announce the number and quality of the
prisoners. He drew up his men on Roundway
Hill, with all Wiltshire and Gloucestershire
spreading in a blue mist before him.
Wishing to prevent the town from joining
Wilmot, Waller, "out of pure gayety," left
his advantage, his firm reserve, his well flanked
cannon, and his fortress hill, and bore down on
Wilmot. Haslerig's cuirassiers made the first
charge at Sir John Byron's regiment, but they
were worsted by the cavaliers, and driven back.
Then Wilmot broke the other divisions one by
one, and hurled them back, a rabble of wounded
men and frightened horses, towards the Cornish
foot that now broke from the town and attacked
the puritan pikemen and musketeers, turning
their own cannon upon them. The flight was
terrible over the hills, and the pursuit arduous;
many rolled down into the valley and perished.
Oliver's Castle and the Wansdyke saw many
a death grapple. The rout was complete. The
Cornishmen were relentless. The puritans lost
nearly two thousand men, slain or prisoners,
and Waller fled to Bristol, leaving his guns,
ammunition, and baggage. That defeat was
the cause of great heart-burnings between
Waller and Essex, Waller thinking himself
betrayed and deserted by Essex, who had
let Wilmot march unimpeded from Oxford;
Essex, reproaching the poet with unsoldierly
neglect and want of courage in letting himself
be beaten by a mere handful of men without
cannon—men, too, against whom he had never
led a single charge in person.

A long swift flight, and the crow is in pleasant
Somersetshire. Passing high over grand old
church towers and snug homesteads, he furls
his wings at the foot of the Mendip Hills, and
descends on the cathedral towers of Wells. In
the hall of the bishop's palace, the last abbot of
Glastonbury was tried for refusing to surrender
his abbey to Henry the Eighth. It was a mock
trial, worthy of the tyrant; for the abbot was
accused of appropriating the church plate; and
although acquitted, was seized on his return to
Glastonbury, dragged to the top of the Tor, and
there put to death. This is the same proud abbot
who is said to have defied the king, who had
threatened to burn his kitchen, by building
that strange edifice still to be seen at
Glastonbury: square without, octagonal within, and
with a pyramidical roof supporting a pierced
lantern to let out heat and vapour. "I will
build such a kitchen," said the abbot, "that
all the wood in the royal forests will not suffice
to burn it." Modern antiquaries, however,
unfortunately have proved the building to be
far older than Whiting.

A short flight to Glastonbury Abbey brings
the crow to congenial ruins, shattered pillars,
and ruined arches. Yonder is Wearyall Hill,
where the monkish legends say that Joseph of
Arimathea rested after his long pilgrimage from
the Holy Land. Here, planting his thorn staff
in the ground, he decided to abide: the green
meadows, the swelling hills, and the pleasant
orchards of Somersetshire soothing his wearied
spirit. In the abbey gardens, a graft from the
saint's staff still grows, and flowers at Christmas
—proof of its miraculous origin.

It was at Glastonbury that, in Henry the
Second's time, was discovered the supposed
grave of King Arthur. Here in Avalon, girt by
marshes, they found the hero in a rude oak coffin,
sleeping beside his guilty but repentant queen,
whose long yellow hair crumbled to dust when a
monk snatched at it. The bones were
deposited in a magnificent shrine, by Edward the
First, and placed before the high altar.

Glastonbury was a great place for saints,
St. Patrick and St. Benedict were abbots at
Avalon, and to the doubtful saint—St. Dunstan
—in some crypt here as he worked as a smith,
constructing cross and chalice for holy uses,
the Devil appeared one day at the half door
in the shape of a beautiful woman. It was
here that the saint waited till he had got his
tongs red hot, and then made a rush and
caught the tempter by the nose.

Now, the crow rises for a further flight,
turns his head westward, and strikes out across
the broad green pastures for Sedgemoor and
the borders of sunny Devonshire.

ALASKA.

DURING the earlier part of last year, public
attention was for a short time devoted to the
Russian settlements in North America. The
course of politics at home happened not to run
over smoothly just at that time, so there was
little inclination to inquire into the affairs of
other countries. Usually eager to criticise,
and that sometimes with scant charity, the
actions of our friends on the other side of
the Atlantic, a strange reticence seemed then
to prevail among us. With the exception
of a few leading articles in the London
papers, Russian America was transferred to
the United States, without one murmur of
assent or disapproval from this country. While
thus in England little interest was felt in the
question, in America it was far different.
There, it was taken up as a party question,
and treated as most party questions are. The
natural advantages and disadvantages of the
country, were alternately exaggerated by
either side. While the friends of Mr. Seward
described it as a paradise of fertility, his
opponents declared it to be "the fag end of
creation." In spite of the ridicule and satire
which beset his every step, Mr. Seward
carried his point. On the 30th of October, 1867,
Russian America, or Alaska, was formally
transferred to the United States. So little was
really known of the resources of the country
at that time, that those who spoke so strongly,
to use no harsher word, for or against its
acquisition, must have relied more on their
imagination than on fact. Indeed, very little is
known about it, even now; but the information
that has come to light in the interim, has
shown that truth lay between the opposing
parties. If Alaska be not "an Elysian field,''
it is certainly not "a worn-out colony."