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caresses us with its whole kindly heart, and passes onward, to caress likewise the next thing that it meets. There is a pervading blessing diffused over all the world. I look out of the window and think, "O perfect day! O beautiful world! O good God!" And such a day is the promise of a blissful eternity. Our Creator would never have made such weather, and given us the deep heart to enjoy it, above and beyond all thought, if He had not meant us to be immortal. It opens the gates of heaven, and gives us glimpses far inward.

Bless me! this flight has carried me a great way; so now let me come back to our old abbey. Our orchard is fast ripening; and the apples and great thumping pears strew the grass in such abundance that it becomes almost a trouble though a pleasant one-to gather them. This happy breeze, too, shakes them down, as if it flung fruit to us out of the sky; and often, when the air is perfectly still, I hear the quiet fall of a great apple. Well, we are rich in blessings, though poor in money....

Friday, October 6. — Yesterday afternoon I took a solitary walk to Walden Pond. It was a cool, windy day, with heavy clouds rolling and tumbling about the sky, but still a prevalence of genial autumn sunshine. The fields are still green, and the great masses of the woods have not yet assumed their many-colored garments; but here and there are solitary oaks of deep, substantial red, or maples of a more brilliant hue, or chestnuts either yellow or of a tenderer green than in summer. Some trees seem to return to their hue of May or early June before they put on the brighter autumnal tints. some places, along the borders of low and moist land, a whole range of trees were clothed in the perfect gorgeousness of autumn, of all shades of brilliant color, looking like the palette on which Nature was arranging the tints wherewith to paint a picture. These hues appeared to be thrown together

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without design; and yet there was perfect harmony among them, and a softness and a delicacy made up of a thousand different brightnesses. There is not, I think, so much contrast among these colors as might at first appear. The more you consider them, the more they seem to have one element among them all, which is the reason that the most brilliant display of them soothes the observer, instead of exciting him. And I know not whether it be more a moral effect or a physical one, operating merely on the eye; but it is a pen. sive gayety, which causes a sigh often, and never a smile. We never fancy, for instance, that these gayly-clad trees might be changed into young damsels in holiday attire, and betake themselves to dancing on the plain. If they were to undergo such a transformation, they would surely arrange themselves in funeral procession, and go sadly along, with their purple and scarlet and golden garments trailing over the withering grass. When the sunshine falls upon them, they seem to smile; but it is as if they were heart-broken. But it is in vain for me to attempt to describe these autumnal brilliancies, or to convey the impression which they make on me. I have tried a thousand times, and always without the slightest selfsatisfaction. Fortunately there is no need of such a record, for Nature renews the picture year after year; and even when we shall have passed away from the world, we can spiritually create these scenes, so that we may dispense with all efforts to put them into words.

Walden Pond was clear and beautiful as usual. It tempted me to bathe; and, though the water was thrillingly cold, it was like the thrill of a happy death. Never was there such transparent water as this. I threw sticks into it, and saw them float suspended on an almost invisible medium. It seemed as if the pure air were beneath them, as well as above. It is fit for baptisms; but one would not wish it to be polluted by having sins washed into it. None but angels should bathe

in it; but blessed babies might be dipped into its bosom.

In a small and secluded dell that opens upon the most beautiful cove of the whole lake, there is a little hamlet of huts or shanties, inhabited by the Irish people who are at work upon the railroad. There are three or four of these habitations, the very rudest, I should imagine, that civilized men ever made for themselves, - constructed of rough boards, with the protruding ends. Against some of them the earth is heaped up to the roof, or nearly so; and when the grass has had time to sprout upon them, they will look like small natural hillocks, or a species of ant-hills, something in which Nature has a larger share than man. These huts are placed beneath the trees, oaks, walnuts, and white-pines, wherever the trunks give them space to stand; and by thus adapting themselves to natural interstices, instead of making new ones, they do not break or disturb the solitude and seclusion of the place. Voices are heard, and the shouts and laughter of children, who play about like the sunbeams that come down through the branches. Women are washing in open spaces, and long lines of whitened clothes are extended from tree to tree, fluttering and gambolling in the breeze. A pig, in a sty even more extemporary than the shanties, is grunting and poking his snout through the clefts of his habitation. The household pots and kettles are seen at the doors; and a glance within shows the rough benches that serve for chairs, and the bed upon the

floor.

The visitor's nose takes note of the fragrance of a pipe. And yet, with all these homely items, the repose and sanctity of the old wood do not seem to be destroyed or profaned. It overshadows these poor people, and assimilates them somehow or other to the character of its natural inhabitants. Their presence did not shock me any more than if I had merely discovered a squirrel's nest in a tree. To be sure, it is a torment to see the great, high, ugly embankment of the railroad, which is here thrusting itself into the lake, or along its margin, in close vicinity to this picturesque little hamlet. I have seldom seen anything more beautiful than the cove on the border of which the huts are situated; and the more I looked, the lovelier it grew. The trees overshadowed it deeply; but on one side there was some brilliant shrubbery which seemed to light up the whole picture with the effect of a sweet and melancholy smile. I felt as if spirits were there, or as if these shrubs had a spiritual life. In short, the impression was indefinable; and, after gazing and musing a good while, I retraced my steps through the Irish hamlet, and plodded on along a wood-path.

According to my invariable custom, I mistook my way; and, emerging upon the road, I turned my back instead of my face towards Concord, and walked on very diligently till a guide-board informed me of my mistake. I then turned about, and was shortly overtaken by an old yeoman in a chaise, who kindly offered me a drive, and soon set me down in the village.

THE NORMAN CONQUEST.

HIS month of October completes

THIS

the eighth century since the battle of Hastings, perhaps the most important action that the modern world has known, with the single exception of the conflict that checked the advance of the Saracens in Europe in the eighth century, - if the battle of Tours can properly be considered an event of modern history. The issue of the battle of Hastings determined the course of English history; and when we observe how influential has been the part of England ever since it was fought, and bear in mind that the English race, great as it is, can scarcely be said to have got beyond the morning-time of its existence, we find it difficult to exaggerate the importance of a conflict by which its career for eight hundred years has been deeply and permanently colored. There is not a great event in English or American annals which is not directly traceable to what was done in the year 1066 by that buccaneering band which William the Bastard led from Normandy to England, to enforce a claim that had neither a legal nor a moral foundation, and which never could have been established had Harold's conduct been equal to his valor, and had Fortune favored the just cause. The sympathies of every fair-minded reader of the story of the Conquest must be with the Saxons; and yet is it impossible to deny that the event at Hastings was well for the world. It is with Harold as it is with Hannibal: our feelings are at war with our judgment as we read their histories. It is not possible to peruse the noble account that Dr. Arnold has left us of the Carthaginian's splendid struggle against the Roman aristocracy without feeling pained by its result. The feelings of men are with the man, and adverse to the order before which his genius failed. So is it with respect to Harold. Hastings, like

Zama, impresses us as having been a "dishonest victory," to borrow the words with which Milton so emphatically characterizes Charonea. But "cool reflection " leads to other conclusions, and justifies the earthly course of Providence, against which we are so often disposed to complain. There can be no doubt, in the mind of any moral man, that the invasion of England by Duke William was a wicked proceeding, that it was even worse than Walker's invasions of Spanish-American countries, and as bad as an unprovoked attack on Cuba by this country, such as would have been made had the pro-slavery party remained in power. But it is not the less true that much good came from William's action, and that nearly all that is excellent in English and American history is the fruit of that action. The part that England has had in the world's course for eight centuries, including her stupendous work of colonization, is second to nothing that has been done by any nation, not even to the doings of the Roman republic: and to that part Saxon England never could have been equal.

The race that ruled in England down to the day of Hastings — call it the Saxon race, if you like the name, and for convenience' sake - was a slow, a sluggish, and a stupid race; and it never could have made a firstclass nation of the insular kingdom. There is little in the history of the Saxons that allows us to believe they were capable of accomplishing anything that was great. The Danish invasions, as they are called, were of real use to England, as they prevented that country from reverting to barbarism, which assuredly would have been its fate had the Anglo-Saxons remained its undisturbed possessors. ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries," says Mr. Worsaae, the Anglo-Saxons

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wades and Norvegana 27 Normans are "ease be gerning race albatta, tea auty of Normandy Big voreman wig verled in Neustria aid, witty platta, the foremost people of frey and their descendCASAKOSA of France that ter koumen the later were doing in England. Crafter gave to the Formans a commeg ence in history that is denied to the Danes; but the infance of the latter was very great on Logosh life, and on the course of Engban events; and Norman influence on that life, and over those events, was materially aided by the earlier action of the Danish invaders of England. The cifference between the Northmen in France and the Northmen in England was this: the former, to a very great extent, became Frenchmen, while the latter did not become Englishmen. The former, from Northmen, became Normans, and took much from the people among whom they settled. The latter remained Northmen, for the

• An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in Ingland, Scotland, and Ireland, by J. J. Worsaae, Sec. 1 p. 6.

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iam & Crates. co. was very great. The Saron Bid was compelled to fight a bale with the Scandinavian invaders of England but twenty days before Hastings: and these invaders sought to place a Danish or Norwegian dynasty on the English throne. Harold was victorious in his conflict with the Northmen; but the weakness and exhaustion consequent on the exertions necessary to repel them were among the leading causes of his failure before the Normans.

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* "What we call purchase, permilitie," sags Blackstone, the feudists called conquest, conga.roto; both denoting any means of acquiring an estate ot of the common course of inheritance. And this is still the proper phrase in the law of Scotland, as it was among the Norman jurists, who styled the first purchaser that is, him who brought the estate into the family which at present owns it the conqueror, or conquereur, which seems to be all that was meant by the appellation which was given to William the Norman." Had Harold been victorious at Hastings, he would, according to the feudists, have been the Conqueror; that is, the man who brought England into his family.

said of them, too, without subscribing to the extravagant eulogies of their ardent admirers, who are too much in the habit of speaking of them in terms that would be misplaced were they applied to Athenians of the age of Pericles. The simple truth concerning them shows that they were superior in every respect to all their contemporaries, unless an exception be made on behalf of the Mussulmans of Spain. The Northmen who came first upon Southern Europe were mere barbarians, but there were among them men of great natural powers, as there were among those barbarians who overran the Roman empire; and they were able to take advantage of the wretched condition of Europe, as earlier barbarians had profited from the wretched condition of Rome. Of these men, Rollo was one of the most eminent; and beyond all others of the Northmen his action has had the largest influence on human affairs, - an influence, too, that promises to last; for it is working vigorously at this moment, though he has been more than nine centuries in his grave, and though to most persons he is as much a mythical character as Hercules, and more so than Romulus. We know that he was the founder of Normandy in the early part of the tenth century; and but for his action in obtaining a southern home for himself and his heathen followers, the conquest of England never could have been attempted in a regular manner; and the stream of English history must have run altogether differently, in a political sense, even had Northmen, as distinguished from Normans, succeeded in establishing themselves in that country. It was the French character of the Normans which rendered their subjugation of England so important an event, giving to it its peculiar significance, and causing it to bear so strongly on European, Asiatic, and American history. The Northmen became Christians and Normans. It is not uncommon to speak of them as if they retained their Norwegian characteristics in the pleasant land of France," and

were in the habit of looking back to the home of their youth, or of their fathers, with that sort of fondness and regret which were felt by those Englishmen who founded the American nation. This is all wrong. The Northmen had left the North for the same reason that other men leave their countries, the only reason that ever causes them to do so, because the North did not afford them means of support. Had they remained at home, they would have starved; and therefore they turned their backs on that home, and became plunderers. Some returned home, bearing with them much spoil; but others settled abroad, and thought no more of the North. They cut the connection entirely. Like an earlier "brood of winter," they found ample compensation for all they had left behind in "the brighter day and skies of azure hue" of Southern lands. They thought they had made a good exchange of “Northern pines for Southern roses."

Of these last, the Normans proper were the most noted, and they have the first place of all their race in the world's annals. They changed in everything, from soul to skin. They became Christians, and they took new names. Their original language was soon displaced by the French, and became so utterly lost that hardly more is known of it than we know of the Etruscan tongue. "The Danish language," says Sir Francis Palgrave, was never prevalent or strong in Normandy. The Northmen had long been talking themselves into Frenchmen; and in the second generation, the half-caste Northmen, the sons of French wives and French concubines, spoke the RomaneFrench as their mothers' tongue." The same great authority says: "In the cities, Bayeux only excepted, hardly any language but French was spoken. Forty years after Rollo's establishment, the Danish language struggled for existence. It was in Normandy that the Langue d'oil acquired its greatest polish and regularity. The earliest specimens of the French language, in the

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