as some of you may have gone already, to Battle; and there from off the
Abbey grounds, or from Mountjoye behind, look down off what was then "The
Heathy Field," over the long slopes of green pasture and the rich hop-
gardens, where were no hop-gardens then, and the flat tide-marshes
winding between the wooded heights, towards the southern sea; and imagine
for yourselves the feelings of an Englishman as he contemplates that
broad green sloping lawn, on which was decided the destiny of his native
land. Here, right beneath, rode Taillefer up the slope before them all,
singing the song of Roland, tossing his lance in air and catching it as
it fell, with all the Norse berserker spirit of his ancestors flashing
out in him, at the thought of one fair fight, and then purgatory, or
Valhalla--Taillefer perhaps preferred the latter. Yonder on the left, in
that copse where the red-ochre gully runs, is Sanguelac, the drain of
blood, into which (as the Bayeux tapestry, woven by Matilda's maids,
still shows) the Norman knights fell, horse and man, till the gully was
bridged with writhing bodies for those who rode after. Here, where you
stand--the crest of the hill marks where it must have been--was the
stockade on which depended the fate of England. Yonder, perhaps, stalked
out one English squire or house-carle after another: tall men with long-
handled battle-axes--one specially terrible, with a wooden helmet which
no sword could pierce--who hewed and hewed down knight on knight, till
they themselves were borne to earth at last. And here, among the trees
and ruins of the garden, kept trim by those who know the treasure which
they own, stood Harold's two standards of the fighting-man and the dragon
of Wessex. And here, close by (for here, for many a century, stood the
high altar of Battle Abbey, where monks sang masses for Harold's soul),
upon this very spot the Swan-neck found her hero-lover's corpse. "Ah,"
says many an Englishman--and who will blame him for it--"how grand to
have died beneath that standard on that day!" Yes, and how right. And
yet how right, likewise, that the Norman's cry of _Dexaie_!--"God