repeatedly noticed, her piety did not prevent her from being affectionate in all her domestic relations. And now all this danger of an unlooked-for contingency was suddenly brought before her, couched in solemn terms fitting the ear of impious parents, such as it had not entered into her dreams to conceive applicable to herself! judge if she had not occasion for her whole panoply, and for all her high religious courage

̓Αλγεινὰ μέν μοι καὶ λέγειν ἐστὶν τάδε,

*Αλγος δὲ σιγᾶν.

In fine, public and political fear came in, to add, as it were, the last drop to the chalice that was held to her pure lips.

She would fill no eye with a prophetic tear-"La vraie foi ne se trouble jamais."

Τί γὰρ πέπρωται Ζηνὶ, πλὴν ἀεὶ κρατεῖν *;

"Yet, my God," exclaims a poet, "it is a melancholy thing

"For such a one, who would full fain preserve

Her soul in calmness, yet perforce must feel
For all her human brethren. O my God!
It is indeed a melancholy thing,

And weighs upon the heart, that she must think
What uproar and what strife may now be stirring
This way or that way o'er these silent hills;

Invasion, and the thunder and the shout,
And all the crash of onset!"

Her last weeks beheld the whole nation in suspense, and London certainly more uneasy than in those ancient times when it seems to have been thought sufficient security to make a municipal decree, that "no boatman, after sunset, shall have his boat on the other side of the water, but on this side;" and that "no boat shall at night remain anchored upon the bankside of Southwark under pain of loss of vessel and imprisonment of body †." She saw and heard the preparations for war, according to the

* Prometh.
+ Liber Albus, 499.

new portentous fashion, on all sides. Dover heights and Castle, beneath which the last week of her life was spent, sent forth each morning the thunders of experimental artillery, and there was some reason to apprehend that England was again to see the days when each tuft of trees contained an ambuscade, and one had to exclaim,

Το

"O pity, God, this miserable age!

What stratagems, how fell, how butcherly,
Erroneous, mutinous, and unnatural,

This deadly quarrel daily doth beget!"

some, it is true, all this might have seemed like the mending of high ways in summer, when the ways are fair enough; but she at all events armed herself to welcome the condition of the time,

"Which could not look more hideously upon her,

Than she had drawn it in her phantasy."

She would say, though not conscious that she was all but citing Shakspeare,

"It is most apt we arm us 'gainst the foe;

For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom,

Though war, nor no known quarrel were in question,

But that defences, musters, preparations,

Should be maintain'd, assembled, and collected,
As were a war in expectation *."

The state of uncertainty around her in these last days was, no question, painful. She could only offer to God the confused sentiment of her regrets and of her fears. So among her latest prayers was one resembling that tender supplication & óλg εUTUXÿ! for she loved England, and she would have said with the ancient chorus

Δέδοικα δὲ σὺν βασιλεῦσι
Μὴ πόλις δαμασθῇ †.

And then remember in what state all this found her; think of the profound wounds already in her heart; how she suffers,

* Henry V.

+ Sept.

physically and morally; how she has trials, so withering, so disenchanting, so calculated to throw one into bitterness, that you might think, when all was moved together, the soul of an angel would give in. Yes, to her the time seemed coming, thus did she follow it, that foul sin, gathering head, shall break into corruption.

"The blood wept from her heart when she did shape,

In forms imaginary, the miserable days

And rotten times, that some should look upon
When she was sleeping with her ancestors."

So her daily aspirations more and more resembled those of Chateaubriand on the death of the Duc Mathieu de Montmorency, when he repeated those solemn words, "Eternal Being, object that never ends, and before whom all disappears, sole permanent and stable reality, Thou alone meritest that one should be attached to Thee; Thou alone fillest the insatiable desires of man. In loving Thee, no more disquietude, no more fear of losing what one has chosen. Thy love combines ardour, strength, sweetness, and infinite hope." Ever, as we formerly remarked, animated with a Davidic spirit, her hope, her consolation being in God, she was seen to be one

"That fortune's buffets and rewards

Has ta'en with equal thanks; and bless'd are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger

To sound what stop she please."

It is true, with the spirit of a martyr, she would have marched to the block any day for her faith or for her honour, using to her enemies the very words of St. Louis, for there is a monotony even in the expressions of such characters, qu'ils en povoient faire à leurs voulenter, et qu'il aymoit trop mieulx mourir bon chrestien, que de vivre au courroux de Dieu, de sa Mère, et de ses saints." It is true she would have proved herself in this respect "as fierce a Christian as you had ever known. But, nevertheless, already, as we have observed, she had been ordained to suffer afflictions which no courage or con

stancy of faith could render sweet; she had been called to verify the lines,

"Years to a mother bring distress,

But do not make her love the less."

So that we have only to say in conclusion, how like an awaking from an ill dream must have been, a few days afterwards, her sudden passage to the other world, when all that had been lost was found again, and all the jarring confusion of this life of contradictions changed into the peace of God and the felicity of Heaven! This world is a scene of warfare, a constant combat. "All those," as the Count de Maistre says, "who have fought bravely in a battle without doubt deserve praise; but, no question also," he adds, "the greatest glory belongs to those who come back from it wounded." That lot was eminently hers. As we leave the portal, methinks that one might think audible a voice addressed to her in the words of the poet,

CELEBRATED writer has said that a Christian like Alexander reserves to himself only hope. One might be reminded of this saying when contemplating the spirit, not alone of courage to face calamities, but of resignation when they were victorious, in which Jane Mary's last years were spent; showing the force of that conviction which lay at the root of all our ancient Christian literature, namely, "que en ce mortel monde ne faut y prendre ses aises ny constituer sa fin*."

Alain Chartier, L'Esperance.

A great modern author, generalizing certain observations, says, "that an accurate analysis of the schools of art of all times, might show us that when the immortality of the soul was practically and completely believed, the elements of decay, danger, and grief, in visible things, were always disregarded." "However this may be, it is assuredly so," he says, "in the early Christian schools. The ideas of decay seem not merely repugnant, but inconceivable to them; the expression of immortality and perpetuity is alone possible." Then, as if he had known personally the character we are delineating, he adds, “A similar condition of mind seems to have been attained, not unfrequently in modern times, by persons whom either narrowness of circumstance, or education, or vigorous moral efforts, have guarded from the troubling of the world, so as to give them firm and childlike trust in the power and presence of God, together with peace of conscience and a belief in the passing of evil into some form of good. It is impossible that a person thus disciplined should feel, in any of its more acute phases, the sorrow, I should rather say the precise kind of sorrow, for any of the phenomena of nature which would occur to another *."

Mme. Swetchine has left some striking pages on this topic, which sooner or later proves of such immediate interest to every human being; and as expressing the thoughts of a woman, I shall the more willingly avail myself of them before proceeding to give any strictly personal details.

"Resignation then," she says, "signifies nothing else but a will to make use of all the remedies offered to humanity by God. Fiat voluntas tua; this is the tenderest word, the most devoted that love has ever uttered, by which we accept and bless a will that is yet unknown to us. His will is our peace.

Et fons de domo Domini egredietur et irrigabit torrentem spinarum.' Resignation is a generous profession of our faith in the charity of the designs of God on us. The more complete are the trials, the more we should arm our courage, perceiving the providential thought. It is against chance that one has no courage. But the moment when one perceives a

. Ruskin, M. P. V. 209.