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of honour and of knighthood. It is for us to remember, as we stand by his grave, that whilst he has left us the legacy of those noble and beautiful feelings, which are the charm and best ornaments of life, though not its most necessary virtues, it is our further privilege and duty to extend those feelings towards the classes on whom he never cast a thought; to have towards all classes of society, and to make them have towards each other, and towards ourselves, the high respect and courtesy and kindness which were then peculiar to one class only.

It is a well-known saying in Shakspeare, that

"The evil which men do lives after them;

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The good is oft interred with their bones."

But it is often happily just the reverse, and so it was with the Black Prince. His evil is interred with his bones; the good which he has done lives after him, and to that good let us turn.

He was the first great English captain who showed what English soldiers were, and what they could do against Frenchmen, and against all the world. He was the first English prince who showed what it was to be a true gentleman. He was the first, but he was not the last. We have seen how, when he died, Englishmen thought that all their hopes had died with him. But we know that it was not so; we know that the life of a great nation is not bound up with the life of a single man; we know that the valour and the courtesy of the chivalry of England are not buried in the

grave of the Plantagenet Prince. It needs only a glance round the country, to see that the high character of an English gentleman, of which the Black Prince was the noble pattern, is still to be found everywhere; and has since his time been. spreading itself more and more through classes, which in his time seemed incapable of reaching it. It needs only a glance down the nave of our own Cathedral; and the tablets on the walls, with their tattered flags, will tell you, in a moment, that he as he lies up there aloft, with his head resting on his helmet, and his spurs on his feet, is but the first of a long line of English heroes-that the brave men who fought at Sobraon and Feroozeshah are the true descendants of those who fought at Cressy and Poitiers.

And not to soldiers only, but to all who are engaged in the long warfare of life, is his conduct an example. To unite in our lives the two qualities expressed in his motto, "Hoch muth" and "Ich Dien"-"high spirit" and "reverent service," -is to be, indeed, not only a true gentleman and a true soldier, but a true Christian also. To show to all who differ from us, not only in war but in peace, that delicate forbearance, that fear of hurting another's feelings, that happy art of saying the right thing to the right person, which he showed to the captive king, would indeed add a grace and a charm to the whole course of this troublesome world, such as none can afford to lose, whether high or low. Happy are they, who having this gift by birth or station, use it for its highest

purposes! Still more happy are they, who having it not by birth and station, have acquired it, as it may be acquired, by Christian gentleness and Christian charity.

And lastly, to act in all the various difficulties of our everyday life, with 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 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 hundred-fold; 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."

A. P. Stanley.

XXX.

TRUE WORTH,1

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, doth make men better be;

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear:
A lily of a day,

Is fairer far, in May,

Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures, life may perfect be.

Ben Jonson.

XXXI.

THE BIG TREES.*

THE gigantesque1 character of America and its people is strikingly illustrated by the vast tracts. of territory recently set apart for national enjoyment. To say that miles are appropriated to this purpose, where we should be content with acres, is to understate the fact. Not only is each city

* From American Pictures, by kind permission of the R. T. S.

providing ample space for the common use of its citizens, Fairmount Park, for instance, at Philadelphia, with an area of three thousand acres, laid out with exquisite taste and beauty-but national parks of still greater extent are being marked out "for public use, resort, and recreation, inalienable for all time," as the Act of Congress phrases it. Six hundred square miles in the Andirondacks 2 are on the point of being withdrawn from private ownership and occupation on behalf of the State of New York. The whole of the Yosemite Valley, with the neighbouring Sierra,3 and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, in the State of California, have been thus nationalized. And the Yellowstone region, containing an area of three thousand, three hundred and seventy-five square miles, has been similarly "dedicated and set apart as a great national pleasure-ground, for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." These great Western reservations are of sufficient importance to claim a chapter to themselves.

To reach the Yosemite, we leave the main Pacific Railway at a point about three thousand miles west from New York, and forty-three east from San Francisco. A branch line carries us fifty miles to Merced, a town so modern that it has not yet made its appearance in maps or guide-books, but whose progress has been so rapid that it already numbers nearly three thousand inhabitants, with an immense hotel, making up a hundred beds. Here we leave railway communications behind us,

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