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must reckon this, that these women have done, as the chief.

Before the opening of the campaign of 1855 the management of the war at home had fallen into the hands of Lord Palmerston, as Premier. The death of the Czar Nicholas, in March, led many to hope that peace was at hand. But still the war went on. Lord Raglan died in June, and still Sebastopol stood as defiant as ever. The two most formidable fortresses were the Malakoff and the Redan. On the 8th of September, 1855, an assault was made on them by the French and the English. A brilliant and resistless rush left our allies masters of the Malakoff. When their tricoloured flag was seen on its White Tower a storming party of 1,000 men left the British trenches and scaled the Redan. After maintaining their ground for a considerable time, they were dislodged and driven out. However, the capture of the Malakoff sealed the fate of Sebastopol. During the night the Russians evacuated the town they had so stubbornly defended, leaving behind them a heap of ruins and a city in flames. The war was now virtually over. A treaty of peace was concluded in March, 1856, by which Russia pledged herself to abstain from all interference with Turkey. [Dawe and Lawson's History of England, published in the Holborn Series.]

1 Sardinia.-At that time a separate kingdom in the north of Italy. Since then the king of Sardinia has become the king of Italy.

2 Crimea.-A peninsula in the south of Russia, between the sea of Azov and the Black Sea.

3 Eupatoria Bay. In the Crimea. Sir Colin Campbell.-Afterwards

appointed to the chief command in India, during the Sepoy Mutiny: he received the title of Lord Clyde in acknowledgment of his services.

Scutari.-In Asia Minor, just opposite Constantinople. There is another Scutari in Albania-a province in the west of Turkey.

AUTUMN.

THAT time of year thou may'st in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold;
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by-and-by black night doth take away,—
Death's second self, that seals up all the rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire:
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to bless

SHAKSPEARE.

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,-
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies; while thy hook
Spares the next swathe and all its twinèd flowers.
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them; thou hast thy music, too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows,2 borne aloft,
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourne ;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden croft,*
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

KEATS.

THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
And the year

On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying.

Come, months, come away,
From November to May,

In your saddest array ;
Follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,

And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

The chill rain is falling, the night-worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
For the year;

The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards—each gone
To his dwelling ;

Come, months, come away,

Put on white, black, and grey,

Let your light sisters play

Ye follow the bier

Of the dead cold. year,

And make her grave green with tear on tear.

'Consumed, etc.-Autumn is at last consumed by Time, the very thing it has lived upon.

2 Sallow.-A tree, or low shrub of the willow kind.

SHELLEY.

Bourne.-Limit, or boundary line. The hills form the limit of vision, or bound the view.

• Croft. A small enclosed piece of arable or garden-ground adjoining a house,

THE PORTEOUS RIOT.

CAPTAIN PORTEOUS, of the City Guard of Edinburgh, had been condemned to death for rashly ordering his soldiers to fire upon the crowd that assaulted him with stones on the occasion of an execution, when the popular sympathy was in favour of the criminal who had been hanged. On the day when the unhappy Porteous was expected to suffer the sentence of the law, the place of execution, extensive as it is, was crowded almost to suffocation. The area of the Grassmarket (as the open square is called) resembled a

huge dark lake or sea of human heads, in the centre of which arose the fatal tree, tall, black, and ominous, from which dangled the deadly halter. This ill-omened apparition was of great height, with a scaffold surrounding it, and a double ladder placed against it for the ascent of the unhappy criminal and the executioner. As this apparatus was always arranged before dawn, it seemed as if the gallows had grown out of the earth in the course of the night, like the production of some foul demon; and I well remember the fright with which the schoolboys, when I was one of their number, used to regard these ominous signs of deadly preparation.

CAUSE OF THE RIOT.

On the 8th September, 1736, the sun rose upon the gibbet, erected during the darkness of night, and ere long a densely-packed crowd gathered round it, with a stern and vindictive show of satisfaction on every countenance. Amid so numerous an assembly there was scarcely a word spoken, save in whispers. The thirst of vengeance was in some degree allayed by its supposed certainty; and even the populace, with deeper feeling than they are wont to entertain, suppressed all clamorous exultation, and prepared to enjoy the scene of retaliation in triumph, silent and decent, though stern and relentless. The compressed lips, the bent brow, the stern and flashing eye of nearly every one present, conveyed the expression of men come to glut their sight with triumphant revenge.

The usual hour for producing the criminal had been past for many minutes, yet the spectators observed no symptoms of his appearance. "Would they venture to defraud public justice?" was the question which men began anxiously to ask each other. The first answer was bold and positive"They dare not." But further delay induced the spectators to apprehend the possibility of a reprieve. At length the silent expectation of the people became changed into that

deep and agitating murmur which is sent forth by the ocean before the tempest begins to howl. The crowded populace, as if their motions corresponded with the unsettled state of their minds, fluctuated to and fro without any visible cause of impulse, like the agitation of the waters called by sailors the ground-swell. The news which the magistrates had almost hesitated to communicate to them were at length announced, and spread among the spectators with a rapidity like lightning. A reprieve had arrived,

intimating the pleasure of Queen Caroline (regent of the kingdom during the absence of George II. on the Continent), that the execution of the sentence of death pronounced against John Porteous, late Captain of the City Guard of Edinburgh, present prisoner in the Tolbooth of that city, be respited for six weeks.

The assembled spectators of almost all degrees, whose minds had been wound up to the pitch we have described, uttered a groan, or rather a roar of indignation and disappointed revenge, similar to that of a tiger from whom his meal has been snatched by his keeper when he was just about to devour it. This shout was succeeded by stifled mutterings, which each group maintained among themselves, and which were blended into one deep and hoarse murmur, which floated above the assembly. The crowd at length broke up in moody silence-all with dark discontent on their brows, and many with a stern resolution in their heart.

THE OUTBREAK.

The sun had not long set, when this secret resolution began to bear fruit. A body of rioters, who had meanwhile carefully drawn up their plans, proceeded to take possession of the gates of the city; for Edinburgh was at that time surrounded by a high wall, and the access was through gates, called in the Scottish dialect ports. By this means they cut off communication between the magistrates within the city and the military stationed without the walls. The

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