The repeated unsuccessful attacks of the French wore out the patience of
their general, and so thinned his ranks, that he at length ceased to
contend, and drew off his troops from the field, leaving the English
masters of it, and holding every point of the position which they had
taken up in the early part of the day.--_Tales of Military Life_.

* * * * *



RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS.

* * * * *


CHURCH SPIRES.

(_For the Mirror_.)


Mr. Bentham, in his "History of Ely Cathedral," says, that one of the
earliest spires of which we have any account, "is that of old St. Paul's,
finished in the year 1222." This spire was of timber covered with lead;
"but, not long after, they began to build them of stone, and to finish all
their buttresses in the same manner." Mr. Murphy observes that spires were
introduced in the 12th century, about the time that the practice of
burying in churches became general over Europe; and he supposes that the
pyramidal form of the spire, was used as the denotation of a church
comprising a cemetery. This representation he imagines to have been
borrowed "from the ancient Egyptians, who placed the pyramid over their