usual dish at the first course at dinner was a large _bore's head_,
upon a silver platter, with minstralsaye." In one of the carols we read
that the boar's head is "the rarest dish in all the londe, and that it
has been provided in honour of the king of bliss."

* * * * *


THE RIVER SCHELDT.


In all former times, and centuries before the labour of Napoleon had
added so immensely to its importance, the Scheldt had been the centre
of the most important preparations for the invasion of England, and the
spot on which military genius always fixed from whence to prepare a
descent on this island. An immense expedition, rendered futile by the
weakness and vacillation of the French monarch, was assembled in it in
the fourteenth century; and sixty thousand men on the shore of the
Scheldt awaited only the signal of Charles VI. to set sail for the shore
of Kent. The greatest naval victory ever gained by the English arms was
that at Sluys, 1340, when Philip of France lost 30,000 men and 230
ships of war in an engagement off the Flemish coast with Edward III.,
a triumph greater, though less noticed in history, than either that
of Cressy or Poictiers. When the great Duke of Parma was commissioned
by Philip II. of Spain to take steps for the invasion of England, he
assembled the forces of the Low Countries at Antwerp; and the Spanish
armada, had it proved successful, was to have wafted over that great
commander from the banks of the Scheldt to the opposite shore of Essex,
at the head of the veterans who had been trained in the Dutch war. In
an evil hour, Charles II., bought by French gold and seduced by French