I shall not be thought to need apology for quoting here the stanzas in which Praed has described this scene--a scene among the most affecting, as well as the most striking, that history supplies. It makes us reflect on the desolate position of Arminius, with his wife and child captives in the enemy's hands, and with his brother a renegade in arms against him. The great liberator of our German race stood there, with every source of human happiness denied him, except the consciousness of doing his duty to his country. "Back, back! he fears not foaming flood Who fears not steel-clad line:-- No warrior thou of German blood, No brother thou of mine. Go, earn Rome's chain to load thy neck, Her gems to deck thy hilt; And blazon honour's hapless wreck With all the gauds of guilt. "But wouldst thou have ME share the prey? By all that I have done,-- The Varian bones that day by day Lie whitening in the sun, The legion's trampled panoply, The eagle's shattered wing,-- I would not be for earth or sky So scorn'd and mean a thing. "Ho, call me here the wizard, boy, Of dark and subtle skill, To agonise but not destroy, To curse, but not to kill. When swords are out, and shriek and shout, Leave little room for prayer, No fetter on man's arm or heart Hangs half so heavy there. "I curse him by the gifts the land Hath won from him and Rome-- The riving axe, the wasting brand, Rent forest, blazing home. I curse him by our country's gods, The terrible, the dark, The breakers of the Roman rods, The smiters of the bark. "Oh misery, that such a ban On such a brow should be! Why comes he not in battle's van His country's chief to be?-- To stand a comrade by my side, The sharer of my fame, And worthy of a brother's pride And of a brother's name? "But it is past!--where heroes press And cowards bend the knee Arminius is not brotherless; His brethren are the free. They come around: one hour, and light Will fade from turf and tide, Then onward, onward to the fight With darkness for our guide. "To-night, to-night, when we shall meet In combat face to face, Then only would Arminius greet The renegade's embrace. The canker of Rome's guilt shall be Upon his dying name; And as he lived in slavery, So shall he fall in shame.