rold_. And when you go to England, go, as some of
you may have gone already, to Battle; and there from off the Abbey
grounds, or from Mountjoy behind, look down off what was then 'The Heathy
Field,' over the long slopes of green pasture and the rich hop-gardens,
where were no hop-gardens then, and the flat tide-marshes winding between
the wooded heights, towards the southern sea; and imagine for yourselves
the feelings of an Englishman as he contemplates that broad green sloping
lawn, on which was decided the destiny of his native land. Here, right
beneath, rode Taillefer up the slope before them all, singing the song of
Roland, tossing his lance in air and catching it as it fell, with all the
Norse berserker spirit of his ancestors flashing out in him, at the
thought of one fair fight, and then purgatory, or Valhalla--Taillefer
perhaps preferred the latter. Yonder on the left, in that copse where
the red-ochre gully runs, is Sanguelac, the drain of blood, into which
(as the Bayeux tapestry, woven by Matilda's maids, still shows) the
Norman knights fell, horse and man, till the gully was bridged with
writhing bodies for those who rode after. Here, where you stand--the
crest of the hill marks where it must have been--was the stockade on
which depended the fate of England. Yonder, perhaps, stalked out one
English squire or house-carle after another: tall men with long-handled
battle-axes--one specially terrible, with a wooden helmet which no sword
could pierce--who hewed and hewed down knight on knight, till they
themselves were borne to earth at last. And here, among the trees and
ruins of the garden, kept trim by those who know the treasure which they
own, stood Harold's two standards of the fighting man and the dragon of
Wessex. And here, close by (for here, for many a century, stood the high
altar of Battle Abbey, where monks sang masses for Harold's soul), upon
this very spot the Swan-neck found her hero lover's corpse. 'Ah,' says
many an Englishman--and who will blame him for it--'how grand to have
died beneath that standard on that day!' Yes, and how right. And yet
how right, likewise, that the Norman's cry of Dexaie, 'God Help,' and not
the English hurrah, should have won that day, till William rode up
Mountjoye in the afternoon to see the English army, terrible even in
defeat, struggling through copse and marsh away toward Brede, and, like
retreating lions driven into their native woods, slaying more in th