Dunois and the Maid rest at a cottage. Their host speaks of the battle of Azincour, and the siege of Roan. JOAN of ARC THE SECOND BOOK. And now beneath the horizon westering slow *The epithets shrill and hoarse will not appear incongruous to one who has attended to the grasshopper's chirp. Gazæus has characterised the sound by a word certainly accurate, in his tale of a grasshopper who perched upon St. Francis's Descended. On their way the travellers wend, finger, and sung the praise of God and the wonders of his own body in his vernacular tongue, St. Francis and all the grasshoppers listening with equal edification. Cicada Canebat (ut sic efferam) cicadicè. Pia Hilaria Angelini Gazai. St. Francis seems to have laboured much in the conversion of animals. In the fine series of pictures representing his life, lately painted for the new Franciscan convent at Madrid, I recollect seeing him preach to a congregation of birds. Gazæus has a poem upon his instructing a ewe. His advice to her is somewhat curious: Vide ne arietes, neve in obvios ruas: Vel ore laceres, vel bifurcato pede, Male feriatæ felis instar, proteras. There is another upon his converting two lambs, whose prayers were more acceptable to God, Marot! says he, than your psalms. If the Nun who took care of them in his absence was inclined to lie-a-bed Frater Agnus hanc beê beê suo O agne jam non agne sed doctor bone! Gleam thro' the embowered gloom: to that they turn; Strangers, your fare is homely," said their Host, "But such it is as we poor countrymen "Earn with hard toil: in faith ye are welcome to it! "I love a soldier! and at sight of one, "My old heart feels as it were young again. "Poor and decrepit as I am, my arm "Once grasp'd the sword full firmly, and my limbs "Were strong as thine, Sir Warrior! God be with thee, |