tle of the Alma,
when an ensign maintained his ground in front, although the men were
retreating. "No," cried the ensign, "bring up the men to the colors."

"To dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare," was Danton's
noble defiance to the enemies of France. "The Commons of France have
resolved to deliberate," said Mirabeau to De Breze, who brought an
order from the king for them to disperse, June 23, 1789. "We have
heard the intentions that have been attributed to the king; and you,
sir, who cannot be recognized as his organ in the National
Assembly,--you, who have neither place, voice, nor right to speak,--you
are not the person to bring to us a message of his. Go, say to those
who sent you that we are here by the power of the people, and that we
will not be driven hence, save by the power of the bayonet."

When the assembled senate of Rome begged Regulus not to return to
Carthage to fulfil an illegal promise, he calmly replied: "Have you
resolved to dishonor me? Torture and death are awaiting me, but what
are these to the shame of an infamous act, or the wounds of a guilty
mind? Slave as I am to Carthage, I still have the spirit of a Roman.
I have sworn to return. It is my duty. Let the gods take care of the
rest."

The courage which Cranmer had shown since the accession of Mary gave
way the moment his final doom was announced. The moral cowardice which
had displayed itself in his miserable compliance with the lust and
despotism of Henry VIII displayed itself again in six successive
recantations by which he hoped to purchase pardon. But pardon was
impossible; and Cranmer's strangely mingled nature found a power in its
very weakness when he was brought into the church of St. Mary at Oxford
on the 21st of March, to repeat his recantation on the way to the
stake. "Now," ended his address to the hushed congregation before
him,--"now I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more
than any other thing that ever I said or did in my life, and that is
the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth; which here I now
renounce and refuse as things written by a hand contrary to the truth
which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, to save my
life, if it might be. And, forasmuch as my hand offended in writing
contrary to my heart, my hand therefore shall be the first punished;
for if I come to the fire it shall be the first burned." "This was the
hand that wrote it," he aga