very threshold of the Palace of Eboracum
(York). Feeling his blood chilling at the
source, and worn by long Syrian and
Caledonian campaigns, he called to his bedside
his two evil sons, Geta the dog, and
Caracalla the wolf. "I leave you, my sons,"
he said, "a firm government. I found the
republic torn and disturbed; cherish the
legions." Then to his attendants, the
Cæsar said: "I have been all, and yet am
no better for it now." It was Solomon's bitter
sigh of "vanity of vanities" over again.
He next asked for the golden urn in which
his ashes were to be conveyed to Rome,
and earnestly looking at it, said, "Thou
shalt soon hold what the whole world could
scarcely contain." Soon after he calmly
departed, meeting King Death as a king
should meet a king. The body of this
Roman emperor was burnt on a great pile
of wood on one of those three hills near
Holdgate, on which the crow has already
fixed his keen eye. After this old man's
death there was hideous work at the city
on the Ouse, for discord sowed envy and
hatred in the hearts of the brothers, and
Caracalla, the stronger and more evil spirit
of the two, fearing Geta with the army,
first massacred twenty thousand of his
adherents in the ranks, then led by the devil
from bad to worse, ended by stabbing Geta
in his mother's arms.

Now the crow, taking a bold flight over
centuries, alights on a later scene of tragic
horror, which Shakespeare has painted in
Rembrandt's finest manner. Those
bloodthirsty Wars of the Roses culminated in
that terrible day of retaliation at York in
1460. The pretender to the crown unwisely
allowed himself, in all the reckless arrogance
of his nature, to be shut up in his castle of
Sendal with only six thousand men at
arms, while the Duke of Somerset, a king's
man, beleaguered him with eighteen
thousand. York's faithful old counsellor, Sir
David Hale, entreated his master not to
venture forth into the open till joined by
his son (afterwards Edward the Fourth)
with reinforcements, but Queen Margaret's
insults and sneers, that it was disgraceful
to a man who aspired to a crown to be
shut up in a castle, and by a woman, too,
were not to be borne by a proud, self-willed
general.

"Hast thou loved me so long," he said,
"and wouldst thou have me now
dishonoured? Thou never sawest me keep
fortress when I was regent in Normandy.
No; like a man I always issued forth
and fought mine enemies, ever to their
loss and my own honour. I will fight them
now, Davy, though I fight them alone."

The Duke of York then marched out, and
drew up his small army on Wakefield Green.
The Duke of Somerset came to meet him
in three divisions, himself in the centre,
Lord Clifford on the left, and the Earl of
Worcester on the right. The Duke of
York began by a bull-like rush straight at
the heart of his enemies, but they outflanked
him, and slowly lapped him in with a flood
of swords, lances, and axes. The fight was
hand to hand—the hatred embittered by
past mutual cruelties. A priest, the tutor
to Rutland, York's second son, escaped
from the mêlée, and hurried with his
charge into Wakefield, but cruel Clifford,
observing the lad's rich dress, spurred after
him, and, on the bridge, overtook him and
the priest.

"Save him!" cried the good monk, "he
is the son of a prince, and may do you
good hereafter."

"Son of York!" shouted the savage
Lancastrian, whose own child had been
slain at the battle of St. Albans: and
seizing the boy by the hair, he said, "thy
father slew mine child, and so will I thee
and all thy kin," and stabbed him to the
heart. The Duke of York, too, was
dragged to a mound and placed on it in
mockery as on a throne. The soldiers
twisted a crown of grass, and paying him
derisive homage, shouted,

"Hail, king without a kingdom! Hail,
prince without a people!"

Then they forced him on his knees and
struck off his head. This gory and hideous
trophy Clifford stuck on a lance, and with
his own hands presented to the she-wolf
Margaret, saying, with a bitter laugh,

"Madame, your war is done, here is the
ransom of your king."

The pale head was then decked with a
paper crown, and by order of Margaret of
Anjou, and amid the ruthless laughter of her
courtiers, placed over the inside of
Micklegate Bar, with the blind heedless face
turned towards the city. The Earl of
Salisbury and other noblemen were sent
to Pomfret and beheaded, and their heads
also placed over the gates of York. About
three thousand Yorkists fell in this bloody
and cruel battle.

But nearly all that York has seen or done
historically, happened in the Minster, and
the crow, on the highest tower, now sits, as
it were, in inquest over the coronation
place of many happy and unhappy kings.
A church has stood where the fair Minster