his special command, and, agreeably to the custom of the time,
observed by his royal foe, harangued the troops. Here were placed
those who loved him as a father, and venerated him as something
superior to mortal man; here the retainers who had grown up with him
from his childhood, who had followed him to his first fields of war,
who had lived under the shelter of his many castles, and fed, in that
rude equality of a more primeval age which he loved still to maintain,
at his lavish board. And now Lord Warwick's coal-black steed halted,
motionless in the van. His squire behind bore his helmet,
overshadowed by the eagle of Monthermer, the outstretched wings of
which spread wide into sable plumes; and as the earl's noble face
turned full and calm upon the bristling lines, there arose not the
vulgar uproar that greeted the aspect of the young Edward. By one of
those strange sympathies which pass through multitudes, and seize them
with a common feeling, the whole body of those adoring vassals became
suddenly aware of the change which a year had made in the face of
their chief and father. They saw the gray flakes in his Jove-like
curls, the furrows in that lofty brow, the hollows in that bronzed and
manly visage, which had seemed to their rude admiration to wear the
stamp of the twofold Divinity,--Beneficence and Valour. A thrill of
tenderness and awe shot through the veins of every one, tears of
devotion rushed into many a hardy eye. No! there was not the ruthless
captain addressing his hireling butchers; it was the chief and father
rallying gratitude and love and reverence to the crisis of his stormy
fate.

"My friends, my followers, and my children," said the earl, "the field
we have entered is one from which there is no retreat; here must your
leader conquer or here die. It is not a parchment pedigree, it is not
a name derived from the ashes of dead men, that make the only charter