St. David is as quickly despatched. This champion enters Wales to crush the pagans there. He wears a leek in his helmet, and his followers adopt the same fashion, in order that friend may be distinguished from foe. The doughty saint, of course, comes conqueror out of the battle, but he is in a heated state, gets a chill and dies after all of a common cold. Bruce, returning safe from exploring the Nile, to break his neck by falling down his own stairs, hardly presents a more practical bathos than this. Why the leek became the badge of Welshmen need not be further explained. It is singular that in recounting the manner of the death of the next champion, St. Denis, the romancer is less romantic than common tradition. He tells us how the knight repaired to then pagan France; how he was accused of being a Christian, by another knight of what we should fancy a Christian order, St. Michael, and how the pagan king orders St. Denis to be beheaded, in consequence. There are wonders in the heavens, at this execution, which convert the heathen sovereign to Christianity; but no mention is made of St. Denis having walked to a monastery, after his head was off, and _with_ his head under his arm. Of this prodigy Voltaire remarked, “Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coute,” but of that the romancer makes no mention. St. James suffers by being shut up in his chapel in Spain, and starved to death, by order of the Atheist king. Anthony dies quietly in a good old age, in Italy; St. Andrew is beheaded by the cruel pagan Scots whom, in his old age, he had visited, in order to bring them to conversion: and St. George, who goes on, riding down wild monsters and rescuing timid maidens, to the last--and his inclination, was always in the direction of the maidens--ultimately meets his death by the sting of a venomous dragon. And now it would seem that two or three hundred years ago, authors were very much like the actors in the _Critic_, who when they _did_ get hold of a good thing, could never give the public enough of it. Accordingly, the biography of the Seven Champions was followed by that of their sons. I will spare my readers the turbulent details: they will probably be satisfied with learning that the three sons of St. George became kings, “according as the fairy queen had prophesied to them,” and that Sir Turpin, son of David, Sir Pedro, son of James, Sir Orlando, son of Anthony, Sir Ewen, son of Andrew, Sir Phelim, son of Patrick, and Sir Owen, son of David, like their sires, combated with giants, monsters, and dragons; tilted and tournamented in honor of the ladies, did battle in defence of Christianity, relieved the distressed, annihilated necromancers and table-turners, in short, accomplished all that could be expected from knights of such prowess and chivalry.