13. Wellington, strangely ungrateful, declared in a letter to Lord Bathurst, that his army, the army that fought on the 18th of June, 1815, was a "detestable army." What does this dark assemblage of bones buried beneath the furrows of Waterloo think of that?

14. England has been too modest in regard to Welling. ton. To make Wellington so great is to belittle England. Wellington is but a hero like the rest. These Scotch Grays; these Horse Guards; these regiments of Maitland and of Mitchell; this infantry of Pack and Kempt; this cavalry of Ponsonby and of Somerset; these Highlanders playing the bagpipe under the storm of grape; these battalions of Rylandt; these raw recruits who hardly knew how to handle a musket, holding out against the veteran bands of Essling and Rivoli, — all that is grand.

15. Wellington was tenacious; that was his merit, and we do not undervalue it, but the least of his foot soldiers or his horsemen was quite as firm as he. The iron soldier is as good as the Iron Duke. For our part, all our glorification goes to the English soldier, the English army, the English people. If trophy there be, to England the trophy is due. The Waterloo column would be more just if, instead of the figure of a man, it lifted to the clouds the statue of a nation.

16. But this great England will be offended at what we say here. She has still, after her 1688 and our 1789, the feudal illusion. She believes in hereditary right and in the hierarchy. This people, surpassed by none in might and glory, esteems itself as a nation, not as a people. So much so that as a people they subordinate themselves will

ingly and take a lord for a head. Workmen, they submit to be despised; soldiers, they submit to be whipped. We remember that at the battle of Inkerman a sergeant who, as it appeared, had saved the army, could not be mentioned by Lord Raglan, the English military hierarchy not permitting any hero below the rank of officer to be spoken of in a report.

17. What we admire above all in an encounter like that of Waterloo, is the prodigious skill of fortune. The night's rain, the wall of Hougomont, the sunken road of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to cannon, Napoleon's guide who deceives him, Bulow's guide who leads him right; all this cataclysm is wonderfully carried out.

18. Taken as a whole, let us say, Waterloo was more of a massacre than a battle. Of all the great battles, Waterloo is that which has the shortest line in proportion to the number engaged. Napoleon, two miles, Wellington, a mile and a half; 72,000 men on each side. From this density came the carnage.

19. The calculation has been made and this proportion established: Loss of men at Austerlitz,- French, fourteen per cent.; Russians, thirty per cent.; Austrians, fortyfour per cent. At Wagram,- French, thirteen per cent.; Austrians, fourteen. At Moscow, French, thirty-seven per cent.; Russians, forty-four. At Waterloo, French, fifty-six per cent.; allies, thirty-one. Average for Waterloo,forty-one per cent.; 144,000 men; 60,000 dead.

20. The field of Waterloo to-day has that calm which belongs to the earth, impassive support of man; it resembles any other plain. At night, however, a sort of vision

ary mist arises from it, and if some traveler be walking there, if he looks, if he listens, if he dreams like Virgil in the fatal plain of Philippi, he becomes possessed by the hallucination of the disaster.

21. The terrible 18th of June is again before him; the artificial hill of the monument fades away, this lion, whatever it be, is dispelled; the field of battle resumes its reality; the lines of infantry undulate in the plain, furious gallops traverse the horizon; the bewildered dreamer sees the flash of sabers, the glistening of bayonets, the bursting of shells, the awful intermingling of the thunders; he hears, like a death rattle from the depths of a tomb, the vague clamor of the phantom battle; these shadows are grenadiers; these gleams are cuirassiers; this skeleton is Napoleon; that skeleton is Wellington; all this is unreal, and yet it clashes and combats; and the ravines run red, and the trees shiver, and there is fury even in the clouds, and, in the darkness, all those savage heights appear confusedly crowned with whirlwinds of specters exterminating each other.

I. Definitions: (1) ẻ nig'må, an action or a thing which cannot be satisfactorily explained; (4) au rō'rå, the rising light of the morning; (7) ăn tith'è sis, opposition, contrast, - "the prodigal robs his heir; the miser robs himself"; (10) elăs'sie, of, or relating to, the highest authority; (11) im plā'eȧ ble, not to be appeased, relentless, unyielding; (15) tê na'cious, holding stoutly to one's purpose; (15) trō'phỹ, any Kemorial of victory or conquest; (16) hi'er äreh ỹ, a body of officials of different ranks or orders; (17) eăt'à elỹşm, a sweeping flood of water, a deluge; (20) hăl lū çi nā’tion, a wandering of the mind, error, mistake; (21) gren à dier', a member of a special regiment or corps; (21) cui răs siēr (kwē-), a soldier armed with a cuirass, or breastplate.

II. Notes: The battlefield of Waterloo is near the village of that name, which is located some ten miles south of Brussels, Belgium. On June 18, 1815, the allied British, Dutch, and German forces, under the Duke of Wellington, and the Prussians under Blu'eher, won a most decisive victory over the French under Napoleon. The rout was so complete and the disaster to Napoleon so decisive, that "Waterloo ' has become a synonym for a final and deciding blow.

(9) Grouchy (Groo she') was a French marshal who commanded a detached force in the Waterloo campaign. He defeated a part of Blucher's army, but failed to prevent Blucher from joining Wellington or to come himself to the assistance of Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo. (14) The battle of Ess'ling was fought a few miles from Vienna, Austria, May 21 and 22, 1809. In this battle the Austrians gained a victory over the French under Napoleon. (14) Rï'võ lï is a village in northern Italy near which Napoleon defeated the Austrians, January 14, 1797. (16) Ink er män' is a ruined town in the Crimea, Russia. Here, November 5, 1854, the English and French defeated the Russians. (16) Sixteen hundred and eighty-eight is the date of the English revolution that deposed James II. and crowned William and Mary. It is sometimes called the "bloodless revolution." (16) Seventeen hundred and eighty-nine is the date of the bloody revolution in France, in which Louis XVI. and his queen, Marie Antoinette, together with multitudes of the aristocracy of France, lost their lives. (17) Near the village of Ohain was the famous sunken road, with perpendicular banks twelve feet high, into which the French cavalry poured, to be crushed and mangled by those in the rear. Nearly one-third of Dubois' brigade rolled into this abyss. This disaster marked the beginning of Napoleon's defeat. (20) Vir'ġil was a famous Roman poet who died 19 B.C. (20) Philip'pi is a ruined town in Turkey in Europe; it was the scene of two battles in 42 B.C. in which Octavius and Mark Antony defeated the republicans under Brutus and Cassius.

III. Suggestions on expressive reading: To read this chapter well, the pupil must go on till he feels the heat of the battle and hears its crash and thunder. It can't be read with full effect by having each pupil read a single paragraph. Study carefully the magnificent antithesis in the eighth paragraph, -the mathematics of Wellington opposed to the genius of Napoleon.

VII, MAMBRINO'S HELMET.

BY MIGUEL DE CERVANTES.

This extract is taken from Chapter XVII of the most famous romance in the Spanish language, and one of the greatest works of its kind ever written. Its title is "Adventures of Don Quixote (Kwiks'ot) de la Män'chä."

The author was born in Spain, and, as in the case of the great Grecian poet, Homer, seven cities claimed the honor of being his native place. This dispute was finally settled by the discovery of the parish register in which his baptism, on the 9th of October, 1547, is recorded.

"Don Quixote " is a satire upon the books of knight-errantry which were so common in the time of Cervantes. He considered that these books were likely to give his countrymen false ideas of the world; to fill them all, especially the young, with fanciful notions of life, and so make them unfit to meet its real difficulties and hardships.

In order to exhibit the absurdity of such works, the author represents a worthy gentleman, whose head had been turned by such reading, sallying forth in search of fame, fortune, and adventure. The absurdities into which the poor gentleman's madness constantly hurries him exerted a powerful influence, and did more towards putting down the extravagances of knight-errantry than many sober volumes of bitter invective.

1. About this time it began to rain, and Sancho proposed entering the fulling mill; but Don Quixote had conceived such an abhorrence for the late jest that he would by no means go in. Soon after he discovered a man on horseback, who had on his head something which