th that coolness, and calmness, and faith in a higher power than
his own, which he showed when the appalling danger of his situation
burst upon him at Poitiers, would smooth a hundred difficulties, and
ensure a hundred victories. We often think that we have no power in
ourselves, no advantages of position, to help us against our many
temptations, to overcome the many obstacles we encounter. Let us take
our stand by the Black Prince's tomb, and go back once more in thought
to the distant fields of France. A slight rise in the wild upland plain,
a steep lane through vineyards and underwood, this was all that he had,
humanly speaking, on his side; but he turned it to the utmost use of
which it could be made, and won the most glorious of battles. So, in
like manner, our advantages may be slight--hardly perceptible to any
but ourselves--let us turn them to account, and the results will be a
hundredfold; we have only to adopt the Black Prince's bold and cheering
words, when first he saw his enemies, "God is my help. I must fight them
as best I can;" adding that lofty, yet resigned and humble prayer, which
he uttered when the battle was announced to be inevitable, and which has
since become a proverb, "God defend the right."

DEAN STANLEY'S _Memorials of Canterbury_.

[Notes: _The Black Prince_. Edward, the son of Edward III, and father of
Richard II. He not only won for the English the renown of conquest, but
befriended the early efforts after liberty. His untimely death plunged
England into the evils of a long minority under his son. The one stain
on his name is his massacre of the townsfolk of Limoges.

"_Reverent service_," or "I serve" (Ich dien), the motto adopted by the
Black Prince from the King of Bohemia, his defeated foe.

_Poitiers_. His victory won over the French king, John, whom he took
prisoner (1356).]

* * * * *

THE ASSEMBLY OF URI.

Let me ask you to follow me in spirit to the very home and birth-place
of freedom, to the land where we need not myth or fable to add aught to
the fresh and gladdening feeling with which we for the first time tread
the soil and drink the air of the immemorial democracy of Uri. It is one
of the opening days of May: it is the morning of Sunday; for men then
deem that the better the day the better the deed; they deem that the
Creator cannot be more truly honoured than in using, in His fear and in
His pres