rections. As the pupil must gradually acquire confidence in this new element, he should not be urged to plunge in against his inclination. After wetting his head, he may wade in until the water is up to his breast, then, turning toward the shore, inflate his lungs, and incline forward until the water covers his chin. The head should be thrown backward, and the back hollowed, and the chest as much as possible expanded. In swimming, the feet should be about two feet below the surface. The hands should be placed in front of the breast, pointing forward, the fingers kept close together, and the thumb to the fingers, so as to form a slightly hollow paddle. Now strike the hands forward as far as possible, but not bringing them to the surface; then make a sweep backward to the hips, the hands being turned downward and out ward; then bring them back under the body, and with as little resistance as may be, to their former position, and continue as before. The hands have three motions: First, from their position at the breast, they are pushed straight forward; second, they sweep round to the hips, like an oar, the closed and hollowed hands being the paddle portion, and their position in the water and descent serving both to propel and sustain the body; and third, they are brought back under the body to the first position. Having learned these motions by practicing them slowly, the pupil should proceed to learn the still more important motions of the legs. These are likewise three in number-one of preparation and two of propulsion. First, the legs are drawn up as far as possible, by bending the knees and keeping the feet widely separated; second, they are pushed with force backward and outward, so that they spread as far as possible; and third, the legs are brought together, thus acting powerfully upon the wedge of water which they inclosed. The motion in the water should be as straight forward as possible, and the more the head is immersed the easier the swimming. Rising at every stroke-breasting, as it is called-is both tiresome and inelegant. All these movements should be made with slowness, and deliberately, without the least flurry. The learner will soon breathe naturally, and, as the motions are really natural, he will not be long in ac quiring them. If he draw in his breath as he rises, and breathe it out as he sinks, he will time his strokes, and avoid swallowing water. Those who have been accustomed to fresh water must be particu larly careful when they go into the sea, the water of which is very nauseous. Plunging or Diving.-In leaping into the water, feet first, which is done from rocks, etc., the feet must be kept close together, and the arms either held close to the side or over the head. In diving head-foremost, the hands must be put together, so as to divide the water before the head. The hands are also in a proper position for striking out. It is wonderful how easy the swimmer directs his course under water. If he wishes to go down or come up, or swim to the right or left, he has but to bend his head and body in that direction, and, after a little use, he will do this almost unconsciously, as if his movements were the result of volition alone. In descending in the water, bend the head so as to bring the chin near the breast, and curve the back in the same direction; in ascending, hold back the head and hollow the back. In swimming over the surface, look up to the sky; it is quite impossible to dive beneath the surface in this position. Swimming in Deep Water. In the swimming schools of Prussia, the pupils are taught in deep water, sustained by a belt and a rope attached to a pole, which the teacher holds as a lever over a railing. The motions of the arms, then of the legs, and then both together, are practiced by word of command, like military exercises. The support is given as required. After a few lessons the pole is dispensed with, then the rope; but the pupil is still kept, until proficient, within reach of the pole. This mode of learning to swim is like that practiced in teaching boys to ride in the circus. A rope, fastened to a belt, passes through a ring in the saddle, and the end is held by the riding-master in the center of the ring. If the boy falls, his teacher has only to draw upon the rope, and he is secure from danger, and ready to spring to his feet again. Those who are learning to swim in shallow water, and without a teacher, may find an advantage in the following method: When the learner has acquired some facility in swimming, and wishes to try to swim out of his depth, he should first venture to cross a stream which may be a foot or two overhead in the middle. He must not be alarmed at not feeling ground under his feet, or make quick and short strokes, and breathe at the wrong time, so that he involuntarily swallows water-all which mishaps, of course, increase the hurry and agitation, and make it difficult for him to get back to shore. Learners should, therefore, never venture out of their depth without having first practiced such distances only as they are certain they can accomplish; for, if they can swim eight or ten yards without allowing their feet to touch the bottom, they can fearlessly attempt to cross a deep stream of only half that width, and so on, increasing the distance by degrees; they will thus progressively attain presence of mind, and find that the deeper the water the greater is its sustaining power, and the easier they will be enabled to swim in it. Treading Water.-This is a favorite position in the water, and useful as a means of resting in swimming long distances. The position is perpendicular; the hands are placed upon the hips or kept close to the side to assist in balancing the body, being moved, like fins, at the wrist only; the feet are pushed down alternately, so as to support the head above water, and the body may be raised in this way to a considerable extent. While in this position, if the head be thrown back so as to bring the nose and mouth uppermost, and the chest somewhat inflated, the swimmer may sink till his head is nearly covered, and remain for any length of time in this position without motion, taking care to breathe very slowly. In | either side the motions of the legs have no alternation, but are performed as usual. To swim on the left side, lower that side, which is done with the slightest effort, and requires no instruction; then strike forward with the left hand and sideways with the right, keeping the back of the latter to the front, with the thumb side downward, so as to act as an oar. turning on the other side, strike out with the right hand, and use the left as an oar. To swim on each side alternately, stretch out the lower arm the instant that a strike is made by the feet, and strike with the other arm on a level with the head at the instant that the feet are urging the swimmer forward; and while the upper hand is carried forward and the feet are contracted, the lower hand must be drawn toward the body. This method is full of variety, and capable of great rapidity, but it is also very fatiguing. Thrusting. This a very beautiful variety of this exercise, and much used by accomplished swimmers. The legs and feet are worked as in ordinary swimming, but the hands and arms very differently. One arm (say the right) should be lifted wholly out of the water, thrust forward to the utmost reaching, and then dropped upon the water with the hand hollowed, and then brought back by a powerful movement, pulling the water toward the opposite armpit. At the same time, the body must be sustained and steadied by the left hand working in a small circle, and as the right arm comes back from its far reach to the armpit, the left is carrying in an easy sweep from the breast to the hip. The left arm is thrust forward alternately with the right, and by these varied movements great rapidity is combined with much ease. Upright Swimming-System of Bernardi.-Bernardi, an Italian teacher of swimming, who has written a treatise up- Swimming on the Back.-This is the on the subject, warmly recommends the easiest of all modes of swimming, because upright position in swimming as being in in this way a larger portion of the body is conformity with the accustomed move supported by the water. It is very useful ments of the limbs, from the freedom of to ease the swimmer from the greater exthe hands and arms, greater facility of ertion of more rapid methods, and espebreathing, and less risk of being caught cially when a long continuance in deep hold of by persons struggling in the water. water is unavoidable. The swimmer can Though this method can never super-turn easily to this position, or, if learning, sede that taught by nature and the frog-he has but to incline slowly backward, her best professor-it may be practiced keeping his head on a line with his body, for variety's sake. The great difficulty is in keeping the head properly balanced, for whichever way it inclines over goes the body. and letting his ears sink below the surface; then placing his hands upon his hips, he can push himself along with his feet and legs with perfect ease and considerable rapidity. The hands may be used to assist in propelling in this mode by bringing them up edgewise toward the armpits, and then pushing them down, the fingers fronting inward, and the thumb part down. This is called "winging." The hands may be used at discretion, the application of force in one direction, of course, giving motion in the other; and the best methods are soon learned when once the pupil has acquired confidence in his powers of buoyancy. From the London Eclectic. LAYS AND LEGENDS OF CROMWELL AND THE NONCONFORMIST HEROES.* PURITANISM and Nonconformity have not been often made the subjects of poetry; yet they have always seemed to us to have in their history plenty of material both for the drapery of the tale and the vehement utterance of the striking fact. The volume we introduce some what surreptitiously to our readers, since it was not sent to us, and very likely was only written or published for the behoof of a very limited circle indeed. Modesty well becomes the writer; for his lays are far enough from equal to the worth and grandeur of the various themes. It may be presumed that if they do not owe much to the inspiration of Lord Macaulay's lays, they were, at any rate suggested by those of Professor Aytoun. We have ourselves never entertained any very high appreciation of Mr. Aytoun's lays. Some friends of ours, who have tough Nonconformist hearts, conjoined with cultured sensibilities, have professed to us their admiration of them. To us they have ever seemed a dreary maundering of nonsense and falsehood in verse, after the Professor's best fashion. They want incident, and movement, and sparkling point, and pith. The topics are chosen from the least known, and therefore least regarded, circumstances of the history. Far be it from us to assert that, among the ranks of the Cavaliers, and the followers of Montrose, there were to be found no incidents of nobility and daring. Indeed, we wish that the author of the volume before us had a little ex *Lays and Legends of Nonconformist Heroes. Privately printed. panded the idea to do fitting honor to some scenes and names consecrated to veneration for loyalty and law. But we admit the difficulty of such a task. The Stewarts, notwithstanding Mr. Aytoun's veneration, were a worthless race. They were all baptized into the name of "the world, the flesh, and the devil;" and a baptism in their font is not a dedication service likely to lead poor souls to much good. Loyalty to law, and to usage, and custom, especially loyalty to the sovereign, is very beautiful and touching, and most sentimentally charming; but loyalty to conscience, and purity, and justice, and righteousness-these also are charming. We have often grieved that no writer has been found to commemorate, in fitting words, the prisons of the martyrs, their lives, and their death-places, and their memories; and, we must even say, we are thankful for so much as we have got out of the present writer, only regretting that what we have has not a higher quality to recommend it, so that we might even beg of him to emerge from his anonymousness and obscurity, or at any rate to give these private and evidently all too carelessly-written and uncorrected lays to the world. His style sadly lacks quiet and compression. We have reason to believe that most of these pages have been written many years, and evidently too much beneath the influence of spasmodic models. We counsel our young friend to read "Helps" for his English, and to kindle his fire from the fuel of Homer, and so begin again, and a few years hence give us some more lays and legends. However, such as they are, we do propose to introduce several of them to the eye of the reader who may be courteous enough to the author to bear with his attempts, less for what they are than for the subjects they attempt to commemorate. Of course, in a volume upon Nonconformist Heroes, the mighty soldier of Puritanism, Cromwell, stands forth no doubt the foremost man, as usual. Our author devotes to him some pages of eulogistic and elucidatory writing; and, although so much has been said, and is said still, upon him, we do not believe there is danger that too much will be said. The process of conversion has been long in working; but, at last, brief and rapid. Opposite theories, however, may be found still. Our author says: the contest of the city and the castle was represented even by the wars of the Roses; but much more here; and hence over the whole lages that had slept quietly for centuries beland soon passed the echoes of strife. Old vilneath the shadow of the church spire or tower; old halls, famous for the good cheer and the merry songs of roystering Christmas time; fields, spreading wide with the rich herbage and green meadow-land-all these were dyed with blood. The river that had for ages crept lazily along through the woodland became choked with the bodies of the dead, and crimsoned with the blood of the slain. Winding round many a graceful bend of road where nature had touched the scene with tenderness, the Roundhead clad in iron, saw the waving plume of the Cavalier. Soon the two straggling parties were locked in deadly conflict, and the spot beshed in a skirmish which could not be dignified came memorable for ages after for the blood by the name of a battle. Throughout the land family ties were severed; every where a man's "It was at this time, too, that he saw the foes were they of his own household. 'Old ardestinies of the contest, and from among the mor came down from a thousand old walls, and freeholders and their sons in his own neigh-clanked upon the anvils of every village smithy;' borhood he formed his immortal troop of Iron-boot and saddle' was the order of the day and sides-those men who in many a well-fought night; every buff coat, and every piece of steel field turned the tide of conflict-men who jeop- that could turn or deal a blow, became of value. ardized their lives on the high places of the Even the long-bow, the brown bill, and the field. These men were peculiarly molded; cross-bow, resumed their almost forgotten use; their training was even more religious than mi- rude spears, and common staves, and Danish litary; they were men of position and charac- clubs, assumed the rank of weapons. The ter. Oliver preached to them, prayed with trumpets of the Cavaliers rang out fearlessly them, directed their vision to all the desperate through the half of England, and thrilled the and difficult embroilments of the times. These spirits of the people with the cries of Loyalty; men were Puritans all; Independents; men responded to by the shrill blast of the Roundwho, however horrible it may be to our more head, and the cry of Liberty. 'Those,' says Christian notions, used their Bible as a match- Carlyle, 'were the most confused months Englock, and relieved their guard by revolving land ever saw; in every shire, in every parish, texts of holy writ, and refreshed their courage in court-houses, ale-houses, churches, and marby draughts from God's Book. kets, wheresoever men were gathered together, England was, with sorrowful confusion in every fiber, tearing itself into hostile halves, to carry on the voting by pike and bullet henceforth.' 'The spirit of war stalked forth; many times we find the record of men who slew an enemy, and found a parent in the corpse they were about to spoil. The face of nature became changed, and peaceful homesteads and quiet villages assumed a rough, hostile look; and the old familiar scenes rang with the fatal, fascinating, bugle-notes of war. Every house of strength became a fortress, and every household a garrison.' ties "Oliver said, at a later time, he saw that all the Cavaliers were a dissipated race of godless men; there could be no hope for success but in religious and godly men. He allied the cause of Puritanism with such an enthusiasm, such a blaze of martial glory, that—indeed they could be no other than irresistible—they grasped the sword of the Spirit, the word of God; they held communion with the skies, these men. What! shall we compare Tancreds and Ivanhoes, and Red Cross Knights with these realithis band of Puritan Havelocks? Not soldiers of a tournament were they; in very deed, fighting against principalities, and powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places-piety exasperated to enthusiasm, and blazing at last into warlike madness! Then, the civil war was up in earnest, and Oliver soon found work. Since the last civil wars, the battles of the Roses, several generations had passed away, and England had grown in wealth and power; but widely different were the interests represented by the two contests to the mind; this was the struggle, indeed, with the last faint life of feudalism. In some sort | | "Romance and poetry have woven gay garlands, and sung highly-wrought and glowing melodies around the achievements of knighthood and chivalry; but romance and poetry shrink back startled and appalled before the deeds of the mighty Puritan heroes-the Ironsides of Cromwell. The carnal mind of the succeeding century has succeeded in defacing the features, and soiling the fair fame of the Knighthood of Puritanism; but do you not think that the Soldiers of the Cross may deserve words as eloquent, and songs as soul-kindling, as those which echoed around the rabble rout of the strange Red Cross Knights of Normon feudalism ?" Our author, we should think, is no peace man; if so, then a very inconsistent one, for many of his pages are devoted to the description of the great Puritan battle-fields: iron-clad men. Between the two armies lay a drain. On the opposite bank to the Royalist forces in the center stood Leven and Fairfax, the commanders of the Parliament; on the left yonder, Cromwell with his Ironsides. Rupert had with wild, furious, characteristic energy fallen upon that center, and his life-guards had scattered and routed them, so that amidst the storm of shot, the maddening shouts, the thundering hoof, pursuing and pursued, they swept "It was MARSTON that first developed the across yonder field, cutting down remorselessly power of Cromwell on the field-I know the all, scattering the whole host like leaves before spot well; I know the little village of Long the storm-wind. Goring, the other Royalist geneMarston well-Marston Moor, seven miles from ral, was not idle; his desperadoes charged on, York. How came that battle to be fought at and with wild tumultuous rout they hewed all? The old city of York is a venerable city, down the fugitives by scores; two thirds of the crowned with its tiara of proud towers, and field were gained for Rupert and for Charles, stands like an old queen on the banks of the Fairfax was defeated, he fled through the field, Ouse. And it has witnessed memorable things through the hosts of the Cavaliers, who supin the course of its history; but not one more posed him to be some Royalist general, he postmemorable than that great fight in which, for ed on to Cawood Castle, arrived there, and in the first time, the genius of Cromwell rose tri- the almost or entirely deserted house, he unumphant and complete upon the field. York, booted and unsaddled himself, and went like a the old city, was in possession of the Royalists; wise old soldier to bed. Leven, the brave old and so weak were they, that it seemed the Leslie, was a prisoner. But amidst all that rout Roundheads, who lay encamped before the city, the carnage and flying confusion, ONE man held must soon find an entrance there. But just back his troops. Cromwell there to the left, then the fiery Rupert came plunging across the when he saw how the whole Royalist force atLancashire Hills, with twenty thousand of the tacked the center, restrained the fiery impaflower of the Royalist and Cavalier army, and tience of bis Ironsides, he drew them off still the Puritan forces drew out to Marston Moor. further to the left, his eye blazed all on fire, till Had Rupert contented himself with relieving at the moment he uttered his sbort, sharp, pasand succoring York, the whole tide of conflict sionate word to the troops, CHARGE IN THE might have been different; but he did not know NAME OF THE MOST HIGH,' beneath the clouds, the strength of his foes. Charles, indeed, had beneath the storm, beneath the night-heavens written to him, 'If York be lost, I shall esteem flying along, he scattered the whole mass. my crown to be little less' than lost. There, You know it was wondrous to see him in those outside of the city, lay the Royalist army, lay moods of highly-wrought enthusiasm, and his the protecting host of Rupert; and there, yon- watchword always struck along the ranks. der along the Moor, the armies of the Parlia-Truth and Peace' he thundered along the ment, a calm summer evening, on the twenty-lines; Truth and Peace' in answer to the fourth of June, 1644. I can scarcely even now think that Rupert, even with his madness, could have wished to hazard a battle when the advantage so decidedly his own could only have been hazarded and risked by conflict; and yet let us recollect that the letter of Charles to him was carried by him on his heart to the day of his death as his warrant for that well-fought fatal field; and he did not know the strength of that army of yeomen and volunteers; above all, he did not know Cromwell. The evening of the day closed in gloom, the heavens were covered with clouds, thick, black murky masses swept over the sky. Hymns of triumph rose from the ranks of the Roundheads and the Parliament, while Prince Rupert would have a sermon preached before him and the army, and his chaplain took a text which seemed to challenge the issue of the morrow, from Joshua: 'The Lord God of gods, the Lord God of gods, he knoweth, and Israel he shall know; if it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the Lord, save us not this day.' Still, dark, and gloomy, and more gloomy, fell the evening; thunder pealed along the heavens, and the forked flame glanced on the terrible mass of Royalist cry of God and the King.' 'Upon them-upon them.' That hitherto unknown man and his immortal hosts of Puritans poured upon the Cavaliers. The air was alive with artillery. Cromwell seized the very guns of the Royalists, and turned them upon themselves. Thus, when the Royalists returned from the scattering the one wing of their foes, they found the ground occupied by victors. The fight was fought again, but fought in vain; in vain was Rupert's rallying cry: For God and for the King!' Through the black and stormy night was seen the gleaming steel of other hostile lines. The Cavaliers were scattered far and wide over the plain-over the country; while, amidst the thousands of the dead lying there, the shattered carriages, Rupert made the last effort of flying from the field to York; across the bean-field, over the heath, the agonized young fiery heart made his way. And there amidst the gathering silence, and amidst the groans of the dying, rises the magnificent genius of Cromwell." In a more advanced part of the volume we have another battle-field: |