The Dangers of a Court. which led her into the path of vice; a path many of them had privately explored, and wandered in much farther than Maria. These soi disant virtuous ladies quitted her society entirely, from which much improvement in rectitude might have been gained; but they attributed their neglect of her, as necessary to the preservation of their own unsullied reputation. Maria still loved her seducer. He was at that time, though very faulty, extremely amiable; perfectly skilled in the learning of the times; elegant in his manners, and his beauty in its prime. Mistaken Confidence. CHAP. V. MISTAKEN CONFIDENCE. Tu meprises ton bienfaiteur; prens garde au serpent qui te pique. ANON! THE unfortunate Margaret of Anjou, after her defeat at Northampton, had fled to Durham and escaped into Scotland; where her great affability, insinuation, and address, gained her gained her many friends-and her promises and caresses affected all who approached her. Compassion to majesty in distress allured many to her standard, and, in a short time, she collected an army of twenty thousand strong. * Thou despisest thy benefactor; beware of the serpent that may sting thee. Mistaken Confidence. This was little expected by the Yorkists, and the nation still continued its round of expensive pleasures, though engaged in a war with France, and scarce secure from dissensions at home; while Edward was giving way to the vilifying vice of intoxication, and sinking himself to contempt and ridicule, with LOVELACE, his darling associate; a 'man of noble family, eminent abilities, but of the loosest morals, and most famed for the quantity of wine he could drink at a banquet. He it was, who drew the Duke of Clarence into the fatal snare, which he might be literally said to plunge in, to the day of his death; for he would so intoxicate this prince with malmsey madeira, that he knew not, in those moments of madness, what he said or did; and, in one of those periods of subverted reason, he signed his own death-warrant, by consenting to head a Mistaken Confidence. rebellion against his brother, though he loved him with the truest fraternal affection, and had no recollection the next day of the dreadful transaction. LOVELACE, however, who was a disgrace, in some respects, to his noble family, stimulated Edward to drink to excess, and led him into every haunt of vice; and he might, with truth, be said, by his ill example and precepts, at the time the princes were in their nonage, to have corrupted the morals of them all, and to have sown those seeds of vice in their minds, which promised no fruit of perfection in maturity. Indeed it seemed to be as much the delight of this thoughtless and inconsiderate man, to train the princes to every species of licentiousness, as a virtuous Spartan would feel in seeing his offspring become every thing great and good. Mistaken Confidence. The cause of the house of York now felt a severe shock in the battle of Wake-' field, where near three thousand of them were slain; but the Lancastrians again met with a defeat near Mortimer's Cross, which Margaret compensated by a victory over Warwick, in a battle at St. Albans, in which Lord Bonville perished. This victory was no great advantage to Queen Margaret; for Warwick soon was in a condition to come against her with supe-. rior force, and gained a complete conquest over this unhappy princess and her little army. As the English were now at war with France, Louis, the eleventh of that name,' who was of an intriguing and politic genius, took advantage of our dissensions at home, and gained over, by bribery and other stratagems, many of the Lancastrians to his party. Margaret was profuse in her |