push it a little into shape, exclaimed--half mournfully, half jocularly--"Well, well, to the punishment of the usurper this indenture witnesseth." The Duke of Norfolk--our old friend the jockey--shared his master's fate, or rather had a similar fate all to himself, though as he received the fatal crack, he expressed a wish that he might be allowed to split the difference. The fierce and interesting battle we are now speaking of was one of those short but sharp transactions, which leave their marks no less upon posterity than upon the heads and helmets of the warriors engaged in the fearful contest. The great importance of the event deserves something more than the prosaic narrative in which we have recorded it; and having sent our boy to the Pierian spring with a pitcher, for the purpose of getting it filled with the source of inspiration, we proceed to attempt a poetical account of the Battle of Bos-worth. The celebrated Mr. Thomas Babington Macaulay has, we acknowledge, kindled our poetic fire, by his "Lays of Ancient Rome;" and our imagination having been once set in a blaze it must needs continue to burn, unless, by blowing out our brains, we put a suicidal extinguisher on the flame. Philosophy, however, teaches us that "_L'ame est un feu qu'il faut nourrir_" (Voltaire) and _alere flammam_ is a suggestion so familiar to our youth, that we do not scruple to throw an entire scuttle of the coals of encouragement upon the incipient flame of our poetic genius. We know that poetry is often an idle pursuit, and that he is generally lazy who addicts himself to the composition of lays, but the Battle of Bosworth Field is an event which fully deserves to have poetical justice done to it. Following the example of the illustrious model, whose style we consider it no humility, but rather an audacity, to imitate, we will suppose the recital to be made some time after the event has occurred, and we will imagine some veteran stage manager giving directions for, or superintending the rehearsal of, a grand dramatic representation of one of the grandest and--if we may be allowed the privilege of a literary smasher in coming a word--the dramaticest battles in English history. "Ho! trumpets, sound a note or two! Ho! prompter, clear the stage! A chord, there, in the orchestra: The battle we must wage. Your gallant supers marshal out-- Yes, I must see them all; The rather lean, the very stout, The under-sized, the tall: The Yorkites in the centre, Lancastrians in the rear, Not yet the staff must enter-- The stage, I charge ye, clear Those warriors in the green-room Must have an extra drill; Where's Richard's gilt-tipp'd baton? They charged it in the bill.