be he felt that her natural distaste for the contemplated marriage might be broached by her, and that his affection for her would dispose him to break off the treaty; a step which would be most injurious to his position with foreign powers. He was certainly inwardly rejoiced at any opportunity that afforded him the means of humouring her, without compromising his main policy. If he resisted her will at first, respecting the appointment of the Duke of Suffolk, it was because he thought her request a whim which she, in the nature of things, would soon repent; but as soon as he perceived she was earnestly bent upon attaining her desire, he complied, as we have seen, with as much good feeling as dignity.

When the King quitted the Princess and her companion, the former, exhausted, sank speechless on a low cushioned Spanish chair. Lady Kate stood beside her, grieved and unable to address her.

The tire-woman returned, bringing a rude copy of the unlucky verses, which, with lengthened visage, she presented to the Princess, devoutly crossing herself, and hoping that "the evil omen might light upon the seer rather than the subject."

The Princess read them listlessly, but aloud. "Methinks, dear Kate, the proverb is reversed the mouse in labor with a mountain teems. "Tis an innocent prophecy, and yet it will hold true of all. The sea of storms' all voyagers must brave: to 'the viewless grave' all voyagers are bound. Our anchor hath a surer ground, naithless. The anchor of the christian soul is stayed in Heaven. The sooner the vessel, moored in safety, reaches its haven, the better: the suffering, first; the rest, afterwards." "One would hardly have expected so much noise from such a puny missile," said Kate quietly, returning the copy of the verses to the Princess.

Chapter V.

HOW HERBERT FELL IN WITH A GOSPELLER AND SOME ODD NOTIONS OF DIVINITY.

After the beggar-prophet had left young Herbert, who was immediately conveyed from the gaoler's room to the safe-ward, it is not to be wondered at that the youth experienced a sensible depression of spirits. The closeness of the room, its iron-grated windows, through which the declining rays of an autumnal sun shone feebly, the damp smell of earth, the floor being considerably below the middle of the street and surrounded by a wainscot

of yellow-white mould, the nausea occasioned by various filth, and the sepulchral gloom which seemed to pervade the place, had a severe effect upon him, who had ever been accustomed to the freshness of the country, the endearments of home, and, not a little prone to give his imagination rein.

The early education of the child combined with the instincts of the youth to dress in two-fold terrors the actual punishment of a prison, from which the light and air of Heaven were excluded, and whose grating and finally closed bars and bolts struck on his ear as the harsh sentence which excluded him from hope and liberty for ever.

Nay, it was no good thought which arose in his mind as he stood in that dreary apartment. His curdling blood choked his heart; and, as the thick puddle slid lazily through his swelling veins, black melancholy rose, like fetid vapour, to his brain, and troubled him with " thick coming fancies." For the moment he appeared their passive agent; but anon his spirit roused itself within him, and he exclaimed, with a deep, lengthened sigh, "Blessed Virgin! our Lady Saint Mary, from whom proceedeth all comfort and consolation, help me!"

A slight sound, as from some individual at the darkest corner of the ward, startled him, and he became conscious that he was not alone.

There are some people who, in whatever situation, company, or country they find themselves, seem to look upon the initiated or inhabitant as a valuable item of mortality, peculiarly welcome to the stranger. This disposition is more common with the young and inexperienced than with the man who styles himself the "old stager," who prides himself upon his being a cosmopolite; in other words, one who has no love for any country, and no particular sympathy for any thing, or any one, but himself.

Herbert was of sanguine temperament, and felt an instant attraction towards his fellow prisoner, although that gentleman was very much in the dark.

As the black disk in the diorama is gradually relieved by a dim shadow, as the spectator gazes fixedly upon it, and this again by a figure momentarily merging into light, so the stranger became, by degrees, visible to Herbert, till he was able to scan face, proportions, costume, and age.

Who can define what are the vital actions, what the trivial accidents of life? Who can point out to us the acorn destined to become the centenarian monarch of the forest, and the vigorous sapling which withers from the hour of transplanting? Surely the allowed fall of the sparrow is a deeper and more important lesson than the over-ruled rise and ruin of an empire. How many a cause undertaken with a bombast of circumstan

ces is like an untimely birth; whilst the offshoot of a moment gives color to a man's whole life.

A result, not unlike, was produced on Herbert by the accidental encounter with the stranger at the ward at Ludgate.

The man was hardly distinctively dressed-a singular circumstance at that period, when artificers and men mechanical were not ashamed to be known by their dress, and when they thought not of absurdly aping the equality of the gentleman, in habit; a fashion whereby the laborer has lost much honor and respect.

To despise our own calling is an effective method of making it despicable.

The stranger somewhat resembled a Swabian trooper, but he wore over his thick buff coat a Spanish plate of polished steel. His right arm was supported by a thick oak table, very black and filthy. His head rested on his hand: and such a handit more resembled a leg of mutton than a man's hand. His lower limbs were encased in long, loose trousers, similar to those worn by the heavy cavalry in Gonsalvo de Cordova's army. His figure was large and massive, but his stooping position, as he reclined in a rude elm seat, apparently half asleep, gave small opportunity of judging of his height.

As Herbert approached the stranger, he saw two notable marks the one, an iron scabbard, to all appearance, a yard and a half long; the other, the stranger's face. His features were all large. His rude iron cap, with a plain rib of steel running from the peak to the back, and having a rim of the same, to which a band of steel was rivetted to fasten under the chin, lay on the table beside him. His head was therefore uncovered. It was round and small for his size: the hair, thin and quite grey, short cut, lying smoothly upon the head, and coming about an inch over the forehead. His beard was long and pointed, and formed, with his whiskers and moustache, heavy fall of hair about his neck and throat, which was no otherwise protected. The eyes were heavy and nearly shut. The age about fifty five.

a

He held a book, ornamented with thick plates of brass, in his left hand. Quite a matter of superfluity was that book: there was not light enough in the chamber for the eyes of a learned cat to read by. He could have read it by the force of mesmeric influence only, for his eyes must have peered out of his chin to have fallen on the volume.

By some accident the book fell from the stranger's hand. The youth stooped and, picking it up, presented it to the old soldier, who said, in a deep, guttural tone, in good English, though with a slight foreign accent, "I thank you, young

E

gentleman, but it is now too dark to read." He took from Herbert's hand the book, and, raising the lower border of his breast-plate, he deposited it in some pouch, apparently made expressly for it.

The gaoler entering, the soldier demanded some salted mutton and some Gascoigny wine, “and, friend, two cups and two platters." He then drew from a pocket some Spanish coin, which he laid deliberately upon the table.

"Ah! well is it of you now, Master Ritznow," replied the gaoler; "it will sweeten the taste of the thing to the young moon-calf, and make the loss of an ear, to-morrow, more pleasant like." The brute then shouted lustily,

"There's naught takes the smart

From the head or the heart

Like another full can

And another dead man.

Hip, hurrah!—ring, ring-g! Hip, hurrah !—clink, clink!” "Cease thy ill-omened howl, master janizary: music suits not ill subjects, nor evil deeds," remarked the soldier sternly. Perceiving at that moment, by the light of the gaoler's lamp, the effect the announcement of his punishment had produced on Herbert, and that the wretch was gloating over the obvious misery he had caused, Ritznow exclaimed,

"I know not if thy threatened punishment is prepared for me, or for this youth.

Him," said the other, pointing to Herbert, whose head had sunk on the table.

"Haste, friend, for my food, for I am hungry, and leave thy lamp."

The gaoler obeyed. The soldier watched Herbert, whose visible distress seemed nearly paralyzing, and then, after a pause, remarked, in a calm and somewhat solemn voice,

"I wonder not, my young friend, that you take so ill that man's announcement, for your strength is stayed by a broken reed-your consolation cometh from a dry cistern.

Herbert forced himself to answer audibly, "How can you know that, if it be even so."

The soldier stretched forth his enormous hand, and clearing his throat, began,

"Few are the creatures whose cry I cannot distinguish: A single howl tells me 'tis a wolf, a leopard, a dog, or a bear: I heard your note-'tis no less characteristic and, I repeat, 'tis a broken cistern, which can hold no water, which you have trusted in, and now, in your first day of drought, you faint of thirst."

"The voice, surely, is a poor criterion of a man's capacity," resumed Herbert, his pride somewhat roused.

"I think not so," replied the soldier, "but 'tis not thy voice I complain of, but the sentence I heard thee utter, on thy

entrance."

Herbert had forgotten it: the stranger remarked this and continued.

"Thou did'st speak of the woman, Mary, as one from whom all comfort and consolation proceedeth."*

"And is she not?" said Herbert eagerly.

"Yea, verily, in the sense of being mother of Him, who was the source of all comfort to her, as He is to us. Tell me frankly, was it in this sense you used that exclamation?"

"No, truly, I confess it was not," replied Herbert.

"Then art thou trapped in the snare of that "school of the devil"— that synagogue of iniquity, termed, The Council of Constance,' as honest Jerome of Prague, justly calls it."

"Jerome of Prague!" exclaimed Herbert, with a shudder, devoutly crossing himself, "Did he not expiate his crime of heresy by the burning of his body?"

"A strange whim have you learned of the method of expiation," said the soldier, musingly, then, in more rapid utterance, he broke forth. "The death of Socrates; the captivity of

* Six years prior, (1509,) was renewed the dissention between the Dominic and Franciscan Friars, about the immaculate conception of the Virgin. The Franciscans, called Grey Friars, or Minorites, (whence the Minories,,) held the natural sinlessness of the Virgin; the Dominic or Black Friars held the ancient catholic creed of "Her being conceived in sin in common with other mortals."

In 1476, Pope Sixtus the fourth had declared. in favor of the Grey Friars, and added to the "Ave Mary" the extraordinary words, "et benedicta sit Anna, mater tua, de qua sine macula, tua processit caro Virginia," "And blessed is Anna, thy mother, of whom hath proceeded thy virgin flesh unspotted."

In consequence, the Grey Friars carried it with high hand against the black guard of St. Dominic, and thence-forward in the pulpit and elsewhere, the black guard was a term of reproach. "The comforter of mankind," used by Berners and others, was a novel title of distinction for the Virgin. The first feast of Anna's supposed immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, was held about this period.

In the year 1746, at the feast of the immaculate conception held December 8th, the hearing mass and service from "first even-song to the octaves of the same month" was SACRAMENTAL, as was also the addition to the "Ave Mary;" both being effectual to the release of sins, which even the Holy Eucharist, or sacrament of Holy Communion, was not, without special confession, penance, and particular absolution.

It was common for the Taborites, or Reformers, on this account to use the word 'woman' merely, of the Virgin after the example of our Lord, (John ii. v. 4), as they believed the adoration of the Virgin, at that period incontrovertibly in vogue, gross idolatry.