Are ye afraid of his power ?" continued the artful confident of that Prince, "we acknowledge him a strong and valiant knight; but these are not the days of King Arthur, when a champion could encounter an army.

If Richard indeed comes back, it must be alone,--unfollowed--unfriended.

The bones of his gallant army have whitened the sands of Palestine.

The few of his followers who have returned have straggled hither like this Wilfred of Ivanhoe, beggared and broken men .-- And what talk ye of Richard's right of birth ?" he proceeded, in answer to those who objected scruples on that head.

"Is Richard's title of primogeniture more decidedly certain than that of Duke Robert of Normandy, the Conqueror's eldest son?
And yet William the Red, and Henry, his second and third brothers, were successively preferred to him by the voice of the nation, Robert had every merit which can be pleaded for Richard; he was a bold knight, a good leader, generous to his friends and to the church, and, to crown the whole, a crusader and a conqueror of the Holy Sepulchre; and yet he died a blind and miserable prisoner in the Castle of Cardiff, because he opposed himself to the will of the people, who chose that he should not rule over them.