mighty blade. The sound of his magic horn still seems to echo around those rugged crests and pulse through those winding valleys, as it did on the day when, as legend says, it was borne to the ears of Charlemagne miles away, and warned him of the deadly peril of his favorite chieftain.

Its sound

This horn had supernatural powers. was so intense as to split all other horns. The story goes that Roland, himself sadly wounded, his fellows falling thickly around him, blew upon it so mighty a blast that the veins and nerves of his neck burst under the effort. The sound reached the ears of Charlemagne, then encamped eight miles away, in the Val Carlos pass.

"It is Roland's horn," he cried. "He never blows it except the extremity be great. We must hasten to his aid."

"I have known him to sound it on light occasions," answered Ganalon, Roland's secret foe. "He is, porhaps, pursuing some wild beast, and the sound echoes through the wood. It would be fruitless to lead back your weary host to seek him."

Charlemagne yielded to his specious argument, and Roland and all his followers died. Charles afterwards discovered the body with the arms extended in the form of a cross, and wept over it his bitterest tears. "There did Charlemagne," says the legend, "mourn for Orlando to the very last day of his life. On the spot where he died he encamped and caused the body to be embalmed with balsam, myrrh, and aloes. The whole camp watched it that night, honoring his corpse with hymns and songs, and innumer

able torches and fires kindled in the adjacent mountains."

At the battle of Hastings the minstrel Taillefer, as we have elsewhere told, rode before the advancing Norman host, singing the "Song of Roland," till a British hand stilled his song and laid him low in death. This ancient song is attributed, though doubtfully, to Turold, that abbot of Peterborough who was so detested by Hereward the Wake. From it came many of the stories which afterwards were embodied in the epic legends of medieval days. To quote a few passages from it may not be amiss. The poet tells us that Roland refused to blow his magic horn in the beginning of the battle. In the end, when ruin and death were gathering fast around, and blood was flowing freely from his own veins, he set his lips to the mighty instrument, and filled vales and mountains with its sound.

"With pain and dolor, groan and pant,
Count Roland sounds his Olifant:
The crimson stream shoots from his lips;
The blood from bursten temple drips;
But far, oh, far, the echoes ring,
And in the defiles reach the king,
Reach Naymes and the French array;
"Tis Roland's horn,' the king doth say;
He only sounds when brought to bay.'
How huge the rocks! how dark and steep 1
The streams are swift; the valleys deep!
Out blare the trumpets, one and all,
As Charles responds to Roland's call.
Round wheels the king, with choler mad
The Frenchmen follow, grim and sad;

No one but prays for Roland's life,
Till they have joined him in the strife.
But, ah. what prayer can alter fate?
The time is past; too late! too late!"

The fight goes on. More of the warriors fall. Oliver dies. Roland and Turpin continue the fight. Once more a blast is sent from the magic horn.

"Then Roland takes his horn once more;

His blast is feebler than before,

But still it reaches the emperor

He hears it, and he halts to shout,

'Let clarions, one and all, ring out!'

Then sixty thousand clarions ring,
And rocks and dales set echoing.

And they, too, hear,-the pagan pack;

They force the rising laughter back:

'Charles, Charles,' they cry, 'is on our track!

They fly; and Roland stands alone,—

Alone, afoot; his steed is gone."

Turpin dies. Roland remains the sole survivor of the host, and he hurt unto death. He falls on the field in a swoon. A wounded Saracen rises, and, seeing him, says,

"Vanquished, he is vanquished, the nephew of Charles! There is his sword, which I will carry off to Arabia." He knew not the power of the dying hero.

"And as he makes to draw the steel,

A something does Sir Roland feel;
He opes his eyes, says nought but this,
'Thou art not one of us, I wis,'

Raises the horn he would not quit,

And cracks the pagan's skull with it.

...

And then the touch of death that steals
Down, down from head to heart he feels;
Under yon pine he hastes away

On the green turf his head to lay;
Placing beneath him horn and sword,
He turns towards the Paynim horde,
And there, beneath the pine, he sees
A vision of old memories;

A thought of realms he helped to win,
Of his sweet France, of kith and kin,

And Charles, his lord, who nurtured him."

And here let us take our leave of Roland the brave, whose brief story of fact has been rounded into so vast a story of fiction that the actual histories of few men equal in extent that of this hero of ro

mance.

CHARLEMAGNE AND THE

AVARS.

STRIKING is the story which the early centuries of modern Europe have to tell us. After the era of the busy building of empire in which the sturdy old Romans were the active agents, there came an era of the overthrow of empire, during which the vast results of centuries of active civilization seemed about to sink and be lost in the seething whirlpool of barbarism. The wild hordes of the north of Europe overflowed the rich cities and smiling plains of the south, and left ruin where they found wealth and splendor. Later, the half-savage nomades of eastern Europe and northern Asia—the devastating Huns-poured out upon the budding kingdoms which had succeeded the mighty empire of Rome, and threatened to trample under foot all that was left of the work of long preceding ages. Civilization had swung downward into barbarism; was barbarism to swing downward into savagery, and man return to his primitive state?

Against such a conceivable fate of Europe Charlemagne served as a mighty bulwark, and built by his genius an impermeable wall against the torrent of savage invasion, saying to its inflowing waves, "Thus