Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land;
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

5. – CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.

[The following spirited lyric commemorates a famous exploit of a portion of the British army during one of the most famous actions of the Crimean War. It will be noted that the galloping dactylic movement of the verse is specially suited to the description of the action.]

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.
Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed ? 2
Not 3 though the soldiers knew

Some one had blundered !
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die: -
Into the valley of Death

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them,

Volleyed and thundered ;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode, and well;
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell,

Rode the six hundred.

Flashed all their sabers bare,
Flashed as they turned in air,
Sabering the gunners there,
Charging an army, while

All the world wondered :
Plunged in the battery-smoke,
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the saber-stroke,

Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back — but not,

Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them

Volleyed and thundered ;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well

Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,

Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade!
Oh, the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made !
Honor the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred !

6. – THE EAGLE.

FRACMENT.

He clasps the crag with hookéd hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.

XIX. - WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

LIFE AND WORKS.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY was born July 18, 1811, at Calcutta, where his father resided as a civil servant of the British East India Company. His mother was Anne Becher, whose father was also in the Company's service. She married early, and was only nineteen when her son William Makepeace was born.

He was brought a child from India, and was sent early to the famous Charter House School in London. A schoolfellow speaks of him at this time as "a pretty, gentle, and rather timid boy.” Though he had afterwards a scholarlike knowledge of Latin, he did not attain distinction in the school. With the boys who knew him, Thackeray was popular; but he had no skill in games, or taste for them. While still a school. boy he became known for his skill in making verses, chiefly parodies. One of these was a parody on a poem of L. E. L.'s, about“ Violets, dark blue violets.” Thackeray's version was “Cabbages, bright green cabbages,” and his classmates thought it very witty.

When eighteen years of age (1829), Thackeray was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. A little periodical called The Snob was, during that year, brought out in Cambridge, and Thackeray took a hand in editing it. Tennyson was at this time in his last year at Trinity; and it will be remembered, that, in our sketch of the poet, it was mentioned that Tennyson that year won the chancellor's medal for a prize poem on “Timbuctoo.” In The Snob, Thackeray published some burlesque lines on the prize subject. In two of the stanzas there is fairly good fun; as,

“ In Africa

a quarter of the world Men's skins are black; their hair is crisped and curled; And somewhere there, unknown to public view, A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo.

I see her tribes the hill of glory mount,
And sell their sugars on their own account;
While round her throne the prostrate nations come,
Sue for her rice, and barter for her rum.”

After a year's study at Cambridge, Thackeray was withdrawn from college; and he spent the next two years at Weimar and in Paris, studying drawing, it being the desire of his heart to become an artist.

Though he never learned to draw in the technical sense, he acquired a peculiar talent for making effective sketches. Later on, he illustrated his own books; and these plates, while very incorrect as delineations, are excellent as illustrations.

Dickens has informed us that he first met Thackeray in 1835, on which occasion the young artist aspirant, looking, no doubt, after profitable employment, “proposed to become the illustrator of my earliest book.” It is singular that such should have been the first interview between the two great novelists. The offer was rejected by “Boz."

When Thackeray came of age (1832), he inherited a considerable fortune; but in a year or two it all passed through his hands, partly from the failure of an India