that he may hasten his departure. Tell him that the unknown friend who sends you to him recommends the greatest caution-the greatest speed. He can save the lady only by stratagem. She will be carried by force from the castle; yes, even out of the country. You must take a letter to Miklas, which I will write directly follow his advice, and do exactly what he bids you. If the lady be saved, tell Lord Richmond that there is only one safe place for her that is, his mother's castle; and not even there will she be secure unless the greatest secresy is maintained; for she is menaced on all sides, and any intelligence of her abode will lead to the most violent persecution. Now remember what you have heard; repeat it to me once before you go; then give me my writing materials and a sheet of paper, and I will write to Miklas.”

CHAPTER XXXII.

The long-expected moment was come, and the event of the eighth of April, 1625, plunged England into mourning. King James at length sunk under the fever which he had himself regarded as the harbinger of death. The mortal blow had reconciled all parties to the deceased monarch; even the numberless hearts of those who had loaded him with reproaches and complaints while the breath of life trembled within him. Every word expressed pity and mildness, showing that death alone overcomes the discontent of mankind, and that he only is beyond the reach of their enmity who is withdrawn from the great circle of life.

All eyes were turned towards the new star which was about to commence its course; and suspicions and forebodings were not wanting of that which really happened.

The frightful fate which Charles suffered opened a wide field for reflection, both to his contemporaries and to posterity; but it remains certain that so fearful a catastrophe in the history of a nation is not

brought about by that head alone which falls as the expiation of its errors. The long existing evils in which, during many centuries, a nation has been entangled, may be compared to an angry man, who, desiring to revenge a deeply-felt affront, and bleeding under recent inflictions, sacrifices the first who bears the colours of the enemy, though the individual himself be free from offence towards him. Charles was not faultless, but he was incapable of the guilt which could deserve such a punishment; and when we see him, though entangled in contradictions, fulfilling his duties with glowing zeal, and using with mildness and goodwill all the possible means for obviating the evils around him-then again, in his arbitary disposition, mistaking men and circumstances, and bringing on the growing revolution by his carelessness;-then we remember Porter's words: “he will act with the violence of an unhappy man, who seeks to divert his thoughts."

If, while discussing what appear openly to us as historical facts, we could be permitted to know the secret history of men who play their part on the great stage of the world, and to fathom their motives, we should be astonished to perceive how deep in the heart is the feeling which controls their actions. With this view we should hesitate, and not judge of them too precipitately. A painful feeling arises of how man is separated from man; all the rest of earth's possessions can be shared except this inward feeling, which no description can make intelligible, and for which perhaps there is but one language, appearing little more than a youthful dream, the sound of which expires in the indurating of the heart, and of life! This loneliness, which we often feel, even while pursuing the ordinary business which occupies our time and attention, is perhaps the home of our devotion, of our connexion with God, whose intelligence we feel quickening us with the promise of unalienable justice.

Charles received the intelligence of the death of his father with childlike resignation. He had devoted himself to his parent till the last moment, sharing even the meanest offices with the attendants. His love had certainly soothed the last days of the king, and had also brought to the sorrowing heart of the son that peace which arises from the performance of a sacred duty. His dark, melancholy eye

and pale face touched every one who beheld them; and when he left the body of his father, that he might not hinder the necessary preparations, the attendants said that the new bearer of the crown resembled almost as much a lifeless statue as did the late king. Slowly, and followed but by a few persons, he passed through the empty rooms, till he came to the one occupied by the well-known Porter, which he entered alone, and with his head sunk on his breast and wrapped in gloom, he approached the bed of the sufferer.

"

Thy king and master is no more," said Charles, repeating the already well-known intelligence. "I have no longer any parents: the grave opens more widely before me. Tell me what you long ago hinted at: have I also lost the last one who can bind me to this world? Fear not," added he, while Porter struggled fearfully for an answer: "I am ready to hear all-even the worst.".

"So may God console your majesty!" stammered the old man; and he had opened his lips to say more, when the king, shrinking and pressing his sword to his side, nodded to Porter silently, and, like a sleep-walker, stiff and mute, left the room.

Porter remained in despair he had not wished for this; but Charles's interpretation of his words was so rapid, and his departure so immediate, that the old man, being confined to his bed and not able to follow, could not quiet him. After some reflection, his sympathy with his master was overcome, and this reception of his words in part secured his own safety, at least for the present, for he had resolved, so soon as he knew of the lady's safe arrival at Godway Castle, to give the king some hope that she still lived.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Let us now turn from the death-bed of a prince, whose decease was the commencement of a period as important for England as his life was uninteresting that life having comprehended so few im

portant events, that it scarcely left a trace behind-let us turn from this to the last couch of a man so humble that his name has found no place in the register of history; but of so much importance to the principal persons of our narrative, that we must not overlook him.

We enter a little room, with which we are already acquainted, and whose vaulted roof, and tall windows reaching to the ground, discover to us the abode of the old Miklas, in the castle of the Duchess of Somerset. The walls are covered with black curtains ; there is no fire in the empty chimney to give light and warmth; twelve wax tapers, with their weak rays, surround the raised corpse, in which we recognise the pale form of the old Miklas; the repose of the countenance, and the rosary hanging from the folded hands, show that he passed at once from pious devotion into death.

We hear, on one side, some person sobbing, and perceive Margaret, clad in deep mourning, kneeling upon the ground before Lady Melville; who, sitting upon a homely chair near the body, assists the inconsolable daughter to keep the melancholy deathwatch. On the other side we hear a light murmur of prayer, in which certain holy names are pronounced with a loud accent, and we discover Sister Electa, who has undertaken the office of repeating the prayers for the dead. Occasionally Mary's voice is heard, when, forgetting her own sorrows, she speaks a loving and consoling word to Margaret. But how changed are those features, in which youth and beauty were formerly united to so lively an expression of intellect, and to such nobility of countenance, that the gaze of the spectator was rivetted upon her, almost against his will. The beautifully rounded cheeks are become wasted and sickly; and the paleness of the skin is scarcely to be distinguished from the white band which fastens her little nun's cap upon her head, her beautiful hair being entirely concealed. Her eyes are likewise changed: seeking nothing without, and finding nothing within which could kindle their former light, they retain only the expression of a pure and exalted soul.

Her eyes wandered from Margaret to the old man, and from him back again to his weeping daughter, sympathizing in her grief, not

only from compassion, but from consciousness of the great loss which she also had sustained in the good old man, who had endeavoured by unobtrusive kindness to alleviate the harshness of her situation. He had often led her at night through secret passages to the forbidden air: she now saw before her an existence little different to that in a prison, and which, to one so accustomed to freedom and exercise, threatened the injury of her health. She resigned herself to the future: one by one her hopes of deliverance had faded away, and she tried to banish all idea of it far from her. She lived only in the remembrance of her former happiness, thus nourishing the deep grief of her bosom till it grew, as it were, into a poisonous tree, under the widely-spreading branches of which the youthful energies of her life faded and were buried. She appeared to have grown old in the castle: it seemed long to her since she was young: she knew that she had once been so; but between her earlier existence and her present one was an abyss, out of which she seemed to have arisen like a fabled spirit, neither alive nor dead.

She had not that consolation which many a shipwrecked wanderer in life possesses, of being able to conquer the remembrance of the past by activity, and by the undisturbed devotion of a pure religion. The greatest of her afflictions was the constraint laid upon her by her residence with persons who endeavoured to engage her in senseess and unintellectual employments; and whose religion confirmed, on a nearer acquaintance, the aversion which she had felt towards it during Father John's efforts to convert her.

The hatred roused in the heart of Lady Somerset by the sight of her, because she bore the beautiful features of the sister of Buckingham-he who had supplanted her husband as favourite of the king, and thus made her his deadly enemy: this hatred was every moment more apparent. It vented itself with malicious triumph upon his innocent niece. Even the humiliating measures pursued against the poor girl appeared to her too mild; as she was resolved that Buckingham should never see bis projects for her realized, even should her persecutor proceed to the worst, and let her fade gently out of existence.