was all spent but a barrel or two; but this only the captains knew at the time. 66 Very well, then," cries Sir Bevill, leaping up gayly. "Come along, boys-we must do it this time." And, the troop forming, once more the trumpets sounded the charge, and up we went. Away along the slope we heard the other trumpeters sounding in answer, and I believe 'twas a sursum corda! to all of us. Billy Pottery was ranged on my right, in the first rank, and next to me, on the other side, a giant, near seven foot high, who said his name was Anthony Payne and his business to act as body servant to Sir Bevill. And he it was that struck up a mighty curious song in the Cornish tongue, which the rest took up with a will. 'Twas incredible how it put fire into them all : and Sir Bevill toss'd his hat into the air, and after him like schoolboys we pelted, straight for the masses ahead. For now over the rampart came a company of red musketeers, and two of russet-clad pikemen, charging down on us. A moment, and we were crushed back: another, and the chant rose again. We were grappling, hand to hand, in the midst of their files. But, good lack! what use is swordsmanship in a charge like this? The first redcoat that encounter'd me I had spitted through the lung, and, carried on by the rush, he twirled me round like a windmill. In an instant I was pass'd; the giant stepping before me and clearing a space about him, using his pike as if 'twere a flail. With a wrench I tugg'd my sword out and followed. I saw Sir Bevill, a little to the left, beaten to his knee, and carried toward me. Stretching out a hand I pull'd him on his feet again, catching, as I did so, a crack on the skull that would have ended me, had not Billy Pottery put up his pike and broke the force of it. Next, I remember gripping another redcoat by the beard and thrusting at him with shorten'd blade. Then the giant ahead lifted his pike high, and we fought to rally round it; and with that I seem'd caught off my feet and swept forward; - and we were on the crest. Taking breath, I saw the enemy melting off the summit like a man's breath off a pane. And Sir Bevill caught my hand and pointed across to where, on the north side, a white standard embroider'd with gold griffins was mounting. ""Tis dear Nick Slanning!" he cried; "God be prais'd the day is ours for certain!" LIBERTY OF PRINTING. BY JOHN MILTON. (From the "Areopagitica.”) BOOKS are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. . Unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and, if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather than a life... As the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits, and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for not without dust and heat. . . . Seeing therefore that those books, and those in great abun |