pattern-books once so well-known to him. It was all patches of land, and between those patches intersections of streams. Indeed, the country had nothing of the regularity of a tailor's patternbook, for the patches were of various shapes, and the intersecting streams running in all directions: the country between the Alps and the Po has ever been a doubtful and spongy sort of land whereon to struggle for the award of victory.

Hawkwood was retreating, but the Adige, the Mincio, and the Oglio were yet to be crossed when the Governor of Milan, Giacopo del Verme, came upon him with his conquering legions. He sat mute and observant: the hazard was extreme. He could not cross the rivers without first beating a vastly superior enemy: to attempt it after a defeat would have been utter destruction. He therefore did nothing but bide his time; and when the enemy had become weary of looking on at him, and had learned to despise him, he suddenly fell upon them with a power against which there was so little preparation that, having thrashed his foe into a condition that made immediate pursuit impossible, he struck his tents and crossed the Oglio, under no worse fire than the sarcasms of his sore and helpless antagonists.

He went on, picking his way, until he reached a plain which was surrounded by the dykes of the Po, the Mincio, and the Adige, and lying below the level of those rivers. The dykes of the last river had been pre-occupied and fortified by the foe; the stream of the river too was broad and rapid, and when Hawk wood had surmounted all other obstacles he was terribly puzzled as to how he was to overcome this. The puzzle was not made easier to him when, on the little eminence on which he and his little army were stationed, like rats upon a brick in a flooded sewer, he beheld the entire plain turning into a lake. The progress of the change worked like a dissolving view at the Polytechnic; and, when the ex-tailor felt the water percolating through the lower chinks of his leg-armour, he was thoroughly satisfied, or rather dissatisfied, that his opponent was playing him a sorry

joke. "Nay," cries he, on second thoughts, "it is not so; the men shall not catch so much as a cold!"

The dykes had been cut, and he forthwith began himself to cut out a plan of triumph. He would neither be starved, nor beaten nor moistened into submission. So he averred; and he had just declared as much when a messenger from the hostile leader, who occupied the only strip of land on which a man could walk dryshod, sent by that road and messenger a present, which was delivered into Hawkwood's own hands: it was a fox shut up in a cage! "Umph!" lowed the Essex calf, "it may be that I am a bit of a fox, and Reynard may know a trail that will take him safe home, and may spoil the sport of his pursuers by a 'stole away.""

He at all events went boldly in the darkness of that same night to look for one. He and his men plunged into the water, and waded through it in a direction parallel to the dykes of the Adage. Through mud and water up to the horse-girths, and across trenches, which engulfed the heavier men, who could not clear them, they all waded on; and, when the second night had nearly been spent, and numbers had been lost by cold, fatigue and hunger, the survivors --the almost despairing infantry-clinging on to the tails of the horses which floundered before them, at length emerged again on to dry ground, upon the Paduan frontier.

The enemy did not dare to follow him in his hazardous undertaking, which had, as it deserved, so successful an issue. But even that enemy acknowledged that there was not a commander in Italy who, for bravery and for resources in moments of difficulty, could for a moment compare with Hawkwood the Tailor.

If Florence enjoyed an unusually lengthened term of peace and prosperity, the happy result was chiefly owing to the gallantry of Hawkwood and his men. The value which the State set upon his services was exemplified when Florence disbanded all her foreign mercenaries, save John of the Needle and one thousand men, the Macedonian phalanx of the land.

His unwonted ease however was not to the taste of the active

soldier. He had ever been in turmoil, and could not exist without it. What says the old naval captain in the French song?—

A présent, que je suis en retraite,
Je me vois forcé de végéter;

Et bien souvent tout seul je tempête
De n'avoir jamais à tempêter.
Un vieux compagnon de lame,
Aussi folâtre que moi,

Me dit de prendre une femme :

Eh! mais pas si mal, ma foi!
Car j'aime le tapage-

Et je suis tapageur."

Just so with honest John. He had passed the best years of his life in war, and he could not do without at least a little healthy skirmishing; and he provided that which he had hitherto lacked, by taking a wife, and that wife a dark-eyed, lightning-tongued Italian. The lady, Bianca Sforza, and domestic controversy, kept him from "growing pursy," like Sir Giles; and there was ever a very hot fire at the hearth of the tanner's gallant son of Sible Hedingham.

In his later days he did what retired veterans are apt to do, and are wise in their aptness. He took to meditation, and, not to attending Bible societies, as hearty old admirals do now, but to not less praiseworthy service, a sample of which may be seen in his foundation of the English hospital at Rome for the reception of poor travellers. The funds, I believe, still exist, though they are diverted from the purpose contemplated by the founder.

It would serve, he thought, to balance much of a heavy account with heaven: and he was comforted in that direction by those most skilful drawers of wills, the Romish priests. Having settled this matter, and feeling, like the Irish gentleman on his death-bed, that he had nothing to lay to his charge, for he had never denied himself anything, he calmly died in the Strada Pulverosa, in Florence, in the year 1393. He was buried with a

magnificence that perhaps has never been surpassed. The very details of it dazzle the mental vision; and I will, therefore, leave my readers to conceive of it under the shadow of imagination. He was finally laid to rest in the Church of the Reparata, beneath a tomb in which there is metal enough to make thimbles for all the tailors in Christendom.

There is a cenotaph in honor of the hero in Sible Hedingham church. It is a profusely ornamented memorial, with the pretty conceit of the sort so dear to our forefathers, of hawks flying through a wood. It is due to him in whose honor it was erected, to say that if friends declared his almost superhuman courage and ability, hostile writers conceded with alacrity to the eulogy flung upon him in showers.

There is in Essex a manor of Hawkwood, which is supposed to owe its name to the gallant tailor-soldier; and the house on which, was reputed to have been built by his heirs. It is ascertained, however, that this manor of Hawkwood was so known in the reign of King John; and, perhaps, the renowned John's ancestors originally came from its vicinity, and took its name for a surname, when surnames were rare, and they hardly knew what to call themselves. One author, indeed, has suggested that the received story of the lowly origin of Hawkwood is all fiction, and that he was really of gentle blood. But, I protest against any such suggestion; for, in that case, what would become of all this history I have been telling?

In sober seriousness, the main facts are doubtless as they have been told. They are not mere romantic details of romantic times. In much later days we have heard of tailors turning out heroes, There is no worthier illustration of this fact that I can remember, than "daring Dörfling;" and his little story I will briefly tell, if my readers will only vouchsafe me ear and patience; as Crispin "Cela ne sera pas long."

says,

GEORGE DÖRFLING,

THE MARTIAL TAILOR.

"Of stature tall, and straightly fashion'd;
Like his desire, lift upwards, and divine."

MARLOWE: Tamburlaine.

GEORGE DÖRFLING was born in Bohemia, in the

year 1606. It is popularly said in that country, that when a child is born there, a fairy presents herself at his side and offers him a purse and a violin, leaving to him to choose which gift most pleases him. According as he makes his selection, is his future character determined. If he takes the fiddle, he turns out a musician. If he grasps at the purse, he invariably becomes a thief. Every Bohemian is declared to be either the one or the other. I may add, that under the shadow of the Hradschin, I have met with "Czeks" who were both, and with very many who were neither.

I fancy that at Dörfling's birth there was much confusion, both in the domestic and the magic circle. In the former there must have been something peculiarly wrong. George could make no Shandean calculations touching his birth, for he never knew his parents' names; and as he turned out neither player nor robber, except on a very heroic scale, the fairies do not appear to have afforded him the usual exercise of judgment which they commonly permitted to discriminating infants.

There was one thing, however, of which young George would not doubt. He felt quite sure that he was born. He had no hesitation upon that question; and he was a philosopher of the Des