help will conquer yet!" And tearing off his helmet he rushed into
the thickest of the battle, and aimed right at the standard. Round that
standard the last sharp, long struggle took place. Harold, Gurth, all
the greatest who still survived, met there. With his tremendous
battle-ax the king did mighty slaughter, till, looking upward as he
swung his ax with both hands, a Norman arrow pierced his eye, and he
fell.

"Fight on!" he gasped. "Conceal my death--England to the rescue!" One
instant he sprang to his feet, and then fell back--lifeless. One by one
the other noble guardians fell around him, till only Gurth was left,
brave chief and last man, with no thought of surrender, though all was
gone and lost.

"Spare him! spare the brave!" shouted one; but the brave heart was
already pierced, and he sank beside his king and brother. So fell the
last of the Saxon kings, and so arose the Norman race.

Long did they search the battlefield for Harold's body, disfigured by
wounds and loss of blood, but long did they seek it in vain, till a
woman whose toil had never ceased burst into a sharp cry over a lifeless
form. It was Edith, who with many another woman had watched the battle.
The body was too changed to be recognized even by its nearest friends;
but beneath his heart was punctured in old Saxon letters "Edith," and
just below, in characters more fresh, "England," the new love he had
taken when duty bade him turn from Edith; which recalls the lines of
Lovelace to Lucasta:

"Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe of the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not not honor more."

* * * * *

XXXVIII.

PETER COOPER,

(BORN 1791--DIED 1883.)

THE LESSON OF A LONG AND USEFUL LIFE.

Barzillai, of sacred history, was a very old man, a very kind man, a
very affectionate man, a very rich man of the tenth century before
Christ, a type of our American philanthropist, Peter Cooper, in the
nineteenth century after Christ. When I see Barzillai, from his wealthy
country seat at Rogelim, coming out to meet David's retreating army, and
providing them with flour and corn and