showed, he now declared the omen to be a good one. The turning of the armour betokened that the owner of it would soon be changed from a duke into a king. If we are to believe the tale, the minstrel Taillefer obtained his leave to strike the first blow. Shouting verses from the lay of Roland and of Charlemagne, and throwing his sword up in the air to show his skill in catching it again, he advanced towards the English barrier, and having struck down. one or perhaps two men, was forthwith slain. The fight now began in earnest; and the struggle was one of the fiercest of which the history of any country has retained a record. The Norman attack was made at nine o'clock in the morning, and the shades of evening were fast closing in when the death of the heroic English king decided the issue of the day. It was decided for the precise reason of which Harold had forewarned his soldiers at the outset.

So long as his orders were obeyed, all went well for the English. The Norman host was in dire confusion, and the confusion was deepened into dismay when the rumour spread that the duke had fallen. The day was indeed all but lost, when William, tearing the helmet from his face, cried out, 'Madmen! you are flying into death; victory lies behind you! I live still, and by God's help I will yet conquer.' At length the Norman line was formed again, and they advanced to a second attack, in which William tried to reach Harold and settle their quarrel in person. His horse was killed by the lance of Harold's brother, Gyrth; but in another moment Gyrth was slain, crushed by a blow from William's mace. His death was followed immediately by that of Leofric. Of the three heroic sons of Earl Godwine, who had stood by the English standard, Harold was now the only one left. But so long as Harold lived, there might be not only hope, but a reasonable expectation of victory.

The day was wearing on, and William's heart was beginning to sink withir him,

when the thought struck him that cunning might do what brute force had failed to accomplish. He had already seen, early in the battle, that the flight of some troops of Bretons had tempted the English who were opposed to them to come down from the vantage ground in chase of the fugitives; and he was aware that, unless he could effect an entrance within the English stockade, there was no hope of success for the Normans. He therefore gave orders to some of his troops to feign a flight, and to others, that while these should draw the English after them, they should rush in by the space so left open. The trick was rewarded with a fatal success. Harold's orders were again disobeyed by his lightarmed troops, and although they fought nobly to retrieve their error, the strength of their original position could not be recovered. But the issue of the day was still very doubtful, and Harold was still alive and unwounded, when William ordered his archers to shoot their arrows high into the air. The iron shower soon made awful execution in the English ranks An arrow struck Harold in the ey piercing his brain. His axe fell from his hand, and in a few minutes the undaunted English king lay dead. English king lay dead. Norman knights thronged around him, and Norman gentlemen were not ashamed to hack and hew his body by way of taking vengeance for what they called his perjury.

The death of the king was followed by the slaughter of all his house-carls. The ranks of the light-armed were utterly broken, and they made their way as best they could from the field, inflicting as they went such blows on the pursuers as to fill them still with fear that even now they might be defeated.

Harold was dead; but even then the work of conquest for William was scarcely more than begun. Had Harold lived, it is more than likely that, even though the day was lost at Senlac, William's enterprise would have ended in complete discomfiture. But there was none to take his place; and

LE ET us take an imaginary trip up the river Thames, and note the chief points of interest on our way. We will begin first at the Nore Light-ship, which is generally considered to mark the point at which the Thames ends, and the German Ocean or North Sea begins. This light-ship is situated where the Medway pours its waters into the main stream, and as the navigation here is very intricate, owing to the numerous sand and mud banks, it is of great assistance to sailors.

Proceeding almost due west up the stream, having Essex on our right hand and Kent on the left, we soon leave the thriving watering-place, Southend, behind us, with perhaps now and then the heavy boom of the guns being tried at Shoeburyness to draw our attention to that side of the river. We then traverse Gravesend Reach, pass Tilbury Fort, which recalls to our minds Queen Elizabeth and old Armada days, and on the southern side the busy town of Gravesend, and stretch onwards towards Erith, near which the river Darent joins the Thames. Ten miles farther up is Woolwich, a great military depôt and arsenal, where arms of all descriptions, from the eighty-one-ton gun downward, are manufactured and stored.

A few miles more bring us to Greenwich,

remarkable for its Hospital and Observatory, and the region of Docks, which line both sides of the river for some miles, and being generally crowded with ships of all sorts and sizes, seem regularly to bristle with masts and spars. The river Lea here joins the Thames on the northern side. The docks continue pretty nearly until we reach the Tower of London, a gloomylooking fortress on our right going up, just before we come to the first bridge over the Thames-London Bridge.

We cannot afford space here to mention in detail all the interesting buildings we see while passing through London; it must suffice to say, that in the seven or eight miles of our journey through the metropolis we go under about a dozen bridges, catch a glimpse of St. Paul's Cathedral, Cleopatra's Needle, and the Houses of Parliament on the right, and Lambeth Palace on the left, and rapidly find the river getting clearer as we leave the City behind us.

The next town of any size we come to is Brentford, on the north, with Kew, celebrated for its Gardens and Observatory, on the opposite side.

From these, passing several 'aits' or 'eyots,' as the islands in the river are called, we soon reach Richmond, with its famous Star and Garter Hotel.

Onwards past Kingston, with Hampton Court on the opposite northern side of the river, past the mouths of the Mole and Wey, and we soon reach Chertsey, in the stretch between which and Windsor, whose castle is a striking feature on the southern bank, we pass Staines, near the mouth of the Colne, Runnymede, and Magna Charta Island, famed in the annals of King John. Opposite Windsor is Eton, celebrated for its school. The next large town we arrive at is one famous for its biscuit factories-Reading, at the junction of the Thames and Kennet-before reaching which, however, we leave behind us Maidenhead, Great Marlow, and Henley.

After passing Reading (with the counties Oxfordshire and Berkshire on the north and south respectively) and the mouth of the tributary Thame, which is said to give

its name to the main stream, and Abingdon, which marks the entrance to the Vale of the White Horse, so called from the figure of a huge horse cut in the turf on the slope of one of its bounding hills, we reach the great university city, Oxford.

Above this the Thames is called the Isis, and rapidly narrows as we draw nearer its source. We pass the points at which the Evenlode and Windrush join the main stream, and the country town of Cricklade, and, taking the small river Churn as the originating stream of the river Thames (it is thus marked in the map above), we find it rises at a place called the Seven Springs, in the Cotswold Hills, Gloucestershire. Another source, a rival to the foregoing, is known as Thames Head, and lies some miles to the south-west of the town of Cirencester.