The battle of the bowmen.

Although there lay an immense number of castles and abbeys between Windeck and Cleves, for every one of which the guide-books have a legend and a ghost, who might, with the commonest stretch of ingenuity, be made to waylay our adventurers on the road; yet, as the journey would be thus almost interminable, let us cut it short by saying that the travellers reached Cleves without any further accident, and found the place thronged with visitors for the meeting next day.

And here it would be easy to describe the company which arrived, and make display of antiquarian lore.  Now we would represent a cavalcade of knights arriving, with their pages carrying their shining helms of gold, and the stout esquires, bearers of lance and banner.  Anon would arrive a fat abbot on his ambling pad, surrounded by the white-robed companions of his convent.  Here should come the gleemen and jonglers, the minstrels, the mountebanks, the party-colored gipsies, the dark-eyed, nut-brown Zigeunerinnen; then a troop of peasants chanting Rhine-songs, and leading in their ox-drawn carts the peach-cheeked girls from the vine-lands.  Next we would depict the litters blazoned with armorial bearings, from between the broidered curtains of which peeped out the swan-like necks and the haughty faces of the blond ladies of the castles.  But for these descriptions we have not space; and the reader is referred to the account of the tournament in the ingenious novel of “Ivanhoe,” where the above phenomena are described at length.  Suffice it to say, that Otto and his companions arrived at the town of Cleves, and, hastening to a hostel, reposed themselves after the day’s march, and prepared them for the encounter of the morrow.

That morrow came:  and as the sports were to begin early, Otto and his comrades hastened to the field, armed with their best bows and arrows, you may be sure, and eager to distinguish themselves; as were the multitude of other archers assembled.  They were from all neighboring countries—­crowds of English, as you may fancy, armed with Murray’s guide-books, troops of chattering Frenchmen, Frankfort Jews with roulette-tables, and Tyrolese, with gloves and trinkets—­all hied towards the field where the butts were set up, and the archery practice was to be held.  The Childe and his brother archers were, it need not be said, early on the ground.

But what words of mine can describe the young gentleman’s emotion when, preceded by a band of trumpets, bagpipes, ophicleides, and other wind instruments, the Prince of Cleves appeared with the Princess Helen, his daughter?  And ah! what expressions of my humble pen can do justice to the beauty of that young lady?  Fancy every charm which decorates the person, every virtue which ornaments the mind, every accomplishment which renders charming mind and charming person doubly charming, and then you will have but a faint and feeble idea