Page:Pleasures of England (1888).djvu/135

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Cœur de Lion to Elizabeth.
117

Alfred as the type of the Religion of his era, in its dwelling, not on the deliverance from the punishment of sin, but from the poisonous sleep and death of it. Will you ever learn that prayer again,—youths who are to be priests, and knights, and kings of England, in these the latter days? when the gospel of Eternal Death is preached here in Oxford to you for the Pride of Truth? and "the mountain of the Lord's House" has become a Golgotha, and the "new song before the throne" sunk into the rolling thunder of the death rattle of the Nations, crying, "O Christ, where is Thy Victory!"


NOTES.

1. The Five Christmas Days. (These were drawn out on a large and conspicuous diagram.)

These days, as it happens, sum up the History of their Five Centuries.

Christmas Day, 496. Clovis baptized.
" " 800. Charlemange crowned.
" " 1041. Vow of the Count of Aversa (Page 80).
" " 1066. The Conqueror crowned.
" " 1130. Roger II. crowned King of the Two Sicilies.

2. For conclusion of the whole matter two pictures were shown and commented on—the two most perfect pictures in the world.