3. The halt of the English army took Philip by surprise, and he attempted for a time to check the advance of his army, but the disorderly host rolled on to the English front. The sight of his enemies, indeed, stirred the king's own blood to fury, "for he hated them," and at vespers the fight began. Fifteen thousand Genoese cross-bowmen were ordered to begin the attack. The men were weary

with the march; a sudden storm wetted and rendered useless their bowstrings; and the loud shouts with which they leapt forward to the encounter were met with dogged silence in the English ranks.

4. Their first arrow-flight, however, brought a terrible. reply. So rapid was the English shot, that "it seemed as if it snowed." "Kill me these scoundrels," shouted Philip, as the Genoese fell back; and his men-at-arms plunged butchering into their broken ranks, while the Counts of Alençon and Flanders, at the head of the French knighthood, fell hotly on the prince's line. For the instant his small force seemed lost, but Edward refused to send him aid. "Is he dead or unhorsed, or so wounded that he cannot help himself?" he asked the messenger. "No, sir," was the reply, "but he is in a hard passage of arms, and sorely needs your help." "Return to those that sent you, Sir Thomas," said the king, "and bid them not send to me again so long as my son lives! Let the boy win his spurs; for I wish, if God so order it, that the day may be his, and that the honour may be with him and them to whom I have given it in charge."

5. Edward could see, in fact, from his higher ground, that all went well. The bowmen and men-at-arms held their ground stoutly, while the Welshmen were stabbing the horses in the meleé, and bringing knight after knight to the ground. Soon the great French host was wavering in a fatal confusion.

"You are my vassals, my friends,"

cried the blind king of Bohemia, who had joined Philip's army, to the nobles around him. "I pray and beseech you to lead me so far into the fight that I may strike one good blow with this sword of mine!" Linking their bridles together, the little company plunged into the thick of the combat to fall as their fellows were falling.

6. The battle went steadily against the French: at last Philip himself hurried from the field, and the defeat became a rout: 1200 knights and 30,000 footmen—a number equal to the whole English force-lay dead upon the ground.

Questions on the lesson:-The king's name? The village? Of what was Edward's army composed? Where was the king's standpoint? Where was the reserve placed? The main body? How was the front protected? In what form were the bowmen drawn up? What were used to frighten the horses? The French king's name? How did he feel to the English? Who began the attack? What interfered with their success? Describe the English shower of arrows? Philip's cry? The result? Edward's reply to the demand for assistance?

What encouraged Edward to send the reply he did? The king of Bohemia's words? The result of the fight?

Cressy or Crecy, a village in France.

Genoese, belonging to Genoa in the north of Italy.

bombard, a short thick cannon.

dogged, obstinate.

encounter, hostile meeting.

melee, a fight or scuffle.

reserve, part of an army kept

back to help those engaged.

vassals, dependants.

vespers, evening prayers.

THE BRAVE.

1. How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blessed!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.

2. By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung.
There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair,

To dwell a weeping hermit there!

hermit, one who lives in solitude. | mould, dust.

knell, sound of a bell rung at a pilgrim, one who travels far to funeral.

visit a secred place.

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, doth make men better be;

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald and sere.
A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May,

Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.
-Ben Jonson.

THE BIRTH OF PROVERBS.1

1. The proverb, The Cranes of Ibycus, had its rise in one of those remarkable incidents which, witnessing for God's inscrutable judgments, are eagerly grasped by men. The story of its birth is the following. Ibycus, a famous poet of Greece, journeying to the games at Corinth, was assailed by robbers. As he fell beneath their murderous strokes he looked round, if any witnesses or avengers were nigh. No living thing was in sight, save only a flight of cranes soaring high overhead. He called on them, and to them committed the avenging of his blood. A vain commission, as it might have appeared, and as no doubt it did to the murderers appear.

2. Yet it was not so. For these, sitting a little time after in the open theatre at Corinth, beheld this flight of cranes soaring above them, and one said scoffingly to another, "Lo, there, the avengers of Ibycus!" The words were caught up by some near them; for already the poet's disappearance had awakened anxiety and alarm. Being questioned, they betrayed themselves, and were led to their doom; and The Cranes of Ibycus passed into a proverb, very much as our Murder will out, to express the wondrous leadings of God whereby continually the secretest things of blood are brought to the open light of day.

3. Gold of Toulouse is another of these proverbs in which men's sense of a God verily ruling and judging the earth has found its embodiment. A Roman general had taken the city of Toulouse by an act of more than common perfidy and treachery, and possessed himself of the immense hoards of wealth stored in the temples of the Gaulish

1 From Trench's Proverbs and their Lessons, by permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co.

deities. From this day forth he was hunted by calamity; all worst evils and disasters, all shame and dishonour, fell thick on himself and all who were his. Men traced it all to this accursed thing which he had made his own, and any wicked gains which proved fatal to their possessor acquired this name of Toulosan gold. Of him, at once the sinner and the sufferer, it would be said, "He has gold of Toulouse."

4. There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip is a proverb which descends to us from the Greeks and has a very striking story connected with it. A master treated with extreme cruelty his slaves who were engaged in planting and otherwise laying out a vineyard for him. At length one of them, the most misused of all, prophesied that for this his cruelty he should never drink of its wine. When the first vintage was completed, he bade this slave to fill a goblet for him, which taking in his hand he taunted him with the failure of his prophecy.

5. The slave replied in words which have since become proverbial. As he spoke, tidings were brought of a huge wild boar that was wasting the vineyard. Setting down the untasted cup, and snatching hastily a spear, the master went out to meet the wild boar, and was slain in the encounter, and thus the proverb, Many things find place between the cup and the lip, arose.

6. The Scotch proverb, He that invented the Maiden, first hanselled it, alludes to the well known fact that the Regent Morton, the inventor of a new instrument of death called "The Maiden," was himself the first upon whom the proof of it was made. Men felt that " no law was juster than that the artificers of death should perish by their own art," and embodied their sense of this in the proverb.

7. The Spanish proverb, Let that which is lost be for God,