, to make a job of it beforehand. "I have not found you at work, and I hope you won't give me squire, I'm sorry to say." Here Ned the chance; but you are trespassing, broke in with, "An' if I has another so you clear out," was the sort of ex-dose like that, squire, I shan't be a hortation given.

"Where is he?" "In the brew. house, with two keepers looking after him."

"Confound the rascal! bring him into the gunroom to me," said the squire. When he was presented there "Ned" looked like some animated scarecrow; his clothes had been literally torn to pieces in the fierce struggle that ensued before he was captured. For fear the poor wretch might catch cold, through the general airiness of his vestments, his captors had given him a couple of "horns" of the generous home-brewed ale. From the way in which he occasionally placed his hand to his side, giving himself a gentle rub, it was quite evident also that

After looking at the man and then at the two under keepers, with the greatest difficulty keeping himself from smiling, the squire replied that he supposed not. "What did he get for the last affair?" he asked. "Six months,

trouble no more.

"Are you married ? " but I be thinkin' on it."

"No, squire,

"Who are you courting, you rascal? Some decent girl, I'll be bound; it generally is so." "Yes, squire, you're right there; she's a lot better than I be, or she wouldn't be much.”

"What shall we do with him, D- ?" but before the head keeper could answer Ned broke in, 'For mercy sake, squire, make a under keeper on me. I bin a poacher, an' I be one now, or else I shouldn't ha' bin here. If ye will I'll sarve ye faithfull as a dog. Give me this one chance." Looking him full in the face for one moment the squire said, “I will.'

I saw Ned daily for months after the squire had taken him. He was a prime favorite with all, from the head keeper to the grooms in the hunting stable, and he did his duty honestly and efficiently. As the good old squire remarked, his doubtful investment had turned out well.

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Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

MONTE OLIVETO.

AMID an ashen silence that forbad

Took me to France; a Spanish woman there

1

The world, dwelt lordly hermits, who had Looked in my eyes, I saw her golden hair; fought, And since that day naught else I clearly

Hated, and toiled too long. God's peace they sought

Where yon white steep is yet with olive clad,

As though of Athens' fallen queen they had One gift, who knew her not, but only taught

Their souls the lore that lived in pious thought

And pictured mystery and vigil sad. Knowledge withal she offered, such as shone

Of yore from Hellas. dim,

But the light was

And pale the glory of the Parthenon.
They only knew, with saints and sera-
phim,

To wonder on the Mount and wisely
hymn

see,

Your shadow comes between the world and me.

But if you stole my soul, you gave your

own,

A royal gift, and worthy of a throne.
Yet are you queen as ever; but I stand,
Made equal by our love; thus hand in
hand,

And heart to heart, no phantom throne
between,

My only love, my wife; yet France's queen.
JOHN FAIRFAX.

1 In one of his letters to Anne of Austria, Mazarin says his greatest happiness when parted from her consists in "reading the letters of a certain Spanish woman well known to you." Mazarin was not a priest, and there is but little doubt that he was privately married to Anne; indeed, her daughter-in-law, the second wife of the Duc d'Or

Of man with God and God with man made leans, speaks of it as a fact.

With my arm round you, and with lips close What of her work remains ?— who knows? press'd

Unto the head, now pillowed on my breast.
Sometimes it frets me, we may never stand
In the broad light of day, hand clasped in
hand.

- in the loves of the people? Something, we doubt it not, from every noble endeavor

Down the ages descends, though none but
God can distinguish.

When shines the sun I stand behind the But the grey Northern sea still gnaws the

throne,

But with the moonlight you are mine alone.
I am a mighty power; men call me great,
Say I might wear the triple crown, but fate

cliffs, and the white waves Wrestle in hissing wrath with the brown, irrepressible river.

Spectator.

F. W. Bourdillon.

From The New Review.

SOME DECISIVE MARRIAGES OF ENGLISH
HISTORY.

FORTY years ago a capable writer
a well-known book which he

wrote

called "The Fifteen Decisive Battles

most every

tria, but with the marriages which have affected the destinies of England. They will be found recorded in every been insufficiently emphasized by alhistory. But their significance has of the World." Some of the battles directly occasioned or indirectly influhistorian. Yet they either which he there enumerated have un-enced many of the great events in our doubtedly exerted a powerful influence on the course of history. The defeat Ethelbert of Kent prepared the way annals. The marriage of Bertha with of the Persians by the Greeks, the de- for the conversion of England to Chrisfeat of the Mahometans by Charles tianity; Martel, and our own defeat in our the marriage of Henry VIII. struggle with the revolted colonies in factors which determined the Reformawith Anne Boleyn was one of the chief America permanently affected the face of the world. But many of the battles tion; the marriage of Emma of Norwhich are called decisive by historians the Conqueror an excuse for asserting mandy with Ethelred the Unready gave have in reality decided nothing; and his claim to the throne of England; if Sir E. Creasy had looked a little below the surface he possibly might have of Scotland reconciled the people to the marriage of Henry I. with Matilda been attracted by a series of events the Conquest by restoring the line of which have proved more decisive than Cerdic; the marriage of Henry II. with warfare. For, though the marriages of Eleanor of Aquitaine made England kings usually engage only a secondary the first Continental power in western attention, it may be safely stated that the decisive marriages of the world Europe, and thus produced the long have had more influence on its fortunes Henry VII. with Elizabeth of York struggle with France; the marriage of

than the decisive battles.

The empire of Charles V. is, perhaps, the best example of the effect of such unions. Charles, on his paternal side, was the grandson of Maximilian of Austria and Mary, the daughter of Charles the Bold. From these grandparents he inherited Austria, Burgundy, and Flanders. On the maternal side he was the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, whose marriage had consolidated the houses of Aragon and Castile, and indirectly led to the union of all Spain in one monarchy. Thus the power of this great monarch had been built up by a series of marriages. It was the fate of Charles V. to strike down the power of France at Pavia, but no battle that he ever fought had effects so enduring as the marriages either of his paternal or his maternal grandparents.

But we are concerned at the present moment not with the marriages which built up the power of Spain and Aus1 Burgundy and Flanders had been united a century before by the marriage of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, with the heiress of Louis, Count of

Flanders.

closed the War of the Roses; the mar

riage of Henry VII.'s daughter Mar-
between England and Scotland
garet with James IV. led to the union

the

marriage of Mary, James II.'s daughtion to the Revolution of 1688; and ter, with William of Orange gave direcelector of Hanover gave us kings with finally, the marriage of Sophia with the German interests, and consequently again involved us in Continental struggles.

Charibert, married Ethelbert of Kent, I. When Bertha, the daughter of Christianity had been driven out of England by the victories of the Saxons. Ethelbert himself was busily raising his little kingdom into a formidable he succeeded in extending his suprempower. In the course of a few years acy over eastern England from the Humber to the Channel. He became

thenceforward the most powerful monarch in Britain. Possibly his growing power suggested his ambitious marriage. His alliance with the Frankish kingdom must have increased his consideration both at home and on the

Continent. But the chief consequences, cendency in England through the marof the marriage were not political, riage of Bertha, she lost her ascendency but religious. Charibert naturally stip- through the marriage of Anne Boleyn. ulated that his daughter, in her new It is no doubt, in one sense, absurd to home, should be allowed to profess say that England owes its reformed her own religion; her chaplain was faith to the desire of Henry VIII. to admitted to her husband's court; a get rid of one wife and to wed another. ruined church was allotted to him for The Church of Rome was, on the conChristian worship. Thus, in the heart trary, in its decay; reformers, both in of the little kingdom in which the England and on the Continent, were Saxons had first settled, amidst the exposing its corruptions; and the Refbarbarous worship of the Teutonic ormation would have come in England gods, Christianity found its representa- as it came in Germany and Scotland tive in a queen, her chaplain, and her if Henry VIII. had never cast his church. The little grain of mustard- longing eyes on Anne. All that it is seed was sown whose branches were to attempted to assert is that the cause cover the whole land. which directly led to the Reformation While Bertha was sharing her hus- in England, and which governed its band's throne in Kent, Gregory the direction, was the desire of Henry Great was noticing in the slave market VIII. to possess himself of Anne, and at Rome the fair-haired prisoners from the reluctance of Rome to release him Deira, whose name, whose country, from Catherine. Hence, if England and whose king suggested to him a owes to one marriage the fact that she series of historic puns. He meditated is Christian, she owes to another marthenceforward the conversion of En- riage the fact that she is Protestant. gland; and years afterwards persuaded Thus, strange as it may seem to those Augustine to undertake the mission. who have never thought upon the subBut Augustine did not attempt to pro-ject, her religious life has been moulded ceed to Deira, the country from which by the marriages of Ethelbert of Kent Gregory's fair-haired slaves had been and Henry VIII. brought. On the contrary, he travelled, under the protection of the Frankish king, direct to the court in which the daughter of the Frank was living. He naturally found a ready reception from the husband of a Christian queen, and within a year of his arrival Ethelbert embraced the new faith. But it is surely no illogical deduction from this narrative that the chief factor in Ethelbert's conversion was not Augustine's preaching, but his own marriage.1

III. Very different were the consequences of the marriage of Emma of Normandy. Emma was the daughter of Duke Richard II.; she was therefore the sister of Duke Richard III. and of Duke Robert, whom his contemporaries knew as Robert the Devil, but whom history recognizes as the Conqueror's father. She married Ethelred in 1002. In a political sense the marriage was a new departure. The policy of the house of Alfred had been to curb the Northmen of the Channel.

II. If Rome first acquired her as- Coufronted with the dangers of a Norse

1 The conversion of northern England took the

same form as the conversion of Kent. Kent em

braced Christianity in the last quarter of the sixth century. In the first quarter of the seventh century Northumbria had succeeded to the supremacy. Her ruler, Edwin, was by far the most powerful

monarch who had ever reigned in England; and he

married Ethelburga of Kent, Ethelbert's daughter. Ethelburga carried her chaplain with her to the North, just as her mother carried her chaplain with her to Kent, and through the persuasion of

This queen and her chaplain Edwin, in his turn,

embraced the Christian faith.

invasion, Ethelred, on the contrary, tried to win over the Northmen of Normandy to his own side, and the policy, so far as it went, was successful. In the Danish invasions of England which occurred and recurred in the reign of the unready king, Sweyn and his followers received no aid from their kinsfolk in Normandy; and when the whole kingdom was practically subdued Ethelred sent his wife and her