_Harold_-- And fighting for And dying for the people---- Look, I will bear thy blessing into the battle And front the doom of God. And he did affront it bravely; and the arrow did slay him, near to the spot where the Saxon standard flew to the breeze on that fateful day. The play from which I have quoted may have excess of elaboration and an over-finesse in respect of details: but there are great bold reaches of descriptive power, a nobility of sentiment, and everywhere tender and winning touches, which will be very sure to give to the drama of Tennyson permanence and historic dignity, and keep it always a literary way-mark in the fields we have gone over. The scene of that decisive contest is less than a two hours’ ride away from London (by the Southeastern Railway) at a village called Battle--seven miles from the coast line at Hastings--in the midst of a beautiful rolling country, with scattered copses of ancient wood and a great wealth of wild flowers--(for which the district is remarkable) sparkling over the fields. The Conqueror built a great abbey there--Battle Abbey--whose ruins are visited by hundreds every year. A large portion of the old religious house, kept in excellent repair, and very charming with its growth of ivy and its embowering shade, is held in private hands--being the occasional residence of the Duke of Cleveland. Amid the ruins the usher will guide one to a crypt of the ancient chapel--whose solid Norman arches date back to the time of the Conqueror, and which is said to mark the very spot on which Harold fell, wounded to the death, on that memorable day of Hastings. CHAPTER II. I recur a moment to what was said in our opening talk--as a boy will wisely go back a little way for a better jump forward. I spoke--the reader will remember--of ringing, Celtic war-songs, which seemed to be all of literature that was drifting in the atmosphere, when we began: then there came a gleam of Christian light and of monkish learning thro’ St. Augustine in Southern England; and another gleam through Iona, and Lindisfarne, from Irish sources; then came Cædmon’s Bible singing,--which had echo far down in Milton’s day; next the good old Beda, telling the story of these things; then--a thousand years ago,--the Great Alfred, at once a book-maker and a King. Before him and after him came a dreary welter of Danish wars; the great Canute--tradition says--chirping a song in the middle of them; and last, the slaughter of Hastings, where the Saxon Harold went down, and the conquering Norman came up. _Geoffrey of Monmouth._