or altar and hearth!" My father suddenly drew in and
pished a little, for he saw that he was caught in the web of his own
eloquence.

Then Roland took down from the wall his son's sword. Stealing to the
cradle, he laid it in its sheath by the infant's side, and glanced from
my father to us with a beseeching eye. Instinctively Blanche bent over
the cradle, as if to protect the Neogilos; but the child, waking,
turned from her, and attracted by the glitter of the hilt, laid one hand
lustily thereon, and pointed with the other, laughingly, to Roland.

"Only on my uncle's proviso," said I, hesitatingly. "For hearth and
altar,--nothing less!"

"And even in that case," said my father, "add the shield to the sword!"
and on the other side of the infant he placed Roland's well-worn Bible,
blistered in many a page with secret tears.

There we all stood, grouping round the young centre of so many hopes and
fears, in peace or in war, born alike for the Battle of Life. And he,
unconscious of all that made our lips silent and our eyes dim, had
already left that bright bauble of the sword and thrown both arms round
Roland's bended neck.

"Herbert!" murmured Roland; and Blanche gently drew away the sword--and
left the Bible.

(1) Shaftesbury.

(2) When this work was first published, Mr. Caxton was generally deemed
a very false prophet in these anticipations, and sundry critics
were pleased to consider his apology for war neither seasonable nor
philosophical. That Mr. Caxton was right, and the politicians opposed
to him have been somewhat ludicrously wrong, may be briefly accounted
for,--Mr. Caxton had read history.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Caxtons, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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