shall breakfast on salmon to-morrow. Down to the sea, down to the sea!" "Down to the sea?" said Tom; "everything is going to the sea, and I will go too." 7. And now, down the rushing stream, guided by the bright flashes of the storm; past tall birch-fringed rocks, which shone out one moment as clear as day, and the next were dark as night; past dark hovers under swirling banks, from which great trout rushed out; on through narrow strids and roaring cataracts, where Tom was deafened and blinded for a moment by the rushing waters; along deep reaches, where the white waterlilies tossed and flapped beneath the wind and hail; past sleeping villages; under dark bridge-arches, and away and away to the sea. And Tom could not stop, and did not care to stop; he would see the great world below, and the salmon, and the breakers, and the wide, wide SIMON WASTELL.-Born, 1562; Date of death uncertain. LIKE to the damask rose you see, E'en such is man;-whose thread is spun, The gourd consumes,—the man he dies. Like to the grass that's newly sprung, E'en such is man;—who lives by breath, NOTES. 1 The swan was fabled to sing just before death. SIEGE OF LEYDEN.'-MOTLEY. 1. MEANTIME the besieged city was at its last gasp. The burghers had been in a state of uncertainty for many days; being aware that the fleet had set forth for their relief, but knowing full well the thousand obstacles which it had to surmount, they had guessed its progress by the illumination from the burning villages; they had heard its salvoes of artillery on its arrival at North Aa,2 but, since then, all had been dark and mournful again, hope and fear in sickening alternation distracting every breast. They knew that the wind was unfavourable, and, at the dawn of each day, every eye was turned wistfully to the vanes of the steeples. So long as the eastern breeze prevailed, they felt, as they anxiously stood on towers and housetops, that they must look in vain for the welcome ocean. Yet, while thus patiently waiting, they were literally starving; for even the misery endured at Haarlem3 had not reached that depth LEYDEN. and intensity of agony to which Leyden was now reduced. 2. Bread, malt-cake, horse-flesh, had disappeared; dogs, cats, rats, and other vermin were esteemed luxuries. A small number of cows, kept as long as possible for their milk, still remained; but a few were killed, from day to day, and distributed in minute proportions, hardly sufficient to support life among the famishing population. Starving wretches swarmed daily around the shambles, where these cattle were slaughtered, contending for any morsel that should fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran along the pavement; while the hides, chopped and boiled, were greedily devoured. Women and children, all day long, were seen searching gutters and dunghills for morsels of food, which they disputed with the famishing dogs. The green leaves were stripped from the trees, every living herb was converted into human food, but these expedients could not avert starvation. 3. The daily mortality was frightful-infants starved to death on the maternal breast which famine had parched and withered; mothers dropped dead in the streets with their dead children in their arms. In many a house, the watchmen, in their rounds, found a whole family of corpses, father, mother, and children, side by side; for a disorder called the plague, naturally engendered of hardship and famine, now came, as if in kindness, to abridge the agony of the people. The pestilence stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed inhabitants fell like grass beneath the scythe. From six thousand to eight thousand human beings sank before this scourge alone, yet the people resolutely held out— women and men mutually encouraging each other to resist the entrance of their foreign foe—an evil more horrible than pest or famine. 4. The tempest came to their relief. A violent equinoctial gale on the night of the 1st and 2nd of October, came storming from the north-west. The waters of the North Sea were piled in large masses upon the southern coast of Holland, and then dashed furiously landward, the ocean rising over the earth, and sweeping with unrestrained power across the ruined dykes. In the course of twenty-four hours the fleet at North Aa, instead of nine inches, had more than two feet of water. No time was lost. The Kirkway, which had been broken through, according to the Prince's instructions, was now completely overflowed, and the fleet sailed at midnight, in the midst of the storm and darkness. A few sentinel vessels of the enemy challenged them as they steadily rowed towards Zoeterwonde. The answer was a flash from Boisot's cannon, lighting up the black waste of waters. There was a fierce naval midnight battle, a strange spectacle among the branches of those quiet orchards, and with the chimney stacks of half submerged farm houses rising around the contending vessels. 6 5. Hardly was the fleet in sight, when the Spaniards, in the early morning, poured out from the fortress, and fled precipitately to the left, along a road which led in a westerly direction towards the Hague. Their narrow path was rapidly vanishing in the waves, and hundreds sank beneath the constantly deepening and treacherous flood. The wild Zealanders, too, sprang from their vessels upon the crumbling dyke, and drove their retreating foes into the sea. They hurled their harpoons, with an accuracy acquired in many a polar chase. They plunged into the waves in the keen pursuit, attacking them with boat-hook and dagger. The numbers who thus fell beneath these corsairs, who neither gave nor took quarter, were never counted, but probably not less |