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"They are numberless," said Torfrida, in a serious and astonished voice, as she stood by Hereward's side. "Would they were!" said Hereward. "Let them come on, thick and threefold. The more their numbers the fatter will the fish below be before to-morrow morn- 5 ing. Look there, already!"

And already the bridge was swaying, and sinking beneath their weight. The men in places were ankle-deep in water. They rushed on all the more eagerly, and filled the sow, and swarmed up to its roof.

Then, what with its own weight, what with the weight of the laden bridge, which dragged upon it from behind, the huge sow began to tilt backward, and slide down the slimy bank. The men on the top tried vainly to keep their footing, to hurl grapnels into the rampart, 1 to shoot off their quarrels and arrows.

"You must be quick, Frenchmen,” shouted Hereward, in derision, "if you mean to come on board here."

The Normans knew that well; and as Hereward spoke, two panels in the front of the sow creaked on 20 their hinges, and dropped landward, forming two drawbridges, over which reeled to the attack a close body of knights, mingled with soldiers bearing scaling-ladders.

They recoiled. Between the ends of the drawbridges and the foot of the rampart was some two fathoms' 25 depth of black ooze. The catastrophe was come, and a shout of derision arose from the defenders above.

"Come on-leap it like men! Send back for your horses, knights, and ride them at it like bold huntsmen!"

The front rank could not but rush on; for the press-30 ure behind forced them forward, whether they would or not. In a moment they were wallowing waist-deep, trampled on, and disappearing under their struggling comrades, who disappeared in their turn.

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Look, Torfrida! If they plant their scaling-ladders, it will be on a foundation of their comrades' corpses." Torfrida gave one glance through the openings of the hoarding upon the writhing mass below, and turned away in horror. The men were not so merciful. Down between the hoarding-beams rained stones, javelins, arrows, increasing the agony and death. The scaling-ladders would not stand in the mire. If they had stood a moment, the struggles of the dying would have thrown them down; and still fresh victims pressed on from be-10 hind, shouting, "Dex Aie!" On to the gold of Ely!" And still the sow, under the weight, slipped farther and farther back into the stream, and the foul gulf widened between besiegers and besieged.

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At last one scaling-ladder was planted upon the bodies of the dead, and hooked firmly on the gunwale of the hoarding. Ere it could be hurled off again by the English, it was so crowded with men that even Hereward's strength was insufficient to lift it off. He stood at the top, ready to hew down the first comer; and he∞ hewed him down.

But the Normans were not to be daunted. Man after man dropped dead from the ladder-top-man after man took his place-sometimes two at a time; sometimes scrambling over each other's backs.

The English, cheered them with honest admiration. "You are fellows worth fighting, you French."

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"So we are," shouted a knight, the first and last who crossed that parapet; for, thrusting Hereward back with a blow of his sword-hilt, he staggered past him over the 30 hoarding, and fell on his knees. A dozen men were upon him; but he was up again and shouting:

"To me, men-at-arms! A Dade! a Dade!" But no man answered.

"Yield!" quoth Hereward.

Sir Dade answered by a blow on Hereward's helmet, which felled the chief to his knees, and broke the sword into twenty splinters.

"Well hit," said Hereward, as he rose. "Don't touch 5 him, men! this is my quarrel now. Yield, sir! you have done enough for your honor. It is madness to throw away your life."

The knight looked round on the fierce ring of faces, in the midst of which he stood alone.

"To none but Hereward."

"Hereward am I."

"Ah," said the knight, "had I but hit a little harder!" "You would have broken your sword into more splinters; my armor is enchanted; so yield like a reasonable 15 and valiant man."

"What care I?" said the knight, stepping onto the earthwork, and sitting down quietly. "I vowed to St. Mary and King William that into Ely I would get this day, and in Ely I am; so I have done my work.”

"And now you shall taste-as such a gallant knight deserves the hospitality of Ely."

It was Torfrida who spoke.

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"My husband's prisoners are mine; and I, when I find them such prudhommes as you are, have no lighter 25 chains for them than that which a lady's bower can afford."

Sir Dade was going to make an equally courteous answer, when over and above the shouts and curses of the combatants rose a yell so keen, so dreadful, as made all ∞ hurry forward to the rampart.

That which Hereward had foreseen was come at last. The bridge, strained more and more by its living burden and by the falling tide, had parted-not at the Ely end,

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where the sliding of the sow took off the pressure, but at the end nearest the camp. One sideway roll it gave, and then, turning over, ingulfed in that foul stream the flower of Norman chivalry, leaving a line, a full quarter of a mile in length, of wretches drowning in the dark 5 water, or, more hideous still, in the bottomless slime of peat and mud.

Thousands are said to have perished. Their armor and weapons were found at times, by delvers and dikers, for centuries after; are found at times unto this day, be-10 neath the rich drained corn-fields which now fill up that black half-mile, or in the bed of the narrow brook to which the West water, robbed of its streams by the Bedford Level, has dwindled down at last.

William, they say, struck his tents and departed forth-15 with, groaning from deep grief of heart; and so ended the first battle of Aldreth.

XXVI.

MAGNA CHARTA.

BY HENRY HALLAM.'

In the reign of John, all the rapacious exactions usual to the Norman kings were not only redoubled, but mingled with other outrages of tyranny still more intoler-20 able. These, too, were to be endured at the hands of a prince utterly contemptible for his folly and cowardice. One is surprised at the forbearance displayed by the barons, till they took arms at length in that confederacy which ended in establishing the Great Charter of Lib-25 erties. As this was the first effort towards a legal gov

ernment, so is it beyond comparison the most important event in our history, except that revolution without which its benefits would rapidly have been annihilated. The constitution of England has indeed no single date from which its duration is to be reckoned. The institutions of positive law, the far more important changes which time has wrought in the order of society, during six hundred years subsequent to the Great Charter, have undoubtedly lessened its direct application to our present circumstances. But it is still the key-stone of Eng-10 lish liberty. All that has since been obtained is little more than as confirmation or commentary; and if every subsequent law were to be swept away, there would still remain the bold features that distinguish a free from a despotic monarchy.

As far as we are guided by historical testimony, two great men, the pillars of our Church and State, may be considered as entitled beyond all the rest to the glory of this monument-Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and William, Earl of Pembroke. To their 20 temperate zeal for a legal government England was indebted, during that critical period, for the two greatest blessings that patriotic statesmen could confer the establishment of civil liberty upon an immovable basis, and the preservation of national independence under the 25 ancient line of sovereigns-which rasher men were about to exchange for the dominion of France.

By the Magna Charta of John, reliefs were limited to a certain sum, according to the rank of the tenant, the waste committed by guardians in chivalry restrained, 30 the disparagement in matrimony of female wards forbidden, and widows secured from compulsory marriage. These regulations, extending to the subvassals of the Crown, redressed the worst grievances of every military

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