Thomas Babington Macaulay, historian, essayist, and poet, was born in 1800. His essays are of the highest order, and his "History of England," though never finished, is deservedly famous. He died in 1859, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. was raised to the peerage as Lord Macaulay.

Before his death he

This ballad, written in 1824, while he was at Cambridge, is supposed to be the triumph of a Puritan over the rout of the King's army, at Naseby, by Cromwell, 14th June, 1645.

THE BATTLE OF NASEBY.

BY OBADIAH BIND-THEIR-KINGS-IN-CHAINS-AND-THEIR-NOBLESWITH-LINKS-OF-IRON, SERGEANT IN IRETON'S' REGIMENT.

1 OH! wherefore come ye forth, in triumph from the North, With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red ? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the winepress which ye tread ?

2 Oh, evil was the root, and bitter was the fruit,

1

And crimson was the juice of the vintage that we trod;

Ireton, Cromwell's Commissary-General. He married Cromwell's daughter, Bridget, in January, 1646-six months after the battle.

Verse 1 is addressed to the Puritan army by Puritans of the South, on its return from Naseby. The long Scripture name assumed by the Puritan writer, as the custom of his party was, is taken from Psalm cxlix, 8.

The North. Leicester had recently been taken by storm by the king, and Fairfax, the Parliamentary general, had raised the siege of Oxford, to march north against him.

On the Puritan army showing itself, Charles came south, five or six miles, to Naseby, an upland village among the moors, on the west edge of Northampton, and there was utterly defeated.

Verse 2 is the answer of the sol

diery. The blood of the Royalists is spoken of as the red of grapes trodden in the wine-press. See Isaiah lxiii. 1-3.

For we trampled on the throng of the haughty and the

strong,

Who sate in the high places, and slew the saints of God.

3 It was about the noon of a glorious day of June,

That we saw their banners dance, and their cuirasses shine, And the Man of Blood was there, with his long essenced hair, And Astley, and Sir Marmaduke, and Rupert of the Rhine. 4 Like a servant of the Lord, with his Bible and his sword, The General rode along us, to form us to the fight, When a murmuring sound broke out, and swell'd into a shout,

Among the godless horsemen upon the tyrant's right.

5 And hark! like the roar of the billow on the shore,

The cry of battle rises along their charging line!

For God! For the Cause! for the Church! for the Laws! For Charles, King of England, and Rupert of the Rhine!

The Royalists scorned the Puritans

as mechanics, and the like. They themselves comprised nearly all the nobility and gentry.

They sate in the high places -were the court party, and held all the high offices.

'The saints of God, the Puritans. Verse 3. June. See prefatory note. Man of Blood. The King was called

so as the assumed cause of the war. Long essenced hair, the flowing locks of the Cavaliers or Royalists. The Puritans cut their own hair short, whence their name of Roundheads.

Astley, Sir Jacob Astley, the last
of the King's generals.
Sir Marmaduke, Sir M. Langdale,
a Royalist general, who was taken
prisoner afterwards, but escaped.

Rupert of the Rhine, son of
King Charles's sister and of Fre-
deric, Elector of the Palatinate, a
district on both sides of the Rhine,
from Mainz to Mannheim, and from
Frankfort to Spires. Palatine
means "possessing royal privi-
leges." He fought for the King, at
the head of the royal cavalry. Born,
1619; died, 1682. He was twenty-
six at the battle of Naseby.
Verse 4. The General, Sir Thomas
Fairfax. Born, 1611; died, 1671.
Thirty-four years old at Naseby.
Verse 5. The battle began by a charge
of Rupert's cavalry, the right of the
King's army, on the left of the Pu-
ritan army, which was ridden down
and scattered. But Rupert lost the
advantage by stopping to plunder
the baggage.

6 The furious German comes, with his clarions and his drums, His bravoes of Alsatia, and pages of Whitehall;

They are bursting on our flanks!-Grasp your pikes, close your ranks;

For Rupert never comes but to conquer or to fall.

7 They are here! They rush on! We are broken! We are gone!

Our left is borne before them like stubble on the blast.

O Lord, put forth thy might! O Lord, defend the right! Stand back to back, in God's name, and fight it to the last!

8 Stout Skippon hath a wound; the centre hath given ground; Hark! hark! what means the trampling of horsemen on our rear ?

Whose banner do I see, boys? 'Tis he, thank God, 'tis he, boys

Bear up another minute! brave Oliver is here.

9 Their heads all stooping low, their points all in a row, Like a whirlwind on the trees, like a deluge on the dykes, Our cuirassiers have burst on the ranks of the Accurst, And at a shock have scattered the forest of his pikes.

10 Fast, fast, the gallants ride, in some safe nook to hide
Their coward heads, predestined to rot on Temple Bar;
And he he turns, he flies !-shame on those cruel eyes
That bore to look on torture, and dare not look on war.

11 Ho! comrades, scour the plain; and, ere ye strip the slain, First give another stab to make your search secure,

Then shake from sleeves and pockets their broad pieces and lockets,

The tokens of the wanton, the plunder of the poor.

12 Fools! your doublets shone with gold, and your hearts were gay and bold,,

When you kissed your lily hands to your lēmans to-day,

And to-morrow shall the fox, from her chambers in the rocks, Lead forth her tawny cubs to howl above the prey.

13 Where be your tongues that, late, mocked at heaven and hell and fate,

And the fingers that once were so busy with your blades, Your perfum'd satin clothes, your catches and your oaths, Your stage plays, and your sonnets, your diamonds and your spades?

14 Down, down, for ever down, with the mitre and the crown, With the Belial of the Court and the Mammon of the Pope;

Verse 10. Rot on Temple Bar,

the gate of London at the west end of Fleet Street. The heads of political prisoners were fixed on it as late as 1745.

He, King Charles.

To look on torture. The King was charged with torturing Puritan prisoners. An allusion also to the bloody sentences of the Court of the Star Chamber, and of the Council Table, both of doubtful legality.

Verse 12, lemans, sweethearts.
Verse 14. Belial, the devil-as foul,
licentious, abandoned. Here used,
most unjustly, of the King, who
was a man of pure life.
Mammon of the Pope, Mam-

mon, the Syrian God of Riches;
the symbol of sordid, grovelling
love of money; used of the Pope,
from his endless demands for
money from England, before the
Reformation.

There is woe in Oxford's halls; there is wail in Durham's

Stalls!

The Jesuit smites his bosom; the Bishop rends his cope.

15 And She of the Seven Hills shall mourn her children's ills,

And tremble when she thinks on the edge of England's sword; And the Kings of earth in fear shall shudder when they hear What the hand of God has wrought for the Houses and the Word.

1 Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are! And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of Navarre! Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance, Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, oh, pleasant land of France!

And thou, Rochelle, our own Rochelle, proud city of the waters, Again let rapture light the eyes of all thy mourning daughters. As thou wert constant in our ills, be joyous in our joy,

For cold and stiff, and still are they, who wrought thy walls

annoy.

Oxford, the King's head-quarters
during the war. The University
sent him its plate to be coined into
money for his use.

Durham, then the richest see in
England. Very friendly to Charles.
He slept there on his journey to
and from Scotland, in 1641.
Jesuit, member of the Society of
Jesus. Founded by Ignatius Loyola
(born, 1491; died, 1556,) in 1534.
Verse 15. She of the Seven

Hills, Rome.
Houses, the Houses of Parliament,
whose army had conquered at
Naseby.

The Word, the Bible.

1 Ivry was the name given to a battle
between the Reformers of France,
known as the Huguenots, and the
Roman Catholic party.
It was
called the battle of Ivry from the
place where it was fought, in the
department of the Eure, in Nor-
mandy.

Verse 1. Liege, lord.

Rochelle is a seaport on the west
It was one of the

coast of France.
great strongholds of Protestantism.
Constant in our ills. Rochelle

had been faithful to the Protestants, and had stood a siege by the Romanists after the massacre of St. Bartholomew.