misfortunes, and her irreproachable fidelity to the designs of GOD, amid so fierce a trial, than he wrote her a letter, in which he poured forth his apostolic consolation in the fullest measure. He exhorted her, by the example of the Saints and the promises of eternal life, to persevere in the holy resolution of perpetual continence, and in patience to work out the full measure of glory to which GOD designed to raise her. He bid her put confidence in his apostolic support, promising never to abandon her as long as he lived, but always to regard her as his special daughter, taking both her person and her goods under his special protection. At the same time, he accorded her all the privileges she required for the church and cemetery attached to the hospital she had founded in honour of St. Mary Magdalene, at Gotha. Finally, the holy Father charged Master Conrad, of Marburgh, who still retained the office of Commissary Apostolic in Germany, and who was now returning to Thuringia, to undertake more earnestly than ever the spiritual direction of the princess, and at the same time to defend her from all her persecutors.

Encouraged afresh with the exhortations of the holy Pope, and faithfully following the impulse of divine grace, she conceived every day desires more and more ardent of Christian perfection, and of a still closer union with her GOD. Detached as she was from the pomps and vanities of the world, she felt a want of something more than the detachment of the affections; she still had to do with the world, and she shrunk from its blighting influence. After long reflecting on the dif ferent modes of life she might adopt to render herself more pleasing to our Lord, hesitating between the various monastic institutes which then existed, and the solitary life of a recluse, the memory and example of the glorious Seraph of Assisi flashed upon her soul with such a force, that not content with professing the penitential rule of the Third Order of St. Francis, to which she already belonged, she determined to embrace his entire rule in all its austerity: burning with the love of GoD and holy poverty, she determined, like him and his fervent disciples, to abandon all she possessed in this world, and to beg from door to door what she needed for her daily sustenance. This determination she communicated to Master Conrad, but he, like a prudent director, rejected the suggestion; and though she implored his consent, he sternly dissuaded her from it, persuaded that her sex and her delicate constitution put it out of the question. The more he resisted, the more she urged it, shedding floods of tears that she could not gain her point. But Conrad was inflexible: he saw that GOD inspired her with these

sublime thoughts at once to encrease her thirst for perfection, and to prove the solidity of her obedience to His own ordinance,-that of manifesting His will through our spiritual director.

When Elizabeth perceived that it was useless to urge her desire with Master Conrad, she thought of another way to satisfy her ardent zeal. The Regent Henry, as we have already seen, notwithstanding any private feeling of disapproval in regard to his sister's ideas and practices, failed not to treat her with every mark of respect and affection; mindful of the solemn promise he had made over the dead body of his royal brother, he paid her on all occasions every honour, though our humble princess shrunk from such marks of esteem. Reckoning on his kindness, after having passed about a year in the bosom of her family, Elizabeth begged the Duke Henry to grant her a residence where she could entirely devote herself to GOD, and where nothing could distract her from works of piety and charity. Henry, on his part, having asked the advice of his mother and brother, yielded to her request, and made over to her the city of Marburg, in Hesse, with all its dependencies and their various revenues. Penetrated with gratitude, she affectionately thanked her brother-in-law and the duchess Sophia, testifying that they had done more for her than she deserved, and that the provision they offered was even more than she required. But the Landgrave promised her, in addition to this, a sum of five hundred marks of silver to defray the expenses of her outfit. It seems that Master Conrad did not quite approve of this arrangement, for he wrote to the pope, that it was in spite of his wishes that the duchess had determined on following him to his own province. But notwithstanding this disinclination, he did not altogether oppose it; so Elizabeth took the opportunity of his next journey to Marburg for her departure from Thuringia, henceforth making the city, which had given birth to her spiritual director, the scene of her virtues and her charities.

As soon as she arrived at Marburg, asking the advice of Master Conrad, she appointed the officers and stewards, who were to administer the affairs in her name. The people of the town vied with each other in paying every mark of honour and loyalty to their young sovereign; but her humility shrank from these demonstrations, so she soon retired to a little village called Wehrda, on the charming banks of the Lahn, a river which flows near Marburg. Here she fixed upon a poor cottage for her abode, determined not to put the inhabitants of the village to any expense on her account. So ruinous was the con

dition of the building, that we read she was obliged to stop up the holes in the roof with branches of trees covered with leaves. She even dressed her own food how she could, giving GOD thanks for the grace of holy poverty. This miserable abode protected her neither from the cold nor the heat, and the smoke dreadfully affected her eyes. But she endured all these mortifications with joy, her mind constantly dwelling upon GOD. Whilst she remained in this miserable abode, she erected, within the precincts of Marburg itself, close to the convent of the Friars Minors, a small cottage of wood and plaister on the plan of one of the meanest cottages in the town, to prove to all men that she did not enter her capital as a rich princess, but as a simple and humble widow, who came there to serve our Lord in all poverty of spirit. As soon as it was finished, she took possession of it along with her children, and her faithful attendants, Guta and Ysentrude.

Notwithstanding all these sacrifices, Elizabeth still felt the want of some more striking and complete renunciation of the world, to constitute a closer bond of union between her soul and GOD. As her confessor persisted in his refusal to let her embrace the Franciscan rule in its whole extent, and to beg her bread with the nuns of St. Clare, she desired at least to approach as near as she could to this form of life, which seemed to her the very type of evangelical perfection. We have already seen, even during her husband's life-time, how she was aggregated to the Third Order of St. Francis. She now resolved to give this affiliation a character at once more solemn and irrevocable; and though at that time this branch of the Franciscan Order was not looked upon as forming a regular or monastic order, in the proper sense of the term, she determined to make a public profession after the manner of cloistered nuns, and solemnly to renew those vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, which she had so often made heretofore in the secret of her heart. Thus she felt that she could participate according to the measure of her strength, in that total abnegation of all earthly goods, which during a long lapse of ages has merited for the seraphic order the manifest protection of GOD, and the tender veneration of Christendom. Master Conrad approved her design, after giving her to understand that her vow of poverty was not to interfere with the free disposal of the dowry and lands made over to her by the Landgrave Henry; but on the contrary, that it would be her duty to expend them in succouring the poor, and paying off some debts, which had been left by her husband.

Notwithstanding this, she felt that in spirit she was bound to renounce

all affections to the goods of this world, and even to its dearest ties. To gain this victory over the world and herself, Elizabeth knew that a good will alone would not suffice, that even the example of her holy patron, St. Francis, and of other Saints who had trodden the same path, bid her look to a still higher source for the grace she needed: so she poured forth her soul to GOD with greater fervour than ever, beseeching His Divine Majesty for many successive days to grant her His Almighty help to prepare her soul for that holy course of life on which she was about so solemnly to enter. She related to her faithful Ysentrude that she begged three gifts of our Lord :—a hearty contempt for all earthly things; courage to make light of the injuries and calumnies of men; and lastly, a diminution of the excessive love she felt for her children. After having prayed with this intention for many days, she came to her companions, her face beaming with more than earthly joy, and announced to them: "Our Lord has heard my prayer. Behold all the riches and goods of this world, which heretofore I loved, are now no more than a lump of clay in my estimation. As for the calumnies of men and the falsehoods of the wicked, or the contempt they feel for me, I rejoice at them, and count myself happy to suffer. My dear little children, the offspring given me by GoD, whom I so tenderly loved, whom I have so often pressed to my bosom, these dear treasures are now no more to me than strangers,-GOD is my witness. I offer them to Him; I confide them to His loving kindness. May His Holy Will be accomplished in their regard. I no longer love any creature; I only love my Creator."

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Inflamed with this heroic love, Elizabeth felt she might now venture to take the vows, and to wear the habit of her glorious patrons, St. Francis and St. Clare. "If I could find," said she, a habit poorer than that of St. Clare, I would choose it, to console me that I cannot altogether enter her order; but in truth I cannot find a poorer." She chose for this ceremony the chapel of the Friars Minor, the one she herself had founded, and for the day, Good Friday: a fitting day, that on which JESUS, stripped of all for the love of us, was fastened naked to the cross! a day, the solemn memory of whose ineffable Sacrifice is recalled to the faithful by the bare and empty Altars, stripped of all their wonted ornaments. It was on this day that Elizabeth determined to lay aside all, and to break every tie that still kept her attached to this world; so to follow closer still the footsteps of her heavenly Spouse on the path of poverty and love. On this holy day, then, she came, in the sight of her children and her faithful ladies, amid a crowd of holy

Franciscans, to place her right hand upon the bare altar-stone, there to vow entire renouncement of her own will, her relations, her children, her friends, of all the pomps and joys of this world. The Fatherguardian of the Friars Minor of the province of Hesse, her spiritual father and friend in Christ-brother Burckhard-cut off her hair, clothed her with the grey tunic, girding her with the cord,—that distinctive badge of the order of St. Francis, whilst Master Conrad celebrated holy Mass. This costume she wore ever afterwards,-going barefoot to the very hour of her death. From this moment, to erase all the signs of her former grandeur, she exchanged for the escutcheon of her family and her husband, a seal whereon was engraved a barefooted Franciscan.

Her maid of honour, Guta, the inseparable and devoted companion of her childhood, could not detach herself from the course of her beloved mistress; so she took, on this same day, the habit of the third order, solemnly renewing that vow of chastity which she had made many years before, during the lifetime of duke Louis. Sweet as must have been the mutual sympathy of two such souls in this seraphic mode of life, Elizabeth would doubtless have declined it, so fearful was she of indulging in anything that could satisfy her natural feelings here below, had she reflected upon it: and, in fact, very shortly afterwards, she was deprived of it. From her children she at once separated; for she reproached herself with having loved them too passionately. Her son Hermann, the eldest of the family, and the sovereign of his father's states, being now between six and seven years of age, was conveyed to the castle of Creuzburg, to be educated by a trusty guardian, until he should be fit to take the reins of government, which were at present in the hands of his uncle, who filled the office of regent. It is probable that the same place served as the abode of her eldest daughter Sophia, who was already betrothed to the young duke of Brabant. Her second daughter, also named Sophia, returned to the abbey of Kitzingen, where she was destined to take the veil, and where she spent the remainder of her days. Gertrude, the youngest of all, hardly yet two years old, having been born after her father's death, was sent to the Premonstratensian Nunnery, at Aldenberg, near Wetzlaw. All the world was astonished to see this young princess placed in a convent so poor, and as yet hardly to be called founded, and our Elizabeth was severely reproached for so doing: but she replied, that it had been agreed upon between herself and her husband, at the moment of their last sad parting, before even the little girl was born. "It was heaven," said she, "that