dered her a suitable attendant for the lovely Queen of France.

Thus was Anne Boleyn, at the early age of fourteen, launched at once into the world, and placed in a situation most perilous to youth and beauty.

After suffering severely from a terrible storm, the royal party landed at Boulogne, where they were met by a large company of the princes, knights, and nobility of France, and escorted, with great pomp, towards Abbeville, at which place the King awaited his bride. When they approached the town, a stately procession was formed. The beautiful Queen mounted a snow-white palfrey with gorgeous trappings and covered in cloth of gold: her robes were bright and glittering, but her secret heart, which she alone could know, was sad. Thirty-six ladies, clothed in robes of crimson velvet, and richly adorned, mounted also on white palfreys, formed her train; and a fairer sight could

not well be seen than the entré of Queen Mary and her ladies into the town of Abbeville.

One of the ladies thus gorgeously arrayed was Anne Boleyn; and her young, ambitious heart must have swelled with triumph and hope amid a scene of so much splendour and excitement!

The nuptials of King Louis and his young bride were celebrated; and the very next day, to the great astonishment of the English party, all Mary's attendants were dismissed, and desired to return to England, excepting three ladies: Anne Boleyn was one of these three. It would seem strange that such a girl should be retained, when the Queen's oldest attendants were dismissed; but it is probable that her talents had already rendered her serviceable; and her facility in speaking French must have been most useful to her poor mistress.

The extreme simplicity and doleful tone of

C

the following letter, written by the mourning bride, while surrounded with courtly pomp and regal honours, shews how lonely and desolate a woman may be when left without one kindred heart on which hers may lean, in the midst of all that might gratify vanity or ambition. It is addressed to Henry VIII.

"MY GOOD BROTHER,

"So heartily as I can I recommend me to your Grace, admiring much that I have never heard from you since my departure, so often as I have sent and written to you: and now I am left heartless, alone in effect; for on the morn next after my marriage my chamberlain with other gentlemen were discharged in like manner my mother Guildeford" (that is, her nurse, Lady Guildeford, or rather, as we should now say, her governess)," with other my women and maidservants, except such as never had experience or knowledge how to advise or counsel me in

any time of need; which time it is to be feared is approaching more shortly than your Grace thought at the time of my departing.*

I humbly request you to cause my said mother Guildeford to repair here once again, for else if any chance hap other than well, I shall not know where nor of whom to ask any good counsel, to your pleasure, ́nor yet to mine own advantage. I am

well assured that when ye know the truth of everything as my mother Guildeford can shew ye, ye would full little have thought I should be thus treated.

Lord of York had come

"Would to God my with me in the room of my Lord of Norfolk; for then I am sure I should have been left much more at my heart's ease than I am now; and thus I bid your Grace farewell,

* This alludes to her widowhood, which, from King Louis's state of health, could not be considered as far distant, and implies that Anne Boleyn would be of little use at such a period.

and more heart's ease than I have now. The

29th day of October. These go to my mother Guildeford, of your loving sister,

MARY, Queen."

Shortly after this letter was written, the Duke of Angoulême, afterwards the famous Francis I. of France, issued a challenge to the knights of England to "tilt and tourney." Sir Charles Brandon, Mary's hopeless lover, wished much to attend this chivalrous and splendid scene; but the cost of steed and armour was then excessive, and he was too poor to furnish himself with them. King Henry, little suspecting the cruel trial he exposed his lovely sister to, furnished his handsome and gallant favourite with these splendid necessaries, and the Duke of Suffolk (for to that rank he had raised him) repaired to France just in time to see the gallant Duke of Angoulême hold over the young Queen's head, "at her coronation,