posted outside to beat back the noisy throng, who
thought little of snatching the dishes as the cooks carried them to
table!

The juggler, who under the Normans filled the place of the English
gleeman, tumbled, sang, and balanced knives in the hall; or, out in the
bailey of an afternoon, displayed the acquirements of his trained monkey
or bear. The fool, too, clad in coloured patchwork, cracked his ribald
jests and shook his cap and bells at the elbow of roaring barons, when
the board was spread and the circling of the wine began.

Monasteries served many useful purposes at this time. Besides their
manifest value as centres of study and literary work, they gave alms to
the poor, a supper and a bed to travellers; their tenants were better
off and better treated than the tenants of the nobles; the monks could
store grain, grow apples, and cultivate their flower-beds with little
risk of injury from war, because they had spiritual penalties at their
call, which usually awed even the most reckless of the soldiery into a
respect for sacred property.

As schools, too, the monasteries did no trifling service to society in
the Middle Ages. In addition to their influence as great centres of
learning, English law had enjoined every mass-priest to keep a school in
his parish church where all the young committed to his care might be
instructed. The youth of the middle classes, destined for the cloister
or the merchant's stall, chiefly thronged these schools. The aristocracy
cared little for book-learning. Very few indeed of the barons could read
or write. But all could ride, fence, tilt, play at cards, and carve
extremely well; for to these accomplishments many years of pagehood and
squirehood were given.

W. F. Collier, (Adapted)

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead
life to sovereign power.

Tennyson

YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND

Ye mariners of England
That guard our native seas,
Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze!
Your glorious standard launch again
To match another foe:
And sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.

The spirits of your fathers
Shall start from every wave--
For the deck it was their field of fame,
And Ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
Your manly hearts sh