agony than a violent death could inflict, by the degradation of her child. He willed his marriage with Anne to be annulled even before death, then advancing with rapid strides, should release him from wedlock, in order that the illegitimacy of the infant Princess Elizabeth should preclude her from disputing the succession with any daughter to which Jane Seymour might give birth. The plea for this step was Anne's having been contracted to the Earl of Northumberland previously to having wedded with him—a statement wholly untrue, and declared to be so by the earl himself.

On the 17th of May, Lord Rochford and the other accused persons were executed. Anne was made aware of this, but her mind was so wholly engrossed in preparations for her own approaching death, that the loss of a brother so fondly loved was looked on by her as only the departure on a journey of a dear friend, whom she would join a few hours later. Her prayers to God before whom she was soon to be summoned were fervent and frequent, uninterrupted by the presence of any one dear to her; no parting adieus shook her courage or melted her heart. Of her child she thought with all a mother's tenderness, praying for her as a dying mother might; and she earnestly entreated Lady Kingston to implore the Princess Mary to pardon any occasional slights which she had received from her.

Those around her were no less edified than surprised at the resignation and fortitude which she maintained to the last. She approached the block with a calm countenance and a firm step, endeavouring to console her weeping followers, among whom was her early friend, the sister of Sir Thomas Wyatt, to whom she gave, as a parting gift, a small manuscript prayer-book, with a request to wear it ever in her breast, as a memorial of undying affection. She besought her other attendants to forgive her if she had ever offended them; and then, ascending the scaffold, is said to have addressed those around her as follows: "Friends and good Christian people, I am here in your presence to suffer death, whereto I acknowledge myself adjudged by law, how justly I will not say; I intend not an accusation of any one. I beseech the Almighty to preserve his Majesty long to reign over you. A more gentle or mild prince never swayed sceptre; his bounty towards me hath been special. If any one intend an inquisitive survey of my actions, I entreat them to judge favourably of me, and not rashly to admit any censorious conceit; and so I bid the world farewell, beseeching you to commend me in your prayers to God.".

This address has been very properly doubted. Mr. Secretary

Cromwell, whose son and heir was married to the sister of Jane Seymour, who had supplanted Anne in Henry's affection, and who, though he owed his present greatness to her, was too much of a courtier to give her the least succour in her troubles, was present, and probably introduced the words about a gentle and mild prince to please his tyrant master. At all events those declarations are not more opposed to nature and honesty, than they are to her own words in her letter to the king of the 6th of May, that "he must hereafter expect to be called to a strict account for his treatment of her, if he took away her life on false and slanderous pretences." She spoke with an unfaltering voice and a calm countenance; and then, uncovering her neck, she knelt down and prayed aloud," To Jesus Christ I commend my soul!" She laid her head on the block, but is said by one account to have refused to have her eyes bandaged; and that such was the effect which their saint-like expression produced on her executioner, that he could not strike the fatal blow, until, by inducing some of his attendants to approach on her right side, he, taking off his shoes, noiselessly advanced on the left; and Anne, hearing the steps on her right, turned her glance on that side, when the axe fell on that fair neck, and severed the head from it. A Portuguese gentleman, however, who was present, relates that her eyes were bandaged with a handkerchief by one of her ladies. A cry of grief and horror burst from the spectators when the head of the victim fell; but it was hushed by the discharge of artillery, which made known the tragical catastrophe, and was the signal to Henry that he was free to wed Jane Seymour.

JANE SEYMOUR,

THIRD QUEEN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.

IF the ascent of Anne Boleyn to the throne of Henry the Eighth met with well-merited censure, as being purchased at the heavy cost of misery to that good and virtuous queen, Katharine of Arragon, whose repudiation, and the ingratitude, insults, and cruelties that preceded and followed it, broke the proud and loyal heart of the noble Spaniard, what can be said of the successor of the hapless Anne, Jane Seymour, who mounted the steps of the throne still ensanguined with the warm life-blood of her predecessor? That blood-shed only the previous day, and shed that the selfish and cruel Henry might remove the only obstacle to the gratification of his passion for Jane Seymour-was hardly cold, when, forgetting all womanly feeling and decency, Jane plighted her troth to the widower of a day-the self-made widower, too!-who had condemned his wife's head to the block. As Anne Boleyn had betrayed her mistress Queen Katharine, and wiled away from her the affection of the king, so did Jane Seymour win from Anne the fickle heart of Henry, and, indifferent to the anguish she inflicted, and the violent death she must have known would follow, to make place for her on the throne, thought only of gratifying her own pride and ambition.

Of all Henry's acts of cruelty-and they were neither "few nor far between”—there is no one more revolting than these bloodstained nuptials, the unseemly haste of which have led impartial readers to disbelieve the crimes of which Anne Boleyn was accused, and to attribute the charges brought against her to Henry's desire for the possession of her unfeeling rival.

Like Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour is said to have resided some years in the French court, and to have filled a similar position in the regal retinue of the Princess Mary of England, queen to Louis the Twelfth. A portrait of her in the royal collection at Versailles, simply