2. She saw her brother Peterkin
Roll something large and round
Which he beside the 'rivulet,

In playing there, had found;
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round

3. Old Kaspar took it from the boy,

Who stood 'expectant by;

And then the old man shook his head,

And with a natural sigh,

""Tis some poor fellow's skull,” said he,
"Who fell in the great victory.

4." I find them in the garden,

For there's many here about;

(681,

And often, when I go to plough,

The ploughshare turns them out!
" said he,
thousand
many

For

men,

"Were slain in that great victory."

5. "Now tell us what 'twas all about,"
Young Peterkin he cries:
While little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes;

"Now tell us all about the war,

And what they killed each other for."

6. "It was the English," Kaspar cried,
"Who put the French to rout;
But what they killed each other for,
I could not well make out.
But everybody said," quoth he,
"That 'twas a 'famous victory.

7. " My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by ;

They burned his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly;

So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.

8. "With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide;

And many a childing mother then,

And new-born baby, died :

But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

9. "They say it was a 'shocking sight
After the field was won;

7

For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun :

But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

10. "Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won,
And our good Prince Eugene.

"2

"Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!"

Said little Wilhelmine.

"Nay, nay, my little girl," quoth he,
"It was a famous victory.

11. "And everybody praised the duke,
Who this great fight did win.”-
"And what good came of it at last?”
Quoth little Peterkin.-

66

Why, that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a famous victory."

29.-SOCIAL CONDITION-THE STEWARTS.

1. Though during former periods the face of Britain changed much as years rolled by, yet the change since the Stewarts reigned has perhaps been the most marked of all. Where there are now to be

seen green meadows and yellow corn-fields, orchards white with spring blossoms, or golden with autumn fruit, and cozy farm-houses nestling among the 'sheltering trees, there was then in many places nothing but forest, furze, or marsh.

2. Through the old woods wandered deer in great troops; a few wild bulls; and, until the peasantry killed them during the Civil War, wild boars, long 'preserved for royal sport. Badgers, wild cats, eagles, huge bustards were common even in the southern and eastern lowlands of England. The sheep and oxen were much smaller than ours. The British horses, now famed all the world over, then sold for fifty shillings each. Spanish jennets for the saddle, and gray Flanders mares for harness, were the breeds most prized.

3. Our mines were still poorly worked. Cornwall yielded tin, and Wales yielded copper, but in quantities far below the present supply. Salt, now a leading export, was then so badly prepared that the physicians blamed it as the cause of many diseases of the skin and lungs. The iron manufacture was checked by the cry which was raised about the waste of wood in the furnaces. The smelters had not yet learned to use coal, which was still only a domestic fuel, burned in the districts where it 'abounded, and in London, whither it was carried by sea.

4. The population of England at the close of the seventeenth century was about five million and a half. The increase of people in the northern counties far exceeded that in the south of the

island. The cause of this may be found in the rapid improvement of these counties, which followed the union of the Crowns in 1603.

5. Previously, the north had been constantly ravaged by the Border robbers, called moss-troopers, from whom neither house nor herd was safe. Gradually these freebooters were hunted down, and life and property became secure. Coal-beds were discovered. Manufacturing towns began to rise, and were soon filled with a thriving population.

6. After the capital, Bristol was the greatest English sea-port, and Norwich the chief manufacturing town under the Stewarts. Manchester, the modern centre of the cotton trade, contained only 6,000 inhabitants, and could boast of neither a printing-press nor a hackney-coach. Leeds, now the great woollen mart, had a population of about 7,000 persons. There were not more than 200

seamen belonging to the port of Liverpool.

7. London, when Charles the Second died, had a population of half a million. One old bridge spanned the Thames. The houses were all built with the upper stories 'projecting over the shops below. The city was the merchant's home. He did not then, as now, leave his counting-house after business hours for a gay villa in the suburbs.

8. The coffee-houses,1 first set up in Cromwell's time, were the great lounges, where the news and scandal of the day were discussed. In one might be seen the exquisites, with their flowing wigs, their embroidered coats, their fringed gloves, and scented snuff. To another crowded literary men to