FOOTNOTES:

an act which may perhaps have suggested to the young King the substitution, which he had all but effected, of the Bible for St. George in the insignia of the Order of the Garter.

By the time he was fourteen his precocious mind became aware of the manner in which his uncle Somerset, had abused his power and taken advantage of his childhood. He saw how the exchequer had been emptied by the rash wars with France and Scotland into which the Protector's ambition had dragged England. How the coinage was debased. How crown lands worth five million of English money of the present day, had been granted away to the Protector's friends. All this the boy-king saw. He felt the shame of his debts; and although he could do little to stop such scandals, he did what he could. According to a schedule he devised, we find him diminishing the garrisons of the forts and the Irish army; ordering greater economy in his household; cutting down the wardrobe charges, and disallowing various claims for fees.

Edward now took part regularly in public business, and began to inquire into the daily transactions of the Council. "He required notice beforehand ofthe business with which the council was to be occupied, and an account was given in to him each Saturday of the proceedings of the week." There is a rough draft of his will, dictated to Sir William Petre the year before his death, which shows how his mind had dwelt silently on the events of his boyhood. "Should his successor like himself, be a minor, his executors, unlike his father's, should meddle with no wars unless the country was invaded." But of all the writings he left, the most interesting and important is an unfinished fragment on the condition of England. Although it was written three hundred years ago by a boy of fifteen, some of it is such fine and wholesome reading for us nowadays, that I must quote part of Mr. Froude's account of it.

"A king who at fifteen could sketch the work which was before him so distinctly, would in a few years have demanded a sharp account of the Stewardship of the Duke of Northumberland."

Looking at England, ... as England was, the young king saw "all things out of order." "Farming gentlemen and clerking knights" neglecting their duties as overseers ofthe people, "were exercising the gain of living." ... Artificers and clothiers no longer worked honestly; the necessaries of life had risen in price, and the labourers had raised their wages, "whereby to recompense the loss of things they bought." The country swarmed with vagabonds; and those who broke the laws escaped punishment by bribery or through foolish pity. The lawyers and even the judges were corrupt.Peace and order were violated by religious dissensions and universal neglect of the law. Offices of trust were bought and sold; benefices impropriated, tillage-ground turned to pasture, "not considering the sustaining of men." The poor were robbed by the enclosures; and extravagance in dress and idle luxury of living were eating like ulcers into the State. These were the vices of the age; nor were they likely, as Edward thought, to yield in any way to the most correct formula of justification. The "medicines to cure these sores" were to be looked for in good education, good laws, and "just execution of the laws without respect of persons, in the example of rulers, the punishment of misdoers, and the encouragement of the good." Corrupt magistrates should be deposed, seeing that those who were themselves guilty would not enforce the laws against their own faults; and all gentlemen and noblemen should be compelled to reside on their estates, and fulfil the duties of their place.[47]

Peace and order were violated by religious dissensions and universal neglect of the law. Offices of trust were bought and sold; benefices impropriated, tillage-ground turned to pasture, "not considering the sustaining of men." The poor were robbed by the enclosures; and extravagance in dress and idle luxury of living were eating like ulcers into the State. These were the vices of the age; nor were they likely, as Edward thought, to yield in any way to the most correct formula of justification. The "medicines to cure these sores" were to be looked for in good education, good laws, and "just execution of the laws without respect of persons, in the example of rulers, the punishment of misdoers, and the encouragement of the good." Corrupt magistrates should be deposed, seeing that those who were themselves guilty would not enforce the laws against their own faults; and all gentlemen and noblemen should be compelled to reside on their estates, and fulfil the duties of their place.[47]

Boys and girls in all countries are apt to say "as happy as a king." I wonder if they ever think of the meaning of that phrase. Certainly a less enviable position than that of this young king cannot well be imagined. Holbein's portraits show him to us a delicate, precocious looking boy, with fine features, small mouth, and odd narrow eyes which glance with a keen penetration from under the sleepy lids. If he had been the son of some country squire he would have been living out of doors, making his frail little body strong and healthy, doing ordinary lessons, riding and leaping and playing tennis like any other lad of his age. But instead of this, we find him a mere tool in the hands of unscrupulous advisers, who are filling their own pockets and ruining the kingdom at his expense. He is pondering on matters of state when he ought to have been playing at marbles. Sitting for long hours in the council chamber, when he should have been riding about the forest with his hawks and hounds. Galloping all the night through, from Hampton Court to Windsor, when his uncle Somerset carried him off to servehis own ends, and thereby did the king's delicate chest an injury which it never recovered. And at length, after six years of a miserable, troublous reign, dying at Greenwich before he was sixteen, with the lords in council and the judges quarreling about his death bed. Poor boy! surely no one would be tempted to envy his fate.

He was buried at Westminster in the splendid chapel that his grandfather built and that his father finished under "the matchless altar" which stood at the head of Henry the Seventh's tomb. This sumptuous "touchstone altar, all of one piece," with its "excellent workmanship of brass," was the work of Torregiano, the rival who broke Michael Angelo's nose in the gardens of St. Mark at Florence. He came to England to complete the adornment of Henry the Seventh's chapel, and lived for twenty years in the precincts of the Abbey, where he kept up his Florentine reputation by sundry fighting feats against the "bears of Englishmen."

The Altar was "by the hot-brained zealots in 41 (1641) demolished; so that not the least footstepsnow remain;" and only a gray stone slab marks the resting place of the last male heir of the Tudors. But when in 1868 Dean Stanley made the memorable search in the vaults of the Abbey to discover where James the First was buried—a mystery unsolved till then—a beautiful piece of a carved white marble frieze was found at the entrance of Edward the Sixth's grave. This fragment, three feet eight inches long, seven inches high, and six inches thick, is the only relic which exists of Torregiano's altar. It is now restored as far as possible to its original position, under the present altar in Henry the Seventh's Chapel.

King Edward's funeral, like his coronation, was remarkable in many ways. It was the first service of the Reformed Church of England ever used over an English sovereign; and this concession was made by the King's Roman Catholic sister, Queen Mary. She was not present; being at the requiem sung in the Tower under the direction of Gardiner, her chief adviser. Archbishop Cranmer conducted the service at Westminster. Thus "the last and saddest function of his public ministry which hewas destined to perform," was the burial of his godson, this young king, whom he had both baptized and crowned.

"The one admirable thing which the unhappy reign produced," must however never be forgotten. While King Edward's uncle Somerset was ruining the kingdom, and paying with his head for his ambition—while the Duke of Northumberland was plotting to set aside Henry the Eighth's will, and to place his own daughter-in-law, the hapless Lady Jane Grey, on the throne of England—Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, was working on quietly in the midst of all the uproar of war and treason, plot and counter-plot, at the English prayer book.

As the translation of the Bible bears upon it the imprint of the mind of Tyndal, so, while the Church of England remains, the image of Cranmer will be seen reflected on the calm surface of the Liturgy. The most beautiful portions of it are translations from the Breviary; yet the same prayers translated by others would not be those which chime like church-bells in the ears of the English child. The translations, and the addresses which are original, have the same silvery melody of language, and breathe the same simplicity of spirit.

One other admirable memory has the reign of Edward left in England. If you stand on Westminster Bridge near the houses of Parliament, and look across the Thames, you see several huge piles of red brick and white stone rising on the Lambeth shore. This is the modern St. Thomas's Hospital, one of the finest in England, built on the foundation which Edward made. Ridley in a sermon preached before the young king, urged the rich to be merciful to the poor and to comfort and relieve them by charitable works. The sermon so impressed the boy that he founded St. Thomas's—St. Bartholomew's Hospital, in Smithfield, where a few years later the martyrs were to suffer at the stake under his ruthless sister Mary—and Christ's Hospital, which we all know as the "Bluecoat" school, where Charles Lamb, and Coleridge, and Thackeray and many another learned man spent their schooldays. But the boy-king did yet more. In eighteen towns of England he founded the famous Grammar Schools which "throw a lustre over the name of Edward," although he did not live to see the fruit of his noble thought.

FOOTNOTES:[43]Memorials, 464.[44]"Memorials of Westminster Abbey." p. 81.[45]Memorials. p. 81.[46]Leland. p. 324.[47](Froude. Vol. V. p. 441.)

[43]Memorials, 464.

[44]"Memorials of Westminster Abbey." p. 81.

[45]Memorials. p. 81.

[46]Leland. p. 324.

[47](Froude. Vol. V. p. 441.)

On the 27th of October, 1575, there was a grand christening at Westminster. The tiny baby, wrapped in a mantle of crimson velvet, was carried with royal pomp into the Abbey. Some of the most splendid and famous personages of the day attended to do honor to the child, and the queen's majesty was godmother.

Who was this baby? Why was all this display and ceremony expended on an infant only five days old?

The little girl was of noble birth. She was daughter of John, Baron Russell, second son of the Earl of Bedford, one of that famous family which has given England some of her best statesmen for hundreds of years. Her mother was a daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, of Gildea Hall in Essex, "aman of the ancient equanimity and worship," well known for his goodness and learning. Sir Anthony brought up his daughters to follow in his own footsteps. They were noble and accomplished gentlewomen and learned withal, for they could write easily in Greek, Latin and Italian, as well as in their own tongue. One of them, Mildred, married Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh, Queen Elizabeth's famous councillor and adviser. Anne was wife of Sir Nicholas, afterwards Lord Chancellor Bacon, whose son was the great philosopher, Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam. Elizabeth, Lady Russell, the mother of our "child of Westminster," had been married before to Sir Thomas Hobby, ambassador to France. And when he died in 1566, Queen Elizabeth wrote a letter full of affection and esteem to his widow. In this letter she praises the dead Sir Thomas; and then goes on:

And for yourself, we cannot but let you know that we hear out of France such singular good reports of your duty well accomplished toward your husband, both living and dead, with other your sober, wise and discreet behaviour in thatcourt and country, that we think it a part of great commendation to us and commendation to our country, that such a gentlewoman hath given so manifest a testimony of virtue in such hard times of adversity. And therefore, though we thought very well of you before, yet shall we hereafter make a more assured account of your virtues and gifts; and where-insoever we may conveniently do you pleasure, you may be thereof assured. And so we would have you rest yourself in quietness, with a firm opinion of our special favour towards you. Given under our signet, at our city of Oxford, the —— of September, 1566, the eighth year of our reign.Your loving friend,Elizabeth R.

Your loving friend,

Elizabeth R.

It was "at our city of Oxford" that we chanced upon this letter. Reading in the Bodleian Library, at the end of the great cross gallery lined with rows of books, tier upon tier, we sat in the month of September, 1884, at a quiet table beside a huge stone-mullioned window. One of its casements of leaded panes, guarded with brown rusty iron bars, was open. In the acacia-tree outside a bird was singing. Beyond the delicate green foliage, untouched by any thought of autumn, the towers and spires of the glorious city rose above red andgray roofs. The silence about us was only broken by the crisp turning of leaves or the stealthy foot-fall of the attendants bringing fresh heaps of books to the half-dozen busy workers. There was a fragrant smell of old books—of leather bindings—so dear to the student's heart. The warm, sweet outer air and hot sunshine streamed in at the open window. "The merry, merry Christ Church bells—one, two, three, four, five, six," chimed the quarters; and "Mighty Tom" tolled the hours as the morning stole by only too quickly.

Two hundred and eighteen years ago in this very month of September, Queen Elizabeth was at Oxford, on her way to or from Kenilworth Castle, and she wrote the letter to Lady Hobby with those same Christ Church bells chiming the quarters and the hours within hearing of her lodgings.

What times those were! The fortunes of England under Elizabeth were recovering from long disgrace and decay. The foundation of the Royal Exchange, by Sir Thomas Gresham, in that very year 1566, gave English trade an impetus of which we in England and America are reaping the benefits.English ships under such men as Drake and Frobisher, Sir Richard Grenville and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, were sailing the seas, fighting the Spaniards, and bringing home the wealth of every country in the known globe to the port of London. A few years later, Drake in his little vessel with eighty men would sail through the straits of Magellan, and load his bark with gold-dust and silver ingots, with pearls, diamonds and emeralds, the spoils of the "great galleon that sailed once a year from Lima to Cadiz," and Raleigh would name Virginia after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen.

But something more precious than commerce, or mere tangible wealth, was reviving in England. The prosperity of Elizabeth's reign was signalized by an outburst of literature such as the world has seldom seen. In 1566 Edmund Spenser was fourteen; Sir Philip Sidney was twelve; and William Shakespeare was a little two-year-old lad playing about his father's black and white half-timbered house in sunny Stratford-on-Avon. What need to go further? Those three names alone are enough, to say nothing of the host of other writers—Baconand Fulke Grenville with the philosophers and the essayists, Hakluyt and his library of voyages and travels, Michael Drayton and the patriotic poets. These were some of the men who as statesmen, soldiers, discoverers, poets, have made the Elizabethan age the synonym for all that is most splendid, most brilliant at home and abroad.

Nine years after the queen's letter from Oxford, Elizabeth Hobby, who had meanwhile married Lord Russell, took refuge at Westminster from the plague which was then prevalent in London—that is to say in what we now call the city, where all the grand folks of those days lived.

Having obtained so much favor from Dr. Goodman, Dean of Westminster, as to have her lodgings within the late dissolved Abbey,

her little daughter was born in the precincts on October 22, 1575. Lord Russell wrote to announce the fact to his brother-in-law Lord Burleigh. He was sorely disappointed at the child being a girl. "I could have wished with all my heart to have had a boy:" but as that could notbe he would like a wise man "rejoice in having a girl." Then he goes on to ask Lord Burleigh to pray the queen to be the baby's godmother. The queen willingly granted the request; for her old admiration for Lady Russell had by no means abated. Being at Windsor she sent Lady Warwick as her deputy, "attended by Mr. Wingfield, the queen's gentleman usher, to direct all things in the same cathedral."

Mr. Wingfield caused "a traverse of crimson taffeta"—a kind of enclosure or regal pew if there be such a thing—to be set on the right side of the altar, near the steps within the chancel; and in the traverse a carpet, a chair and cushions of state. This was for the deputy, Lady Warwick, who, as she represented the queen, was treated as if she were royal.

Then a great basin was set up in the middle, near to the high table, a yard high, upon a small frame for the purpose covered with white linen, and the basin set thereon with water and flowers about the brim.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.—From painting in the English National Portrait Gallery.QUEEN ELIZABETH.—From painting in the English National Portrait Gallery.

On Thursday, October 27, at ten o'clock, all was ready. The witnesses and a great company were assembled; and they proceeded from the Deanery through the cloister. First came the gentlemen in waiting; then the knights in their places; the barons and earls in their degree. Then the godfather—none other than that famous and brilliant personage, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the only man whom the great Queen Elizabeth really loved—her cousin, "Sweet Robin." If you ever come to Warwickshire go to Kenilworth Castle, and see the remains of the grand Hall where he received the queen with more than royal state at three different times. Then go to Warwick, and see his effigy in the Beauchamp Chapel, lying beside his third wife, whom he married after poor Amy Robsart's death.

Look at the Earl's handsome proud face; and then picture him to yourselves as he walked through the cloisters and into the noble Abbey, magnificent in dress and bearing, in the heydey of his youth, splendor and prosperity at little Bess Russell's christening. After the godfather came the unconscious baby—the centre of all this display—wrapped

in a mantle of crimson velvet, guarded with two wrought laces of gold, having also over the face a lawn, striped with bone lace of gold athwart, and powdered with gold flowers and white wrought thereon.

She was carried by the nurse, Mrs. Bradshaw. Her second godmother, the Countess of Sussex—Frances Sidney, aunt of Sir Philip Sidney, and foundress of Sidney-Sussex College at Cambridge, followed her. Then a gentleman usher. And then the Countess of Warwick, deputy for the queen. Her train was borne by Lady Russell's two sisters, Lady Burleigh and Lady Bacon; and after them came "other ladies and gentlemen, many."

The deputy went within the traverse, the rest remaining without, while the Dean made a short address. After it was over

Lady Bacon took the child and brought it to the font, where the Dean attended in his surplice. Then the Earl Leicester approached near to the traverse, and there tarried until the deputy came forth, from whence they leisurely proceeded to the font, the deputy's train still borne, where she christened the child by the name of Elizabeth; which donethe deputy retired back into the traverse again, and the nurse took the child, and came down, and there dressed it.

Now comes one of the most impressive and picturesque episodes in the story.

The account says—

In the meantime, Mr. Philip Sidney came out of the Chapel called St. Edward's shrine having a towel on his left shoulder, and with him came Mr. Delves, bearing the basin and ewer. Then the deputy came forth, her train borne, and they two kneeling, she washed.

Imagine Philip Sidney, then twenty-three years old, appearing from the Confessor's Chapel, which as I have explained lies directly behind the altar, with his towel over his shoulder, to kneel before the good and charming Countess of Warwick—Philip Sidney, that exquisite and noble soul, the very type and pattern of all that is most beautiful and admirable in the age of Elizabeth.

Fair as he was brave, quick of wit as of affection, noble and generous in temper, dear to Elizabeth as to Spenser, the darling of the Court and of the camp; his learning and his genius made him the centre of the literary world which was springing into birth on English soil.

Poet, philosopher, chivalrous knight errant, grave councillor, what wonder that he was the idol of the whole country? And the story of his death, which we all know, but of which I, for one, never tire, was a fitting close to the thirty-two years of this Bayard without fear and without reproach. He threw away his life to save the army of his queen in Flanders. As he lay dying he called for water. But when it was brought and the bottle was put to his lips he saw a poor soldier dying near him, and bade them give it to him. "Thy necessity," he said, "is greater than mine." And so he died. This was the man who humbly served Lady Warwick, the deputy, at our baby's christening.

Then other gentlemen with two basins and ewers, came to the Countess of Sussex and the Earl of Leicester; and they having washed, immediately came from the aforesaid place of St. Edward's shrine, gentlemen with cups of hippocras and wafers; that done, they all departed out of the Church through the choir, in such order as before, the Lady Bacon carrying the child, and so the said ladies and godfather went into the Lady Russell's chamber.

Then the company went to dinner, "a stately and costly delicate banquet;" and grace being said by Lord Russell's chaplain, the lords washed, and after rose and returned to Lady Russell's rooms.

The baby Bess, like babies nowadays, had her christening presents: "By the queen's majesty a great standing cup; Countess of Sussex a standing cup; Earl of Leicester a great bowl."

So the pretty child's life began; ushered into that splendid and brilliant court with all the pomp and circumstance possible. Not only is the record of her baptism curious because it gives us a vivid picture of the court at that time, and a glimpse of many famous men and women who were present at it: but christenings have been few and far between at Westminster. For a long while they ceased altogether; and during this century up to about 1868 the few baptisms have been those of children of members of the Abbey body. Since that date a very few children, more or less connected with Westminster, have been christened each year in Henry the Seventh's chapel. And on the last page of the register for 1883, there is the nameof a little grandson of Alfred, Lord Tennyson—the Poet Laureate—a baby well-deserving such an honor, for his grandfather claims descent from King Edward the Third; and from his mother, whose wedding took place in the Abbey, he inherits the blood of Robert Bruce.

The next we hear about our little Bess is some years later, when we learn that she and her younger sister, Anne, were appointed maids of honor to the queen. Their mother, Lady Russell, who was brilliant and vivacious, as well as learned in Latin and Greek, had considerable influence with Queen Elizabeth, and seems to have used her "kind enchantments" in the service of peace and goodwill at court. Towards the close of her reign sad days had come upon the great queen. She was growing old—though she could not bear to acknowledge the fact. Some of those in whom she had trusted most proved false to her—like Essex. Her splendid progresses through the country, her three thousand dresses, could no longer cheer the sad, lonely old woman, who had outlived so many of her early friends and counsellors. The violent Tudortemper which she inherited from her father became more and more ungovernable, and sometimes it showed itself towards the unlucky maids of honor.

"The Queen," says Sir Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney, in 1600:

hath of late used the fair Miss Brydges (daughter of the Lord Chandos), with words andblowsof anger; and she with Miss Russell, were put out of the coffer-chamber, lying three nights at Lady Stafford's, before they could return to their wonted waiting.

And what was their offence? They had ventured to take medicine without leave; and had broken some rule of court etiquette by "going through the private galleries to see the lords and gentlemen play at theballon." This was early in 1600. But shortly afterwards the queen, with one of her capricious changes of temper, made the fullamendefor her words and blows of anger to poor Bess Russell, on the occasion of her sister Anne's marriage to Lord Herbert, son and heir to Edward, fourth Earl of Worcester. On June 9, 1600, Lady Russell went to court to fetch her daughter Anne away, "of whom the queen in public used as graciousspeeches as she had been heard to indulge in of any." She sent her lords and maids in waiting to escort the bride and her mother to their house at Blackfriars. "All went in a troop away"—the court attendants filling eighteen coaches.

The marriage took place on June 16 at Blackfriars, and the queen honored the ceremony with her presence. The bride met the queen at the waterside, where Lord Cobham, who had offered Her Majesty the use of his house, had provided a "lectica made like half a litter, wherein she was carried by six knights to Lady Russell's house." The mere name Blackfriars now conjures up a vision of the smokiest and dirtiest parts of smoky, dirty, dearly-beloved London. A vision of grimy houses crowded together, and piled up story on story to utilize every inch of the space that is now so valuable—of tall factory chimneys; Powell's glass-works; bustling wharves; huge warehouses; of yelling railway trains, whistling and thundering over the great iron bridges that span the Thames; of penny steamboats; of heavy barges on the muddy river all defiled by the great city that presses down to its banks. St. Paul's dome, the grand old Tower of London, and the towers and spires of Sir Christopher Wren's "fifty new churches," pierce the smoke and the haze, and rise above the roofs of the busiest part of the city. The only trees to be seen are the planes on the embankment, along that waterside where the bride met the queen. Is this a fit place for a brilliant court to come to a gay wedding?

MONUMENT TO MISS ELIZABETH RUSSELL.MONUMENT TO MISS ELIZABETH RUSSELL.

Happily we know what Blackfriars was like in Elizabethan days. At Sherbourne Castle in Dorsetshire, Lord Digby possesses a most interesting picture supposed to be painted by Isaac Oliver, of this very procession from the waterside. There is a pleasant background of fields and trees with two or three fine houses standing on the wooded slopes of Holborn hill. The queen, clad in a long-waisted dress covered with jewels, and wearing a great ruff open at the throat, which was then only worn by young unmarried women, is seated in a chair under a light canopy borne by six knights. Anne Russell, the bride, walks directly behind the litter, in huge hooped skirt of white, with a richly workedand bejewelled bodice. She wears an open ruff like the queen's, which shows her throat. Her mother and Lucy Harrington, Countess of Bedford, who are her supporters, have close ruffs that cover their necks, and are dressed in black and gray with rich jewels. Nobles splendidly habited, go before, two and two; and ladies follow, among whom we may suppose that the fair Bess Russell figures. Lord Herbert, the bridegroom, carries the right end of the pole that supports the litter, and reaches his left hand back to his pretty bride who is close behind him. Next him a slim and exquisitely dressed figure is thought by Mr. Scharf F. S. A. to be Sir Walter Raleigh, who had just returned with Lord Cobham from a mission in Flanders.

After the marriage the queen dined with the wedding party at Lady Russell's, where "the entertainment was great and plentiful; and the mistress of the feast much commended for it." At night—for in those days dinners were early—she went to Lord Cobham's where she supped. And

after supper came a memorable masque of eight ladies, each clad in a skirt of cloth of silver, a rich waistcoat wroughtwith silks and gold and silver, a mantle of carnation taffeta cast under the arm, and their hair loose about their shoulders curiously knotted and interlaced. The masquers were Lady Dorothy (Sidney), Miss Fitton, Miss Carey, Miss Onslow, Miss Southwell, Miss Bess Russell, Miss Darcy, and Lady Blanch Somerset, who danced to the music that Apollo brought; and a fine speech was made of aninthmuse, much to her praise and honor. "Delicate," says the narrator, "it was to see eight ladies so prettily and richly attired." Miss Fitton led; and after they had finished their own ceremonies, the eight lady masquers chose eight other ladies to dance the measures. Miss Fitton went to the queen and wooed her to the dance. The queen asked what she was. "Affection," was the answer. "Affection!" said the queen, "affection is false!" yet she rose and danced as did the Marchioness of Winchester.

Poor, sad old queen, clinging like a child—like the true daughter of her hapless mother Anne Boleyn—to any amusement, excitement, display, that could divert her weary thoughts from her loneliness, from the burdening cares of state; with her bitter jibe at the falseness of affection, yet rising and dancing a measure with her maids of honor. It is as pathetic a picture as one can look upon.

So ends the record of the gay wedding at Blackfriars. But alas! within a fortnight the marriage rejoicings were turned into mourning. Our beautiful Bess Russell, the child of the court, the child of the Abbey, was consumptive. She grew rapidly worse, and a fortnight after her sister Anne's wedding she was dead. Her illness indeed, at the last, was so sudden that it gave rise to an absurd story, which was commonly believed one hundred and fifty years ago; namely, that she died of the prick of a needle in her finger which produced gangrene. This however is a mere fable, and only came into existence some seventy years after her death. She was buried in Westminster Abbey—that Abbey under whose shadow she was born, within whose walls she was christened. Well may Dean Stanley call her "the child of Westminster."

Her beautiful monument stands in the Chapel of St. Edmund, near that of her father, and of John of Eltham. She sits "in a curiously wrought osier chair," leaning her head upon her hand, and pointing at the skull, on which her right foot rests, with an expression on her face of great sadnessand sweetness. On the richly carved pedestal upon which the figure is placed are engraved these words: "Dormit, non mortua est"—she is not dead but sleeping—and below on a scroll we read that to the "sacred and happy memory of Elizabeth Russell" this monument is dedicated by her afflicted sister Anne.

Sweet Bess Russell's effigy is remarkable in more ways than one. It is the first of all in the Abbey that is seated erect. Hitherto kings, princes, warriors, noble ladies have been content to lie in profound repose, their hands crossed or folded in prayer. Lord Russell's figure on his splendid monument hard by, shows the first sign of restlessness. He lies on his side, supporting his head on his elbow. At his feet is the son he wished for so greatly—little Francis—who only lived a few months; and graceful figures of his two daughters in mourning robes support the coat of arms above. In a few years the effigies will begin to kneel—as in the case of Sir Francis Vere's noble tomb where four kneeling knights carry his arms on a slab resting upon their shoulders. So intensely alivedo they look that Roubillac the famous sculptor was found standing wrapt before them, and when questioned said softly, with his eyes fixed on the fourth knight, "Hush! hush! he will speak presently!" A little later they will sit—then stand, like Walpole's beautiful mother. Then they will gesticulate with the orators, and rise out of the tomb, or the sea, and soar among the clouds, in the execrable taste of the last century. All this new movement and life in marble, was ushered in by pretty Elizabeth Russell and her worthy father; so that their monuments mark a very distinct period in the history of the Abbey. The reign, too, of her royal godmother inaugurated the "recognition of the Abbey as a Temple of Fame." Queen Elizabeth loved the Abbey, and the chapels were crowded with the "worthies" who served her so loyally and faithfully. Henceforth not only kings and princes were to be buried in the Church of Henry the Third, but all who were great and wise in action or in thought, statesmen, soldiers, poets, were to rest within the walls of the Pantheon of the English Nation.

In 1603 a great change came over the destinies of England. Queen Elizabeth, the last of the house of Tudor, died. And James of Scotland, the first of those Stuart kings who were to bring civil war, ruin and disgrace on our land, came to the throne. A hundred years before, the rich Tudor architecture had taken the place in Westminster of the grave Gothic of the Middle Ages. Now the strong rule of the Tudors—often unscrupulous, but generally able—was in like manner succeeded by the extravagant misrule of the Stuarts.

It was, however, through their Tudor blood—through their descent from Henry the Seventh, the great-grandfather of that most unhappy woman, Mary, Queen of Scots—that the Stuarts succeeded to the English throne. It was fitting, therefore,that they should turn to the chapel which had been built as a burial place for the Tudor race. And within four years of James the First's accession, two "royal rosebuds" were laid to rest within its walls.

Let us go to-day and see their monuments.

We mount the wide steps at the extreme east end of the ambulatory, that form a sort of vestibule of deepest shadow under the massive archway which joins the Abbey to Henry the Seventh's Chapel. The black and white marble floor gleams cold, and the sun streams in through the southern windows upon the brass of Henry the Seventh's tomb as we look through the great bronze gates. But we will not enter them. We will turn to the left, where an open doorway leads us out of the dark entry at the head of the steps into the quiet light of the north aisle. On either side of the great central chapel run these two aisles, only divided from it by slender pillars and by the dark oak stalls of the Knights of the Bath. They are separate chapels, narrower and smaller than the main one, but equally beautiful; with the same cobweb-like stone roof; the same clusters of pillars spreading out into fan traceries; and deep, embayed windows full of hundreds of diamond panes toned down by the grimy London air into a mellow amber color.

THE MONUMENT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH IN THE NORTH AISLE.THE MONUMENT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH IN THE NORTH AISLE.

As we enter the north aisle we tread on a stone that bears the name of Addison. Famous men, poets, generals, statesmen, are all about us. But the great monument that stands in the centre of the chapel claims all our attention. Under a magnificent marble canopy, still and stern in death, lies the last of the Tudors—that splendid personage who, for more than fifty years, ruled over England and kept all Europe at bay; and who by word and deed encouraged those who laid the foundation of the great transatlantic England. Yes! there sleeps Queen Elizabeth—the old lioness. And in spite of vanities and weaknesses that we are apt nowadays to dwell on all too hardly, she was perhaps the greatest woman that England has ever seen. Her tomb, built by James the First, "of white marble and touchstone from the royal store at Whitehall," is not only a worthy memorial of her, but a token of the peace and goodwill that the great Abbey speaks of to allwho will hear. For by her own desire, Elizabeth was buried in the same grave with her sister Mary, that sister whose very name seems only to bring to mind hatred and persecution, the stake and the fagot. Now she and Elizabeth are at peace. And on their monument James the First inscribed "two lines full of a far deeper feeling than we should naturally have ascribed to him":[48]

Fellows in the kingdom, and in the tomb. Here we sleep; Mary and Elizabeth, the Sisters; in hope of the resurrection.

There is another effigy of Queen Elizabeth in the Abbey; and a very curious one it is. From the thirteenth century until the beginning of the eighteenth, it was the custom at royal funerals to carry a life-size, waxen image before the coffin, representing the dead in the clothes they wore. These effigies were left on the grave for about a month, and some of the Abbey officials gained their living by showing them to visitors. Most of the waxen figures have crumbled to dust. The writer believes that she was the last person to look at that of haplessAnne Boleyn. It had so fallen to pieces as to be a very hideous object, and it has since been locked up and shown to no one. But in an upper chamber over the Islip chapel, reached by a little dark stairway, eleven of these strange figures are still to be seen in wainscot cupboards with glass doors. Among them is Queen Elizabeth; not the original effigy—that was worn out in 1708, when a certain Tom Brown who wroteA Walk through London and Westminster, says that he saw the remains of it. This is a copy made in 1760; and we see the poor old queen, dressed in the long-waisted bodice and hooped skirt we know so well in pictures. It is a piteous sight, however; for the effigy, battered and sorely the worse for wear, is leaning up against the side of the glass cupboard in a most undignified attitude. One would rather think of her as she lies still and stately in the beautiful north aisle.

But we must linger no longer about Elizabeth's effigy or her tomb. We must pass on to the east end of the chapel, and there we shall find the monuments of her two little cousins.

On what used to be the altar step of the north aisle stands a baby's cradle—a cradle on real rockers. A gorgeous coverlet, all trimmed with rich guipure lace, falls from the corners of the cradle in splendid, rich folds. The arms of England, Scotland, and Ireland are carved on the back. And when you look under the head of the cradle you see that a baby lies sleeping in it. A darling tiny baby it is—its little wee face set in a close lace cap and lace ruff, under a kind of lace-trimmed hood that forms part of the pillow. You can almost fancy that if the cradle were set rocking the babe might open her eyes. But "baby and cradle, and all," are marble—marble, yellow with the dust and wear of nearly three hundred years.

"The Cradle Tomb" of Westminster, as it is called, has been far better described than by any words of mine. A card hangs close beside it, placed there by desire of Lady Augusta Stanley, on which is a poem "by an American lady." That lady is a well-known favorite of American readers; for she is none other than "Susan Coolidge." And the lovely verses—some of whichI venture to transcribe—appeared inScribner's Monthlyfor 1875:

A little rudely sculptured bed,With shadowing folds of marble lace,And quilt of marble, primly spread,And folded round a baby face.Smoothly the mimic coverlet,With royal blazonries bedight,Hangs, as by tender fingers set,And straightened for the last good-night.And traced upon the pillowing stoneA dent is seen, as if, to blessThat quiet sleep, some grieving oneHad leaned, and left a soft impress.But dust upon the cradle lies,And those who prized the baby so,And decked her couch with heavy sighs,Were turned to dust long years ago.

A little rudely sculptured bed,With shadowing folds of marble lace,And quilt of marble, primly spread,And folded round a baby face.

Smoothly the mimic coverlet,With royal blazonries bedight,Hangs, as by tender fingers set,And straightened for the last good-night.

And traced upon the pillowing stoneA dent is seen, as if, to blessThat quiet sleep, some grieving oneHad leaned, and left a soft impress.

But dust upon the cradle lies,And those who prized the baby so,And decked her couch with heavy sighs,Were turned to dust long years ago.

The inscription on her cradle tells us that this dear baby,

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