as the racer bears its puny weight; the steed itself was scarce less
terrible to encounter than the sweep of the rider's axe. Protected
from arrow and lance by a coat of steel, the long chaffron, or pike,
which projected from its barbed frontal dropped with gore as it
scoured along. No line of men, however serried, could resist the
charge of that horse and horseman. And vain even Gloucester's
dauntless presence and thrilling battle-cry, when the stout earl was
seen looming through the vapour, and his cheerful shout was heard, "My
merry men, fight on!"

For a third time, Gloucester, spurring forth from his recoiling and
shrinking followers, bending low over his saddle-bow, covered by his
shield, and with the tenth lance (his favourite weapon, because the
one in which skill best supplied strength) he had borne that day,
launched himself upon the vast bulk of his tremendous foe. With that
dogged energy, that rapid calculation, which made the basis of his
character, and which ever clove through all obstacles at the one that,
if destroyed, destroyed the rest,--in that, his first great battle, as
in his last at Bosworth, he singled out the leader, and rushed upon
the giant as the mastiff on the horns and dewlap of the bull.
Warwick, in the broad space which his arm had made around him in the
carnage, reined in as he saw the foe and recognized the grisly
cognizance and scarlet mantle of his godson. And even in that moment,
with all his heated blood and his remembered wrong and his imminent
peril, his generous and lion heart felt a glow of admiration at the
valour of the boy he had trained to arms,--of the son of the beloved
York. "His father little thought," muttered the earl, "that that arm
should win glory against his old friend's life!" And as the half-
uttered word died on his lips, the well-poised lance of Gloucester
struck full upon his bassinet, and, despite the earl's horsemanship