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amounted to agony, losing all awe for royalty in her fears for her father, put forth her hand, and, grasping the queen's robe, cried in an imploring tone, Spare my father, my dear-dear father, royal lady!" Lucy had meant to say many persuasive things; but she forgot them all in her sore distress, and could only repeat the words, "Mercy, mercy for my father, gracious queen!" till her vehement emotion choked her voice, and, throwing her arms round the queen's knees, she leaned her head against her majesty's person for support, and sobbed aloud.

The intense sorrow of a child is always peculiarly touching; but the circumstances under which Lucy appeared, were more than commonly affecting.—It was a daughter, not beyond the season of infancy, over-mastering the timidity of that tender age, to become a suppliant to an offended sovereign, for the life of a father. Queen Mary pitied the distress of the young petitioner; but she considered the death of Lord Preston as a measure of political necessity; she therefore told Lucy mildly, but firmly, that she could not grant her request.

"But he is good and kind to every one," said Lucy, raising her blue eyes, which were swimming in tears, to the face of the queen.

"He may be so to you, child," returned her

majesty ; "but he has broken the laws of his country, and therefore he must die."

"But you can pardon him if you choose to do so, madam," replied Lucy: "and I have read that God is well pleased with those who forgive; for he has said, 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain

mercy.

"It does not become a little girl like you to attempt to instruct me," replied the queen, gravely; "I am acquainted with my duty; and as it is my place to administer justice impartially, it is not possible for me to pardon your father, however painful it may be for me to deny the request of so dutiful a child.”

Lucy did not reply; she only raised her eyes. with an appealing look to the queen, and then turned them expressively on the portrait of King James, opposite to which her majesty was standing. There was something in that look that bore no common meaning; and the queen, whose curiosity was excited by the peculiarly emphatic manner of the child, could not refrain from asking, wherefore she gazed so earnestly upon that picture.

"I was thinking," replied Lady Lucy, "how strange it was that you should wish to kill my father, only because he loved yours so faithfully!"

This wise but artless reproof, from the lips of infant innocence, went to the heart of the queen; she raised her eyes to the once dear and honoured

countenance of a parent, who, whatever were his political errors as a king, or his offences against others, had ever been the tenderest of parents to her; and when the remembrance, that he was an exile in a foreign land, relying on the bounty of strangers for his daily bread, while she and her husband were invested with the regal inheritance of which he had been deprived, pressed upon her mind, the thought of the contrast of her conduct as a daughter, when compared with the filial piety of the child before her (whom a sentence of hers was about to render an orphan), smote upon her heart, and she burst into tears.

"Rise, dear child," said she, "thou hast prevailed-thy father shall not die. I grant his pardon at thy entreaty-thy filial love has saved him."

A MOTHER'S FUNERAL.

My dear mother died when I was four years old. I remember that she held out her hand to me just before she kissed me for the last time; and it was so very thin and white; her eyes too looked larger than they ever seemed, and of a deeper blue: she turned round to my father that night, and said, “Let Charles sit up a little longer this evening, my love." My father only looked at her; I wondered he did not answer; but I believe it was because he could not speak just then, for I saw him crying behind the bed curtains soon after. When I woke the next morning, they told me mama was dead. I did not pay much attention to what they said, for I did not know what it meant to be dead; I did not think the morning seemed at all gloomy; for the sun was shining as brightly as ever, and when I went out into our field, the larks were singing as cheerfully as ever; nothing seemed dull. I was sitting under a large hawthorn tree, at the end of our field, and watching a goldfinch which was dancing among the slender branches; while, every now and then, a little shower of white blossoms came flying down to the ground. I was always very fond of peeping up, from under a tree, and observing how many little shady arbours were formed among the

K

boughs; and how transparently green and bright the leaves appeared, when seen from quite beneath. The merry goldfinch had just flown away, when Elizabeth came out; and I began to think about my mother again: "What does 'dead' mean, Elizabeth?" I asked; "for Jenny says mama is dead." My sister only began to weep; but at last she said, 66 Dead, means," she looked round and hesitated; but she saw the hawthorn blossoms on the grass, and said, "these flowers are dead, Charles; those on the tree, which have that beautiful pink colour, blushing over them, are the most fresh; those, which look dark in the centre, are dying: after a few days, these, which are now white on the ground, will have wasted away, and will not be seen any more: some of the blossoms are shaken by very rough winds; and your mama died as they do."-Here Elizabeth wept again: "But all these," she added, after hanging on the tree some time, must fall off and die; as persons who are as old as grandpapa must die." Elizabeth told me a great deal more, and explained why mama was different from the hawthorn blossoms; because she had a soul, which always lives; and she told me, that if I obeyed God, I might see my mother again (after I was dead) in heaven. I was very happy to hear that; because I had begun to fear that she would never be seen again, like the dead flowers. I supposed