"And now the Normans had pressed on so far that at last they had reached the standard. There Harold had remained, defending himself to the utmost; but he was sorely wounded in his eye by the arrow and suffered grievous pain from the blow. An armed man came in the 5 throng of the battle and struck him on the ventail of his helmet and beat him to the ground; and as he sought to recover himself, a knight beat him down again, striking him on the thick of his thigh, down to the bone.

"Gurth saw the English falling around and that there 10 was no remedy. He saw his race hastening to ruin and despaired of any aid; he would have fled, but could not, for the throng continually increased. And the duke pushed on till he reached him and struck him with great force. Whether he died of that blow I know not, but it 15 was said that he fell under it and rose no more.

"The standard was beaten down, the golden standard was taken, and Harold and the best of his friends were slain; but there was so much eagerness and throng of so many around, seeking to kill him, that I know not who it 20 was that slew him.

"The English were in great trouble at having lost their king, and at the duke's having conquered and beat down the standard; but they still fought on and defended themselves long, and in fact till the day drew to a close. 25 Then it clearly appeared to all that the standard was lost, and the news had spread throughout the army that Harold, for certain, was dead; and all saw that there was no longer any hope, so they left the field and those fled who could.

"William fought well; many an assault did he lead,

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many a blow did he give and many receive, and many fell dead under his hand. Two horses were killed under him, and he took a third when necessary, so that he fell not to the ground, and lost not a drop of blood. But whatever 5 any one did, and whoever lived or died, this is certain, that William conquered, and that many of the English fled from the field, and many died on the spot. Then he returned thanks to God, and in his pride ordered his standard to be brought and set up on high, where the 10 English standard had stood; and that was the signal of his having conquered and beaten down the standard. And he ordered his tent to be raised on the spot, among the dead, and had his meat brought thither and his supper prepared there. And he ate and drank among the dead, 15 and made his bed that night upon the field."

Fosse: ditch;

I. Văv'a sõrṣ: vassals or tenants of a baron. trench. Täil le (yẽ) fêr'. Chär'le magne (742-814): a French king, the hero of a legendary chronicle called "The History of Charlemagne and Roland." Roland, Oliver: two of Charlemagne's most celebrated knights, or paladins, as they are called. Ron çes väl'les: a pass in the Pyrenees where Roland and his army were destroyed after a gallant fight. Guer'don: reward. Hau berks: coats of mail made of interlinked metal rings.

II. Mê lée' (mà là') (French): a fight in which the combatants are mixed in a confused mass. Věnt'āil: that part of a helmet

which is arranged to admit air.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

To the Ocean

BY GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou,

Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play-
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow -
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

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Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving; - boundless, endless, and sublime;

The image of eternity; the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

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The Sun

BY CAMILLE FLAMMARION

Camille Flammarion (1842): A popular French writer and lecturer on astronomy and other subjects. He has written "The Wonders of the Heavens," "Popular Astronomy," and other volumes. This selection is from "Popular Astronomy."

The sun is the mighty source from which proceed all the forces which set in motion the earth and its life. It is its heat which causes the wind to blow, the clouds to ascend, the river to flow, the forest to grow, fruit to 5 ripen, and man himself to live.

Everything which moves, circulates, and lives on our planet is the child of the sun. The most nutritious foods come from the sun. The wood which warms us in winter is, again, the sun in fragments; every inch, every pound 10 of wood, is formed by the power of the sun. The mill which turns under the impulse of wind or water revolves only by the sun. And in the black night, under the rain or snow, the blind and noisy train which darts like a flying serpent through the fields and rushes along above the 15 valleys, this modern animal produced by human industry, is still a child of the sun; the coal from the earth which feeds its stomach is solar work stored up during millions of years in the geological strata of the globe.

As it is certain that the force which sets the watch in mo20 tion is derived from the hand which has wound it, so it is certain that all terrestrial power proceeds from the sun. It is its heat which maintains the three states of bodies solid, liquid, and gaseous; the last two would vanish, there

would be nothing but solids, water and air itself would be in massive blocks, if the solar heat did not maintain them in the fluid state. It is the sun which blows in the air, which flows in the water, which moans in the tempest, which sings in the unwearied throat of the nightingale. 5 Thunder and lightning are in their turn a manifestation of his power. Every fire which burns and every flame which shines has received its life from the sun. And when two armies are hurled together with a crash, each charge of cavalry, each shock between two army corps, is 10 nothing but the misuse of mechanical force from the same star. The sun comes to us in the form of heat, he leaves us in the form of heat, but between his arrival and his departure he has given birth to the varied powers of our globe.

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Presented to our mind under their true aspect, the discoveries and generalizations of modern science constitute the most sublime poem which has ever been offered to the intelligence and the imagination of man. The physicist of our day, we may say with Tyndall, is incessantly in 20 contact with marvels which eclipse those of Ariosto and Milton; marvels so grand and so sublime that those who study them have need of a certain force of character to preserve them from being dazed:

And still all this is nothing, or almost nothing, in com-25 parison with the real power of the sun! The liquid state of the ocean, the gaseous state of the atmosphere; the currents of the sea; the raising of the clouds, the rains, storms, streams, rivers; the calorific value of all the forests of the globe and all the coal mines of the earth; 30 the motion of all living beings; the heat of all humanity;