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"By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard 'round the world." Across the vast Atlantic rolled its echoes. Across a trackless sea, across the lands of France, up through the great White Ways of Paris it resounded. It knocked against the palace doors of the King of France.
Higher still is Narni, looking over her embattled walls. It is one of the most striking positions on the way from Florence to Rome, and the next half hour, through savage gorges and black tunnels, ever beside the tormented waters of the Nar until they meet the Tiber, swollen by the tributes of the Paglia and Chiana, is singularly fine.
This inn was gone, but the still more ancient one across the square remains, the tavern where Major Pitcairn dined on the day of the Lexington fight, and from whose windows or door steps he is alleged by the history books to have cried to a group of embattled farmers, "Disperse, ye Yankee rebels." Concord is well preserved. Still there are subtle indications of the flight of time.
The castle was held for King Charles, but was delivered up to the Parliamentary forces in 1646. The present exterior of the castle denotes its former magnificence. The foundations are built into a dark gray rock, and the castle rises from the point of a headland, the northern front consisting of square towers with high, connecting embattled walls.
There is an embattled wall, which makes a terrace walk, above the fair lawns and jewelled flower beds, and from the top as you walk, the hills girdling the old city go waving in gradations of blue to an opal horizon. There's an old Well House in the garden, which is one of its chief ornaments, and has adorned it since the fifteenth century.
There is no other kind of failure which comes so directly home to us, none which appeals to so many of the most deeply rooted sentiments at once. Want of success in any other shape is comparatively a personal misfortune to the man himself who fails; but how many hopes, prides, sacrifices, and heroisms are centred in him who wields the embattled manhood of his country!
Is that great title a mere synonym for the half-heathenish idea of the 'God of battles'? By no means. True! He is the Lord of the armies of Israel, but the hosts which the Psalmist sees ranged in embattled array, and obedient to the command of the great Captain, are far other and grander than any earthly armies.
Every village and solitary cot seemed recently deserted; and through an awful solitude they took their rapid way, till the towers of Roslyn Castle hailed them as a beacon from amidst the wooded heights of the northern Eske. "There," cried Ramsay, pointing to the embattled rock, "stands the fortress of my forefathers! It must this day be made famous by the actions performed before its walls!"
These Clarks were ordinary Yankee farmers, who had been settled in one place for upwards of two hundred years. Very likely some ancestor of my old Samuel Clark had stood at Concord with "the embattled farmers." I know not. He easily could have done so, for Alton was not many miles distant from the battle field.
The view comprehended the two fortifications recently removed to make way for the York and Lancaster Towers, between which stood a gate approached by a drawbridge; the Earl Marshal's Tower, now styled from the monarch in whose reign it was erected, Edward the Third's Tower; the black rod's lodgings; the Lieutenant's now Henry the Third's Tower; the line of embattled walls, constituting the lodgings of the alms-knights; the tower tenanted by the governor of that body, and still allotted to the same officer; Henry the Eight's Gateway, and the Chancellor of the Garter's Tower the latter terminating the line of building.
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