should be paid to the dead. The princely grandees, the proud nobility, the Grand Council, were convoked. And of this solemn ceremony, Ruy Gomez, the worst enemy of the dead, was appointed president. The jailer was to be the chief mourner at the grave. A general mourning for all classes was ordered. In this, and in this alone, did the nation sympathize; for with all his faults, in spite of his many deficiencies, the prince was dear to the people. His reckless extravagances were preferred to the cold cynicism of his father. His youth, his well-known crushed affections, the grandeur of his descent and inherit ance, his terrible, lonely, mysterious fate, all touched the nation's heart. The sorrow that possessed all classes was in harmony with the trappings and the signs of woe which were universally worn. The king retired to the Escurial during the funeral, which was conducted with the grandest ceremonial. The old Monastery of Saint Dominique had never witnessed such a princely array; all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of worldly glory were called forth to do honor to the remains of this short and shattered life. Nor was it only at Madrid that these manifestations of affection and regret were witnessed. In every capital funeral masses of the highest solemnity were ordered. In the Netherlands the Duc d'Alva, as governorgeneral, attended the memorial service of the king's "très cher et très aimé fils." With what kind of emotions could he have heard the solemn requiem echoing through the lofty aisles of the venerable, majestic cathedral? In Rome, the pope, Pio V., assisted at high mass, surrounded by the whole college of cardinals. No victor of the greatest battles against foreign foes, no conqueror in the field of human intelligence, ever received so universal a tribute to his merit as the unfortunate Don Carlos, when every church re-echoed with lamentations at his untimely fate. Her Majesty the queen, says Maritana, was present at the ceremony in the Monastery of Saint Dominique. This sentence contains a life romance, the queen, by Philip's command, weeping over the tomb of her at one time affianced husband, and whose heart, she too well knew, beat only for her. It would seem that the queen never was seen to greater advantage. Painters generally prefer mourning to any other costume, for there are few whom it does not more become than bright and gaudy colors; to the "Il queen it was pre-eminently suited. faisait bon la voir en ce royal costume," says the courtly chronicler. She was very yonng, but her life since her residence in Spain had greatly matured her nature; and she, in this atmosphere of mystery, had learned to conceal her feelings. So in this last trial she was calm and selfpossessed. And well it was she had acquired this art; for Philip's jealousies, having no foundation in fact, were by no means set at rest by the death of his rival son. So prevalent was the feeling that the king's worst suspicions were aroused, that Antonio Perez does not hesitate to charge the king with the murder of the queen. And while he was an exile he proclaimed the evil deed alike in France and England. He, the once friend and intimate councillor of Philip, after his banishment made this formidable denuncia. tion against his sovereign. While always maintaining the honor of the queen, he asserts that the Duchesse d'Alva, her Majesty's gouvernante, by the king's orders proffered the queen a poisoned medicine at a crisis of her illness; that the queen, suspecting danger, refused the potion, and that the king in person entered and compelled her to drink it, when she died within a few hours. This is very circumstantial, but there is no corroborative evidence. On the contrary, the most impartial authorities, De Thou, Ferrara, and others, while they admit that there are grounds for suspicion, are persuaded that the queen sank from weakness, it may be, accelerated by anxiety and mental distress. Florente, no friend to the king, says "que sa mort est due à la nature, nullement au poison.' But the greatest authority is the French ambassador, who never left her Majesty, and was acquainted with all the rumors and jealousies of the court. In his ac count of her death written to the queenmother, Philip's kindness to her in her last moments is mentioned. So perished, at twenty-three years of age - born in 1545, married in 1559, died 1568-one whose name will ever be dear to Spanish hearts; and whose portrait in the Madrid gallery, which contains pic. tures of all the noble and beautiful, is pre-eminent in its nobility and beauty. The light on the countenance comes from within, and the peace, the piety, the grace of her heart, were expressed in her face. "Among women," says Montaigne, "the most virtuous will always possess the greatest charm;" and this was the charm of Elizabeth of Valois. She lived in an age when women occupied a large space, not alone in the hearts of men, but in the annals of king doms. The age of the Renaissance in art and science witnessed at the same time the Renaissance of female influence, and by many was that influence nobly exercised. The names of Claude of France, of Louise of Savoie, of Margaret, married to James of Scotland, of Marguerite, the wife of Emmanuel Philibert, of our own Mary Stuart, will ever be enshrined in the hearts of those who love the history of their respective countries. Then come the three sisters, the Duchesse de Lorraine, the gentle Queen of Navarre, and Elizabeth of Valois, all pre-eminent in charm. Of the last it has been nobly said: "She was greater than any by the grandeur of her destiny, most unfortunate of all by her premature death, most interesting by the drama of her short life and the deep mystery which is associated with her name." Of all queens of Spain, none has left behind her nobler traditions of love, of charity, and of the beauty of holiness, than Elizabeth of Valois, Isabella della Pace. LAMINGTON. From The Cornhill Magazine. THE LAST OF THE SOUTHEYS. MEMORIES OF GRETA HALL. "MOUNT HOREB with the glory upon its summit might have been more glorious but not more beautiful than old Skiddaw in his winter pelisse.' So wrote Robert Southey. It is as beautiful to-day; but we cannot enter into its beauty, for we are standing at Greta Hall with tears in our eyes; the last of the laureate's children has passed away. We turn from Skiddaw, glowing into rosiest sunset, to gaze upon the dark purple ranges towards the west. The Greta runs with audible weeping towards the bridge. The great giant's camp, as Coleridge called it, of tent-like mountains, Grisedale, Swinside, Barrow, Causey, and Catbels, is hushed and darkened, as if some of our sorrow possessed it also. Sadly the returning rooks clang among the trees, then pass on to rest in the great wood beyond, as if they too felt that a change had fallen upon the place. A change has fallen upon the place; the last link that bound full forty years of Greta Hall memories with the present has snapped. We, who would talk with his son about the father who, with singular purpose and the noblest self-sacrifice joined with deepest affection for his family, labored on in the weary mill of letters at this sweet Hall of the Muses, whose days among the dead were passed for forty years in yonder library, who suffered family bereavement more than mortal flesh, unaided by a quiet spirit, could have endured, and passed to his rest as long ago as the 21st of March, 1843, henceforth are unable to hold such converse. Henceforward we must seek for reminiscences hereabout of Robert Southey not from his children, but from the country folk amongst whom he sojourned. It is true that there still lives one venerable lady in the vale who remembers how she and the Greta Hall children twined a laurel wreath to set upon his brows when the laureate returned from London in November, 1813, "sworn to reveal all treason against the king, to discharge the duties of his poet-laureateship, and to obey the lord chamberlain." No one else hereabout survives who entered into the sweet simplicities of Greta Hall, where household manners must needs have breathed wholesome laws, seeing that educated women with their own hands performed much house hold work in love for one another and in devotion for the master and children of the house, and seeing too that, from the naming of the cats to the ordering of the little line of children's clogs in the "mangling-room" "curiously to symbolize the various stages of life,' ," there was a halo of romance thrown over all. But Greta Hall has changed little or nothing. Still, as one enters the front door, one realizes how completely the house was adapted by its very building to be the home of a double family. The wing on the left of the front hall passage was the first half of the house that was erected. There dwelt its architect, old Jackson, the well-known carrier between Whitehaven and Lancaster, employer of "mild Benjamin," "whose much infirmity," seeing he was but "a frail child of thirsty clay," once got the better of him at the Cherry Tree, and though it won immortality for himself and his stately charge That through the mountains used to go In pomp of mist or pomp of snow Majestically, huge and slowlost him his place and robbed the countryside of both wagoner and wain. In that left-hand wing of the master wagoner's house the Coleridges were domiciled when their cousins the Southeys came in 1803 to Keswick. One never enters the left-hand room, "Paul," as it was called, to distinguish it from "Peter," opposite, without thoughts of little Derwent Coleridge giving his father that wonderful lesson in "Derwentogony”. Father. Who made you, Derwent? D. James Lawson, the carpenter, father. Father. And what did he make you of? D. The stuff he makes wood of; he sawed me off, and I did not like it— 66 or else listening in fancy to the prattle of that "blessed vision, happy child," that was so exquisitely wild," whose name still lingers in connection with this room Hartley Coleridge. Here Hartley would invent his new line of kings that were to be, here create the wondrous animals whose skeletons grew outside their skins, and become afeard of his own creations. Above his head would little Hartley hear his father's footsteps pacing to and fro; sometimes too, perhaps, young Derwent playing tricks with old Mr. Jackson's organ, stowed away in Coleridge's study. But we are thinking of Robert Southey and his children, and we must leave this left-hand or northern wing of Greta Hall and pass across the passage to the laterbuilt half of the house, and we shall find ghosts in every corner. Across the passage we enter the room opposite Hartley's, that was known of old as "Peter," comfortably but plainly furnished. We seem to see upon its walls many pictures two oil landscapes by a friend and several water-colors; in one recess "a frightful portrait," as Sara Coleridge called it, of Mrs. Coleridge, by a young lady. It is breakfast-time, eight of the clock. Southey has already had two hours' work down at Davies's lodgings over Dr. Bell's "Letters and Remains; he has been lingering out on the terrace to see the morning light on Grisedale Pike from what he used to call the finest vantage ground for a home view in Cumberland. He stoops his bushy head to enter the door; little Sara Coleridge runs to his arms, arms that have never forgotten his own little grey-eyed, good-humored Margaret, whose place the baby niece had seemed to fill when first the poet and his heart-broken wife came to Keswick. "Uncle," cries Sara, "it's Edith's birthqueen of her. I couldn't sleep all night, day to-day; we are going to make a May the river sounded so loud and the forge hammer began so early." And as she of the dark and glittering eye speaks" with voluble discourse and eager mien," into the room runs quaint Moses, or Job, as they called Hartley, head all awry, topheavy with thinking, and crammed full of his prophecies about King Thomas III. and the unearthly creatures of his imagi nation the Rabzeze Kallaton and others. With Job enters his younger, merryeyed, robustly framed brother Derwent, radiant, affectionate Isabel runs in with Stumpy Canary," in his yellow frock; Bluff King Hal, as Bertha was nicknamed, - Bertha the tender-hearted, "my darkeyed Bertha, timid as a dove." Garrulous Kate, "as round as a mushroom button," comes in next, and with her that "Edithling" once so very ugly, with no more beauty than a young dodo," now grown to be a fair-haired, rosy-cheeked child, with quite enough of the queen of the house about her in her graceful movements to anticipate that burst of Wordsworth's praise: 66 O lady, worthy of earth's proudest throne, With Edith comes into the room her younger and only brother Herbert, that light of his father's eyes, Southey's "only | the green below with much pomp will the and his studious boy," now seven years May-pole be set up, and tea-drinking and old, very active and bright in manner, but flowers and frolic will demand the poet's pale of face with a pallor that gives a depth presence. To-day no hand will touch the to the darkness of his Tartar eyes, and heaps of vellum-covered tomes on their delicate in all his bearing; up he runs at sides upon the floor, no mouth will blow once, and leaps into his father's arms. It the dust from a single one of the four was of Edith May that Southey had thousand volumes of the library that lines written, -the walls. Of course little Job cries out to be shown" his pictures," because it is a "birfday;" but Dapper, the dog, runs barking up the stairs, and Duppa's sketches of Raffaelle and Michael Angelo are forgotten at the voice of honest Joseph Glover, the factotum at Greta Hall, who has come to say that the boat will be ready at eleven o'clock for the young ladies to gather "daffys " at Lord's Isle. A child more welcome by indulgent Heaven Never to parents' tears and prayers was given; but as one watches the poet's look when Herbert, leaping down again, runs round to give his sister another birthday kiss, one feels that it had been more truly written of this his "only boy." Then Wilsy, dear old Mrs. Wilson, aboriginal inhabitant of the house, now seventy years old The aged friend, serene with quiet smile, enters, and with her Madame Bianchi and There is a rush to the mangling room below stairs; such a tumbling together of lanthorns and clogs and pattens; Mrs. Coleridge in a terrible fidget; Mrs. Southey calm; Robert Southey asking for his clogs, his blue peaked cap, and his coat with the lappeted cape and the poem in its pocket; and away from Greta Hall the happy family go, leaving Aunt Lovell to superintend the pastry and the cakes for the May-day tea. Back they come laden with springtide spoil, Wilsy and Glover and Betty Thompson, the faithful nurse, like Jacks in the green. Then dinner at two; afterwards a romp in the apple-room, where the ghost was. A ring at the front-door bell announces the arrival of merry, grey-eyed little Mary Calvert, who has come from Windy Brow to join in the birthday happiness and May-day festival. Now breakfast begins. How sweet a thing it is to watch the tender ways in "Father's written a special poem for which Southey almost coaxes his wife to Edith something about a tale of Paratake the morning meal now pours out a guay!" shrieked the Southey children. cup of tea for her, now prepares toast"We had no Spanish lesson this morning daintily for her acceptance all with such pretty, cooing ways as lovers use, for lovers they are now, as on that half-sad, halfjoyous day that made them man and wife in mid-November, 1795. Then up the stairs the whole party go to the great library with its noble outlooks. The large window, looking south down upon the green with its wide flower-border and over the whitewashed houses with their quaint, low chimneys to Walla Crag and the town, gives glimpses of Derwent water above the houses. Beautiful Walla Crag as seen through this window, to-day at least, will be robbed of that familiar form for foreground, the back view of a gentleman seated at a library table as seen in the frontispiece to "The Doctor." To-day is Edith's birthday, and to-day on and got such a lot of daffodils!" Mary Calvert has brought bluebells, and a gift from her mother and a pot of cream; and, after a good kiss all round, the party set to work to wreathe the Maypole Glover has prepared, and weave the crown for Edith May. child that ever was born," so Wilsy says, | Coleridge, she was always dressing Sara, and so says Betty Thompson. Poor and generally a little fidgety. And soon Nurse Betty! she chokes audibly. "But the clogs are heard pattering down from now, children, I have got some news for you," continues the father. "We are all to be happy, not sad, for Edith May's sake to-day. Mrs. Senhouse sends her compliments, and will you all go over, in honor of Edith, to the Bay for tea to-morrow? And here is a kind letter wishing Edith happy returns from Mr. Spedding, of Armathwaite; and, if we will go, his pleasure-boat, the Spanish Patriot, shall meet us all at the lands' below Great Crosthwaite, and we are to have a primrosing with him in the woods. And here is a letter from Senhora, the Bhow Beghum, for Edith's very self, with lots of kisses.' That even the longest day of life is brief, For, young as the May queen is to-day, The children clap their hands. Hartley puts his head on one side and begins ask ing the questions of a philosopher. Isabel, swift of tongue and temper, rebukes him. Kate sidles up and puts her hand in her father's. Herbert toddles off to Sara of the black eyes, to ask about the new tartan frock in which he is to be dressed for the May-pole dance, and Stumpy Canary votes for the "wreaf" to be put on Edith's head. Then Mrs. Coleridge bustles Sara off to be dressed. Dear, good, clever Mrs. the nursery, and out into "the front" the "O Christ!" wrote Southey to Landor, "what a pang it is to look upon the young shoot and think it will be cut down! and this is the thought that always haunts me." Two years later the May-pole would probably be undressed. Herbert of the the head and flower of Southey's earthly Tartar eyes and swift, precocious mind, happiness, had died, at the age of ten, on April 17, 1816. But five years later there was the sound of May-day revelry again, and standing at the window above the lawn was dear old Betty with a tender babe in her arms, not yet three months old; and as the bairns go dancing round the May-pole they break hands to wave their kisses to little Charles Cuthbert, their baby brother, who is to be christened the week after next at the old Church of St. Kentigern, in Crosthwaite. We would not have so digressed but that we believe that Southey's heart and soul were wrapped in that happy May-day party. He was a home man; his felicities were round the hearth of Greta Hall. Punctual as the quarter boys of St. Dun stan in his afternoon walk, his up-rising, and his down-lying for the whole of the forty years he resided at Greta Hall, he seems to have shut the world, in which he lived and moved, within the circle of |