weapons they could come at, they could not be stopp'd from falling on some of those nations, whom they casualy met, without sense or reason. The clamour and peril grew so excessive, that it made the whole court amaz'd, and they did with infinite paines and greate difficulty reduce and appease the people, sending troops of soldiers and guards to cause them to retire into ye fields againe, where they were watch'd all this night. I left them pretty quiet, and came home sufficiently weary and broken. Their spirits thus a little calmed, and the affright abated, they now began to repaire into ye suburbs about the citty, where such as had friends or opportunity got shelter for the present, to which his Matys proclamation also invited them.-Diary. [THOMAS ELLWOOD. 1639-1713.] JOHN MILTON. HE received me courteously, as well for the sake of Dr. Paget, who introduced me, as of Isaac Pennington, who recommended me, to both of whom he bore a good respect; and having inquired divers things of me, with respect to my former progressions in learning, he dismissed me, to provide myself of such accommodations as might be most suitable to my future studies. I went, therefore, and took myself a lodging as near to his house (which was then in Jewin Street) as conveniently I could; and, from thenceforward, went every day, in the afternoon (except on the first days of the week), and sitting by him in his dining-room, read to him such books, in the Latin tongue, as he pleased to hear me read. At my first sitting to read to him, observing that I used the English pronunciation, he told me if I would have the benefit of the Latin tongue (not only to read and understand Latin authors, but to converse with foreigners, either abroad or at home), I must learn the foreign pronunciation. To this I consenting, he instructed me how to sound the vowels, so different from the common pronuncia tion used by the English (who speak Anglice their Latin), that (with some few other variations in sounding some consonants, in particular cases, as C, before E or I, like Ch; Sc, before I, like Sh, &c.) the Latin thus spoken seemed as different from that which was delivered as the English generally speak it, as if it was another language. I had, before, during my retired life at my father's, by unwearied diligence and industry, so far recovered the rules of grammar (in which I had once been very ready), that I could both read a Latin author, and, after a sort, hammer out his meaning. But this change of pronunciation proved a new difficulty to me. It was now harder to me to read than it was before to understand when read. But "Labor omnia vincit Improbus." "Incessant pains The end obtains." And so did I, which made my reading the more acceptable to my master. He, on the other hand, perceiving with what earnest desire I pursued learning, gave me not only all the encouragement, but all the help he could; for, having a curious ear, he understood, by my tone, when I understood what I read, and when I did not; and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most difficult passages to me. Thus went I on for about six weeks' time, reading to him in the afternoons, and exercising myself, with my own books, in my chamber in the forenoons. I was sensible of an improvement. But, alas! I had fixed my studies in a wrong place. London and I could never agree for health. My lungs (as I suppose) were too tender to bear the sulphureous air of that city; so that I soon began to droop, and, in less than two months' time, I was fain to leave both my studies and the city, and return into the country, to preserve life; and much ado I had to get thither. [Having recovered, and gone back to London,] I was very kindly received by my master, who had conceived so good an opinion of me, that my conversation (I found) was acceptable to him; and he seemed heartily glad of my recovery and return; and into our old method of study we fell again, I reading to him, and he explaining to me as occasion required. Some little time before I went to Aylesbury prison, I was desired by my quondam master, Milton, to take a house for him in the neighbourhood where I dwelt, that he might get out of the city, for the safety of himself and his family, the pestilence then growing hot in London. I took a pretty box for him in Giles Chalfont, a mile from me, of which I gave him notice, and intended to have waited on him, and seen him well settled in it, but was prevented by that imprison ment. But now, being released, and returned home, I soon made a visit to him, to welcome him into the country. After some common discourses had passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his, which, being brought, he delivered to me, bidding me to take it home with me, and read it at my leisure, and, when I had so done, return it to him, with my judgment thereupon. When I came home, and had set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem which he entitled "Paradise Lost." After I had, with the utmost attention, read it through, I made him another visit, and returned him his book, with due acknowledgment for the favour he had done me, in communicating it to me. He asked me how I liked it, and what I thought of it, which I modestly but freely told him; and after some further discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, "Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost; but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?" He made me no answer, but sat some time in a muse; then brake off that discourse, and fell upon another subject. After the sickness was over, and the city well cleansed, and become safely habitable again, he returned thither; and when, afterwards, I went to wait on him there (which I seldom failed of doing, whenever my occasions drew me to London), he showed me his second poem, called "Paradise Regained," and, in a pleasant tone, said to me, "This is owing to you, for you put it into my head at Chalfont; which before I had not thought of."-Autobiography. [RICHARD KNOLLES. 1540-1610.] THE TAKING OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE TURKS. A LITTLE before day, the Turks approached the walls and begun the assault, where shot and stones were delivered upon them from the walls as thick as hail, whereof little fell in vain, by reason of the multitude of the Turks, who, pressing fast unto the walls, could not see in the dark how to defend themselves, but were without number wounded or slain; but these were of the common and worst soldiers, of whom the Turkish king made no more reckoning than to abate the first force of the defendants. Upon the first appearance of the day, Mahomet gave the sign appointed for the general assault, whereupon the city was in a moment, and at one instant, on every side most furiously assaulted by the Turks; for Mahomet, the more to distress the defendants, and the better to see the forwardness of the soldiers, had before appointed which part of the city every colonel with his regiment should assail: which they valiantly performed, delivering their arrows and shot upon the defendants so thick, that the light of the day was therewith darkened; others in the meantime courageously mounting the scaling-ladders, and coming even handy-strokes with the defendants upon the wall, where the foremost were for the most part violently borne forward by them which followed after. On the other side, the Christians with no less courage withstood the Turkish fury, beating them down again with great stones and weighty pieces of timber, and so overwhelmed them with shot, darts, and arrows, and other hurtful devices from above, that the Turks, dismayed with the terror thereof, were ready to retire. to Mahomet, seeing the great slaughter after found by the Turks among the slain, and discomfiture of his men, sent in fresh and known by his rich apparel, whose supplies of his janizaries and best men of head, being cut off, was forthwith prewar, whom he had for that purpose re-sented to the Turkish tyrant, by whose served as his last hope and refuge; by commandment it was afterwards thrust whose coming on his fainting soldiers upon the point of a lance, and in great were again encouraged, and the terrible derision carried about as a trophy of his assault begun afresh. At which time the victory, first in the camp, and afterwards barbarous king ceased not to use all pos-up and down the city. sible means to maintain the assault; by name calling upon this and that captain, promising unto some whom he saw forward, golden mountains, and unto others in whom he saw any sign of cowardice, threatening most terrible death; by which means the assault became most dreadful, death there raging in the midst of many thousands. And albeit that the Turks lay dead by heaps upon the ground, yet other fresh men pressed on still in their places over their dead bodies, and with divers event either slew or were slain by their enemies. In this so terrible a conflict, it chanced Justinianus the general to be wounded in the arm, who, losing much blood, cowardly withdrew himself from the place of his charge, not leaving any to supply his room. and so got into the city by the gate called Romana, which he had caused to be opened in the inner wall; pretending the cause of his departure to be for the binding up of his wound, but being, indeed, a man now altogether discouraged. The soldiers there present, dismayed with the departure of their general, and sore charged by the janizaries, forsook their stations, and in haste fled to the same gate whereby Justinianus was entered; with the sight whereof the other soldiers, dismayed, ran thither by heaps also. But whilst they violently strive all together to get in at once, they so wedged one another in the entrance of the gate, that few of so great a multitude got in; in which so great a press and confusion of minds, eight hundred persons were there by them that followed trodden under foot, or thrust to death. The emperor himself, for safeguard of his life, flying with the rest in that press as a man not regarded, miserably ended his days, together with the Greek empire. His dead body was shortly In The Turks, encouraged by the flight of the Christians, presently advanced their ensigns upon the top of the uttermost wall, crying Victory; and by the breach entered as if it had been a great flood, which, having once found a breach in the bank, overfloweth and beareth down all before it; so the Turks, when they had won the utter wall, entered the city by the same gate that was opened for Justinianus, and by a breach which they had before made with their great artillery, and without mercy cutting in pieces all that came in their way, without further resistance became lords of that most famous and imperial city. this fury of the barbarians perished many thousands of men, women, and children, without respect of age, sex, or condition. Many, for safeguard of their lives, fled into the temple of Sophia, where they were all without pity slain, except some few reserved by the barbarous victors to purposes more grievous than death itself. The rich and beautiful ornaments and jewels of that most sumptuous and magnificent church (the stately building of Justinianus the emperor) were, in the turning of a hand, plucked down and carried away by the Turks; and the church itself, built for God to be honoured in, for the present converted into a stable for their horses, or a place for the execution of their abominable and unspeakable filthiness; the image of the crucifix was also by them taken down, and a Turk's cap put upon the head thereof, and so set up and shot at with their arrows, and afterwards, in great derision, carried about in their camp, as it had been in procession, with drums playing before it, railing and spitting at it, and calling it the God of the Christians, which I note not so much done in contempt of the image, as in despite of Christ and the Christian re- whence they had nothing either to hope ligion.-History of the Turks. [EDWARD GIBBON. 1737-1794.] or fear? Their siege was more reasonably directed against the northern and western sides of the city. Godfrey of Bouillon erected his standard on the first swell of Mount Calvary; to the left, as far as St. CONQUEST OF JERUSALEM BY Stephen's gate, the line of attack was con THE CRUSADERS. JERUSALEM has derived some reputation from the number and importance of her memorable sieges. It was not till after a long and obstinate contest that Babylon and Rome could prevail against the obstinacy of the people, the craggy ground that might supersede the necessity of fortifications, and the walls and towers that would have fortified the most accessible plain. These obstacles were diminished in the age of the crusades. The bulwarks had been completely destroyed and imperfectly restored: the Jews, their nation and worship, were for ever banished; but nature is less changeable than man, and the site of Jerusalem, though somewhat softened and somewhat removed, was still strong against the assaults of an enemy. By the experience of a recent siege, and a three years' possession, the Saracens of Egypt had been taught to discern, and in some degree to remedy, the defects of a place which religion as well as honour forbade them to resign. Aladin or Iftikhar, the caliph's lieutenant, was intrusted with the defence; his policy strove to restrain the native Christians by the dread of their own ruin and that of the holy sepulchre; to animate the Moslems by the assurance of temporal and eternal rewards. His garrison is said to have consisted of forty thousand Turks and Arabians; and if he could muster twenty thousand of the inhabitants, it must be confessed that the besieged were more numerous than the besieging army. Had the diminished strength and numbers of the Latins allowed them to grasp the whole circumference of four thousand yardsabout two English miles and a half-to what useful purpose should they have descended into the valley of Ben Himmon and torrent of Cedron, or approached the precipices of the south and east, from tinued by Tancred and the two Roberts; and Count Raymond established his quarters from the citadel to the foot of Mount Sion, which was no longer included within the precincts of the city. On the fifth day, the crusaders made a general assault, in the fanatic hope of battering down the walls without engines, and of scaling them without ladders. By the dint of brutal force, they burst the first barrier, but they were driven back with shame and slaughter to the camp; the influence of vision and prophecy was deadened by the too fre quent abuse of those pious stratagems, and time and labour were found to be the only means of victory. The time of the siege was indeed fulfilled in forty days, but they were forty days of calamity and anguish. A repetition of the old complaint of famine may be imputed in some degree to the voracious or disorderly appetite of the Franks, but the stony soil of Jerusalem is almost destitute of water; the scanty springs and hasty torrents were dry in the summer season; nor was the thirst of the besiegers relieved, as in the city, by the artificial supply of cisterns and aqueducts. The circumjacent country is equally destitute of trees for the uses of shade or building, but some large beams were discovered in a cave by the crusaders: a wood near Sichem, the enchanted grove of Tasso, was cut down; the necessary timber was transported to the camp by the vigour and dexterity of Tancred; and the engines were framed by some Genoese artists, who had fortunately landed in the harbour of Jaffa. Two movable turrets were constructed at the expense and in the stations of the Duke of Lorraine and the Count of Tholouse, and rolled forwards with devout labour, not to the most accessible, but to the most neglected parts of the fortification. Raymond's tower was reduced to ashes by the fire of the besieged, but his colleague was more vigilant gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused. Before he spoke, the orator engaged on his side the affections of a public or private audience. They applauded his commanding presence, his majestic aspect, his piercing eye, his gracious smile, his flowing beard, his countenance that painted every sensation of the soul, and his gestures that enforced each expression of the tongue. In the familiar offices of life he scrupulously adhered to the grave and ceremonious politeness of his country: his respectful attention to the rich and powerful was dignified by his condescension and affability to the poorest citizens of Mecca ; the frankness of his manner concealed the artifice of his views; and the habits of courtesy were imputed to personal friendship or universal benevolence. His memory was capacious and retentive, his wit easy and social, his imagination sublime, his judgment clear, rapid, and decisive. He possessed the courage both of thought and action; and although his designs might gradually expand with his success, the first idea which he entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an origi and successful; the enemies were driven by his archers from the rampart; the drawbridge was let down; and on a Friday, at three in the afternoon, the day and hour of the Passion, Godfrey of Bouillon stood victorious on the walls of Jerusalem. His example was followed on every side by the emulation of valour; and about four hundred and sixty years after the conquest of Omar, the holy city was rescued from the Mohammedan yoke. In the pillage of public and private wealth, the adventurers had agreed to respect the exclusive property of the first occupant; and the spoils of the great mosque-seventy lamps and massy vases of gold and silverrewarded the diligence and displayed the generosity of Tancred. A bloody sacrifice was offered by his mistaken votaries to the God of the Christians: resistance might provoke, but neither age nor sex could mollify their implacable rage; they indulged themselves three days in a promiscuous massacre, and the infection of the dead bodies produced an epidemical disease. After seventy thousand Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in their synagogue, they could still reserve a mul-nal and superior genius. The son of Abtitude of captives whom interest or lassitude persuaded them to spare. Of these savage heroes of the cross, Tancred alone betrayed some sentiments of compassion; yet we may praise the more selfish lenity of Raymond, who granted a capitulation and safe-conduct to the garrison of the citadel. The holy sepulchre was now free; and the bloody victors prepared to accom-reading and writing; the common ignoplish their vow. Bareheaded and barefoot, with contrite hearts, and in a humble posture, they ascended the hill of Calvary amidst the loud anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the Saviour of the world, and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monument of their redemption.—Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. CHARACTER OF MOHAMMED. ACCORDING to the tradition of his companions, Mohammed was distinguished by the beauty of his person-an outward dallah was educated in the bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect of Arabia; and the fluency of his speech was corrected and enhanced by the practice of discreet and seasonable silence. With these powers of eloquence, Mohammed was an illiterate barbarian; his youth had never been instructed in the arts of rance exempted him from shame or reproach, but he was reduced to a narrow circle of existence, and deprived of those faithful mirrors which reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes. Yet the book of nature and of man was open to his view; and some fancy has been indulged in the political and philosophical observations which are ascribed to the Arabian traveller. He compares the nations and religions of the earth; discovers the weakness of the Persian and Roman monarchies; beholds with pity and indi nation the degeneracy of the times; a resolves to unite, under one God and |