and protegé-Brutus. So Cæsar was murdered in the Senate House, pierced with twenty-three wounds, none to him so deadly as the blow from the hand of Brutus. "Tu quoque Brutus!" he cried, when he saw this man among his assassins, and, covering his face, died.

O mighty Cæsar! Dost thou lie so low

Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure!

Another warrior prince now rises up before us-Charlemagne, King of the Franks. He has slept soundly-this Gallic Cæsar-in his imperial robes, in the sepulchral vault of Aix-la-Chapelle, for more than a thousand years, but his name is still illustrious in the page of history, and the marks of his mighty hammer--they called him Charles the Great, not without reason--are still to be seen.

He was the son of Pepin, and founder of the Carlovingian Empire. He succeeded jointly to his father's throne with his brother Carloman. This brother died, and Charles the Great seized on the whole of the territory, and bade defiance to all opponents. His first military operations were directed against the Saxons, whose idolatry he affected to hold in greatest horror. The light-haired, blue-eyed race were ill able to contend with the overwhelming forces of the Franks; but Witikind, their prince-the ancestor of the late Prince Consortmade a noble stand, and obtaining assistance from the Scandinavians, boldly entered the field of battle. The contest was fierce and sanguinary. Charles the Mighty, having captured Eresbourg, murdered the inhabitants, pillaged and razed the principal temple of the country, and massacred its priests on their own altars; he slew 4,500 prisoners on the banks of the Aller, and would listen to no terms-grant no quarter- until the Saxons consented to be baptized and to become Christians like their conquerors!

After the subjugation of the Saxons, and while the war still waged, Charles the Great smote down other powers, and extended his empire on every side. He fought against the Saracens; seized the crown of Lom

bardy; was crowned at Rome as Emperor of the West, on Christmas Day, A.D. 800. The splendour of his enterprises filled the world; he was said to be as happy as Augustus, as warlike as Adrian; but he was certainly not like the Trajans or Antoninuses, to whom few sovereigns can be compared; he was, however, essentially a man of iron, and did good service in an iron age.

History has preserved the story of a certain lord, named Ogger, who, having incurred the displeasure of this mighty chief, fled from his presence, and took refuge with the monarch of Lombardy. But Charlemagne advanced upon them, and the terror inspired by his troops is graphically characteristic of that awe which his victorious career naturally called forth. Troop after troop, battalion after battalion, legion after legion were seen approaching; and the King of the Lombards thought death incarnate rode in their ranks; and, in his despair, he said to Ogger: “Let us hide ourselves in the earth from the frown of this terrible foe." But Ogger told him, Charlemagne had not yet appeared. "But when," said he, "you shall see the grain shaking in the fields, and bending as before the breath of the tempest-when you behold the affrighted river overflow the walls of your city with waves blackened with iron, then you may believe that Charlemagne approaches. "He had scarcely finished," says the chronicler, "when something like a dark cloud, lifted by the wind, was seen on the western horizon, and the sky, until then clear, became suddenly obscured. From the middle of this cloud the glowing of arms flashed forth upon the eyes of the awe-struck spectators, and Charlemagne himself appeared. Charlemagne! that man of iron! His head covered with a casque of iron-his hands encased in gauntlets of iron-his broad chest protected by a cuirass of iron-his left hand brandishing his lance of iron-his right hand on his invincible sword--his legs guarded by scales of iron-his buckler of iron-his very horse the colour and strength of iron. All who preceded him, all who surrounded him, all who followed him were clothed in iron. Iron covered the fields-iron covered the roads. The rays of the sun flashed upon innumerable

points of iron; and this panoply of iron was borne by a race whose wills were as strong as iron, and whose hearts were as hard as iron. The glancing of this iron spread terror through the city; and as every one fled, there went up a great cry from earth to heaven: Oh! the iron! the

iron!'"

But even Charlemagne, the man of iron, left not a generation of iron-hearted descendants; and before his death saw the indications of the overthrow of his dynasty. He had driven the Goths beyond the Pyrenees; he had pursued the Huns into Pannonia; he had destroyed the kingdom of Didier, in Italy. But one nation escaped himone people refused submission to his iron will: these were the Normans. It is related by a Monkish writer that Charlemagne, on one occasion, was at a maritime city in Gaul, and that while there a fleet of Norman pirates came to anchor in the harbour. The question arose, what was the nation to which these strange vessels belonged; and various opinions were hazarded respecting them. Charlemagne was consulted; and he no sooner beheld their long hulls and slender masts than he cried out: "These ships are not filled with merchandise, but with enemies." The men of iron drew their swords and rushed forthtime enough to see the Norman fleet move stately out of the harbour. Charlemagne watched their departure with a saddened countenance, and tears rolled down his cheeks. As no one dared to ask him the cause of his uneasiness, he was pleased to say: My faithful friends, know ye why I weep so bitterly? It is not, certes, that I fear the men will annoy me with their pitiful piracies; but I am cut to the heart that they dare approach this shore while I live, because I perceive how they will persecute my people after I am gone.

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And Charlemagne was right. As soon as Charles the Great, as he was commonly called, was of no further use-a broken falchion, cast aside for ever-these Normans became bolder, and, in their long hulls and light masts, played more terrible tricks than were ever perpetrated by Black Beard, Paul Jones, and the Flying Dutchman to boot.

The next warrior prince to whom we allude is Richard the Lion-Hearted, flower of Plantagenet chivalry.

He was a gallant knight, right royal of spirit, which, after all, is more legitimately royal than being the borr son of a king; but Lion-Heart was both. His father, Henry the Second of England, created him Count of Poictiers; but he was of a wild, daring temperament, could ill brook control, and was soon involved in open warfare with his sire. The extensive portion of Gaul then united under the authority of Henry II. was in a position similar to that of the whole of Gaul in the time of Louis the Pious. The tribes inhabiting south of the Loire ro more desired to be associated with those which dwelt

north of that river, and to the inhabitants of England, than the Gauls and the Italians of Charlemagne's empire had wished to remain united to the Germans. The son of King Henry encouraged the Gauls in this repugnance; they, especially Richard, openly committed themselves to the cause of the malcontents; and when once the sword was drawn between the father and son, neither the one nor the other were permitted to return it at will to the scabbard; for, besides the two rival parties in this domestic war, nations took part in the contest for the sake of popular interests that were incapable of bending as each return of paternal indulgence or filial repentance might direct.

When Richard and the other princes arrayed themselves against Henry II., many men-especially young men of the Norman race-declared themselves on their side. Into that unhappy dispute, however, it is not necessary to enter; in that, of course, the conduct of the young prince was tarnished by the sin of filial disobedience. We think of his receiving, amid his gay compeers, the news of his father's death; of the compunction that was awakened within him; how he hastened to gaze for the last time on the remains of the dead king, and how he knelt beside the uncovered coffin, and looked at the face which still showed by the contraction of its features the signs of violent agony. Next day the body was buried in the church of Fontevrault, and Richard the First ascended the throne.

The conduct of the new king was at the outset a little surprising to his subjects. He seemed to be seized by a passion for money. He put up to sale all the lands that he possessed, and declared he would sell London if he could find a purchaser. But it was soon ascertained that the money thus accumulated was designed for a purpose, at that time, at all events, esteemed sacred. It was destined to defray the expenses of an expedition to the Holy Land which he had sworn to make in alliance with Philip of France. The expedition was fitted out (1190), and sailed for Sicily, where the crusading king agreed to winter. They subsequently set sail for the Holy Land,