himself once more King of Castile. Pedro did not requite the services of his English allies as he had promised; they were not even reimbursed the outlay they had expended on arms and accoutrements, and returned, much dissatisfied, to Aquitaine.

Meantime Henry of Trastamare was not inactive. He re-assembled his forces, and defeated Pedro at Montiel. The King took refuge within the castle, which still held out; nor did he leave it until impelled by hunger, his small garrison having been reduced to extremity by the close blockade. Then, accompanied only by twelve trusty followers, he sallied forth, under cover of the darkness, hoping to make his way unobserved through the beleaguering host. A tradition has survived, which informs us that the King's spirits were greatly damped by observing, as he left the castle, a motto, carved in stone, over the portal," This is the Tower of La Estrella." Where this tower of La Estrella was situated, Pedro, actuated by superstitious terrors, had long endeavoured to discover, for an astrologer had foretold to him that from the tower of La Estrella he should go forth to die.

The prediction was verified at last. Pedro was made prisoner in the act of escaping, and was stabbed to the heart by his rival, who ascended the throne made vacant by a brother's death. We shall close our brief gleanings from Spanish history with the account which Froissart gives of the capture of the hapless Sovereign of Castile :

"At midnight,

Don Pedro

set out. It was very dark. At this hour the Bègue de Villaines had the command of the watch, with upwards of three hundred men. Don Pedro had quitted the castle with his companions, and was descending by an upper path, but so quietly that it did not appear as if any one was moving. However the Bègue de Villaines, who had many suspicions, and was afraid of losing the object of his watch, imagined he heard the sound of horses' feet upon the causeway; he therefore said to those near him, 'Gentlemen, keep quiet, make no movement, for I hear the steps of some people. We must know who they are, and what they seek at such an hour. I suspect they are victuallers who are bringing provision to the castle, for I know it is in this respect very scantily provided.' The Bègue then advanced, his dagger on his wrist, towards a man who was close to Don Pedro, and demanded, 'Who art thou? Speak, or thou art a dead man.' VOL. XXXIX.-NO. CCXXIX.

The man to whom the Bègue had spoken was an Englishman, and refused to answer; he bent himself over his saddle, and dashed forwards. The Bègue suffered him to pass; when addressing himself to Don Pedro, and examining him earnestly, he fancied it was the King, notwithstanding the darkness of the night, from his likeness to King Henry, his brother, for they very much resembled each other. He demanded from him, on placing his dagger on his breast, And you, who are you? Name yourself, and surrender this moment, or you are a dead man.' In thus saying, he caught hold of the bridle of his horse, and would not suffer him to escape as the former had done.

"King Don Pedro, who saw a large body of men at arms before him, and found that he could not by any means escape, said to the Bègue de Villaines, whom he recognized: 'Bègue, Bègue, I am Don Pedro, King of Castile, to whom much wrong has been imputed, through evil counsellors. I surrender myself

and beseech thee, in the name

of thy gentility, that thou put me in a place of safety. I will pay for my ransom whatever sum thou shalt please to ask; for, thank God, I have yet a sufficiency to do that; but thou must prevent my from falling into the hands of the Bastard.'"— Chronicles of Sir John Froissart, vol. i. p. 388.

The Bègue de Villaines was, unhappily, powerless to fulfil Pedro's last request. Henry of Trastamare entered the tent where the King lay; and the brothers, with the fury of wild beasts, joined in a death struggle, which proved fatal to the rightful heir of Castile. "Thus died Don Pedro who had formerly reigned in great prosperity. Those who had slain him left him three days unburied, which was a pity, for the sake of humanity, and the Spaniards made their jokes upon him.”

Pedro's character has been variously represented by historians. Some depict him as a monster, guilty of the most appalling crimes; others, as an enlightened and philosophic prince, solicitous for the well-being of his meanest subject. It is not easy to reconcile these conflicting opinions. We should remember, however, that the writers who have chronicled his actions flourished under the shadow of that House of Trastamare which supplanted him on the throne; and, also, that his inquiring and speculative mind, and frequent intercourse with the Jews and Moors of Spain, made him an object of dislike to the ecclesiastical authorities. Above all, the evil passions of his nature were early developed by his weak and jealous mother. Maria of

F

Portugal sowed the seeds of suspicion, distrust, and cruelty in the breast of her son. He reaped a powerful host

of enemies, whose designs against him were made successful by the aversion or indifference of his subjects for the cause of their unloved though rightful monarch.

Before we close the instructive volumes of the Senora George, we shall follow her in a digression which she makes to the affairs of Portugal, by recounting the fate of Costanza Manuel, the intended bride of Alfonso of Castile, whom he rejected for Maria de Portugal. We have already mentioned that the slighted maid was wooed by Pedro, Crown Prince of Portugal; but the union was one of state policy, not of affection; and Costanza, wounded by the indifference and infidelity of her husband, died of a broken heart.

Inez de Castro was the object of Pedro's tenderest regards. As soon as his hand was free he privately married her, but carefully concealed the fact from his father, King Alfonso of Portugal. Years elapsed, and Pedro, urged in vain to form a second suitable matrimonial alliance, persisted in declining the hands of princesses proposed for his acceptance. Alfonso's suspicions were aroused, and he determined to separate his son from his mistress, as he deemed Inez de Castro to be. His ruthless resolve was barbarously executed. He took advantage of the prince's absence on a hunting expedition, and repaired to the abode of the doomed lady. Alfonso found her at her beautiful villa on the Mondego, surrounded by her children. Apprehensive of evil, she deprecated his anger, and her trembling little ones clung to the king's knees entreating for mercy. Moved by their infantine beauty, Alfonso half relented from his cruel purpose. His counsellors, however, urged the accomplishment of the deed of blood, as a necessary piece of state policy. The beautiful Inez knelt in vain-she was barbarously murdered; and her blood dyed the pure waters of the Mondego, "cold and clear." Miss Pardoe, in a note, describes the scene of this horrid tragedy:

"At the moment of their arrival she was seated with her children on the margin of a fountain, fed by a spring in the rock which overhung the grounds, and under the shale

of two lofty cedar trees. As their errand was announced to her, she eagerly sprang up to demand their tidings, when she was instantly struck down by the assassins, who left her with her head lying across the marbleborder of the basin, where she was discovered by her attendants, with her long hair floating upon the surface of the water, which was dyed with her blood. Until the late revolution, this spot, rendered historical by the fatal tragedy of which it had been the theatre, remained precisely in the same condition as at the period of her murder; the piety of her life, the gentle urbanity of her bearing, and her exhaustless charity, having so deeply endeared her to all ranks, that any change effected in the place would have been considered a sacrilege."

Pedro, animated by a just and natural indignation against the murderers of his wife, vowed an undying vengeance. He waged war on his father, but Alfonso's death speedily followed that of his victim, having been accelerated by remorse. The tortures which Pedro, thus become king, inflicted on the murderers of Inez, were fiend-like in their imaginative cruelty. corse of the beloved one was exhumed, clad in royal attire, and crowned in the Cathedral of Coimbra, then re-interred with great pomp in the monastery of Alcobaça.

The

Pedro directed, on his death bed, that his body should rest by the side of his adored Inez. For nearly five centuries they lay, unmolested, in the peaceful slumbers of the grave. Their mortal remains, after this long interval, were disinterred; and the body of Inez preserving, it is alleged, the same miraculous exemption from decay that had been remarked on its first exhumation, was once again exposed to the gaze of intruders on the tomb:

"The two magnificent sarcophagi, containing the bodies of Inez and her royal consort, occupied a small chapel, enclosed by a screen of richly wrought and gilded iron, in the right aisle of the splendid chapel. The gates were forced by the French during the Peninsular war, and the tombs rifled; during which sacrilegeous process the illustrious dead were torn from their resting-place and flung upon the pavement. Three of the community (of whom the prior was one), instead of flying, had concealed themselves within the sacred edifice, and were enabled to witness, from the place of their retreat, the brutal violence of the invaders. On iny visit to Alcobaça, in 1827, I made the acquaintance of the prior, whose community had once more rallied about him, and who

solemnly assured me that although the body of the prince had entirely perished, leaving nothing but a mere skeleton clad in its royal robes, that of Inez remained perfect; her beautiful face entirely unchanged, and her magnificent hair, of a light, lustrous auburn, which had been the marvel of the whole nation during her life, so enriched in length and volume, that it covered her whole figure, even to her feet, and excited the wonder and admiration of the very spoilers who tore away the rich jewels by which her death-garments were clasped."-(Editor's note—“ Queens of Spain, vol. i. p. 243.)

The story of Inez de Castro has been charmingly narrated by Camoens, in his great national poem of the Lusiad. The romantic incident of the homage rendered to her after death, forms the theme of one of Mrs. Hemans's spirited ballads. With her touching representation of the scene, and of the feelings of the principal living actor in it, we shall conclude our brief notice of the beautiful and unfortunate Inez :

"It was a strange and fearful sight, The crown upon that head,

The glorious robes and the blaze of light, All gathered round the dead!

"And beside her stood in silence
One with a brow as pale,
And white lips rigidly compress'd,
Lest the strong heart should fail.
King Pedro with a jealous eye
Watching the homage done,
By the land's flower and chivalry,
To her his martyr'd one."

"There is music on the midnight

A requiem sad and slow,

As the mourners through the sounding aisle

How different a picture do the times of these princesses present from that which surrounds the writer, living under the peaceful sway of Victoria! Violence and vice, war, pillage, and insecurity, are the characteristics of the one period;-peace, virtue, and contentment of the other. One of these petty states whose jars and animosities have made the lives of thousands unhappy, and the labour of thousands unproductive, would not in wealth and intelligence equal one of the counties which now owns the gracious sovereignty of our Queen. The spectacle of a power so vast conducted with so much gentleness, and of a position so splendid filled with so much humility and virtue, is one on which the writers of after ages will long love to look back as the most delightful of historical contrasts; and we cannot take leave, even for a season, of the troublesome times of these princesses of bygone days, without congratulating ourselves and our readers that we live in the age and under the government of the greatest and best Queen who has ever reigned over a grateful nation.

THE Crystal Palace! Day after day, now for above a year, the name has appeared in every newspaper, has been uttering by almost every tongue. First came the marvel of its erection. A few months-less than is ordinarily assigned to the construction of a labourer's cottage-were allotted to the arising of a fabric that should enclose the aggre gated marvels of the industry and the skill of six thousand years, and of a thousand races, that should receive the peoples of the world within it. There were sneers, and scoffs, and inuendoes of some; prophecies of failure in a hundred ways; forecastings of noncompletion, forecastings of swift dissolution and crashing ruin; forecastings that looked, perhaps, deeper into the true effects of things, and further into the ultimate results of them, that augured possibilities of national humiliation, from this gallant show of national progress and power. Day by day, amid all these, and despite them all, the erection went on; the fabric, itself a more wonderful monument of the enterprise and skill of man than any one it was destined to receive within it, 66 rose like an exhalation" of combined beauty and power. Light and graceful as a fairy palace, firm and self-sustaining for its destined purposes as an Egyptian pyramid, it soared towards its completion.

At last, and by the appointed day, the wonderful structure was finished. From the north and south, the east and west, there streamed into it the art and the industry of all nations. The powers and aptitudes of every nation were represented in it; the developments of every era since the flood were typified in it. The rude handiwork of the Esquimaux was there, with majestic, and polished, and complex machines, endowed with all but human faculties. Rude carved masses of stone were there, speaking of barbaric times, and simple minds, and skilless hands; and there were "plead.

ing" statues and glorious sculptures, all but worthy of the loftiest era of Grecian art, and imbued with more tender sentiment or more solemn eloquence than Grecian art could ever attain.

With solemn ceremonial was opened this stately show: with solemn prayer, with deliberate invocation on it of His blessing who alone can bless, and with deliberate ascription of all the glory thereof to Him whose is the earth and all the fulness thereof. The Crystal Palace already was the exhibition of the world's industrythe industry not of the world of present, but of the world of the past and present in one-the industry not of the few great nations alone whose names are as household words-but of tribes whose very existence was known but to a few, and whose names, even with their achieved productions thus before us, pass from our remembrance at once. It was now to become the gathering place, not of the world's industry alone, but, by abundant and multiform representation, of the world itself. Europe and Asia, Africa and America, Arctic Island and Tropic Zone, civilisation and savageism, Christian and Parsee, Mahommetan and Jew-all met there. The highest intellectual culture, the humblest and most undeveloped capacity existent upon earth, may have been in contact there. The achiever of the Britannia bridge, or the deviser of the electric telegraph, may have often there stood side by side with one who still

"Thought the silver moon, That nightly o'er him led her virgin host, No broader than his father's shield."

From every land, from every corner of our own land, the crowd streamed continuously on toward this centre of attraction to the world. Day after day we heard of numbers still increasing; of twenty, forty, sixty, seventy,

a hundred thousand; till the intelligence became as a truism, and the record in the daily press hardly attracted a passing glance. What were the thoughts, what the emotions, that occupied the minds and swelled the hearts of these daily gathering multitudes? what the influences this proud display wrought in each and all of them? An archangel, with all minds and hearts so open before him, as we know them to be open to ONE alone, might possibly chronicle that varied showing of human thought and affection, aspiration and emotion; but hardly any inferior finger. Yet, so far as the daily and weekly press, so far as the allotted records of this world's show, could be taken as the exponent of these multitudinous thoughts, a wearying sameness, an almost saddening monotony,

pervaded them all. In pæans of triumph over the great achievement, exclamations of wonder at the gorgeous result, labourings of language to describe it, acclamations over the assembled marvels of human enterprise, the accomplishments of human industry, the triumphs of human wisdom, the beauties and the majesties of human art; these somewhat, though even this not much, varied as to form or power of expression, constituted almost the entire utterance thus recorded of all this mass of human thought and emotion.

It thus truly represented all that passed through all these minds and hearts? Young and old, rich and poor, civilized and savage, cultured and ignorant, thoughtful and thoughtless, was there not seen of Him who seeth in secret, in one out of all these, aught of other, deeper, higher emotion than this of exultation in the genius, the enterprise, the achievements of man? Among all these thousands upon thousands, was there not found one to recal to remembrance that opening solemnity, and all that it designed and professed to express, not one to recall that opening prayer, that solemn consecration of all to the one God of all power and wisdom, whose "inspiration giveth man understanding;" that solemn, deliberate ascription of all the glory of all this glorious show to him alone? Did there awaken in no heart, the more deeply because of the lustres and splendours and greatnesses of these achieved results, the realisation that, except that "in Him we live and move and have

our being," the rudest specimen of handicraft presented there had been as impossible to us as the calling suns into being with a word? And did there "enter into the ear of the Lord God of Sabaoth," from amid the complex, ceaseless, mysterious hum of that vast assemblage, no whisper escaping from all the overcharged excitement of the heart, "not unto us, Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name be all the glory"?

We believe, we are sure, there have been such deeper awakings, such nobler emotions, such purer and higher outbreathings. We believe there have been those wandering through these long arcades of splendour, rejoicing to the uttermost in all that they presented and represented of the capabilities and the achievements of man; rejoicing too to claim kindred with all the ages, all the nations, there present through their marvels of invention or adaptation; but amid all this appreciation of human accomplishment, finding time for one reverent thought of Him, one adoring ascription to Him, without whom and whose presence with man nothing of all this ever could have been. We believe there have been hearts uplifted from all that unresting murmur of activity and life toward the ineffable serene of His eternity; going forth from amid all that lustre of human manifestation to consider Him "who only doeth wondrous things," and breathing their humble thanks to the one God and Father of all, that He had endowed man with capacity and faculty for achievements so varied and so wondrous.

Was there to be no permanent record of these higher emotions? Pencil and pallet, daguerreotype and calotype, have long been labouring to fix the forms and the outward presence of that world's wonder. Newspaper and magazine have done what they could to chronicle the feeling of exultation that man, even that same man who is but of yesterday, should have done all this. Were the thoughts, the emotions, the aspirations that awoke toward Him of whose wisdom and might man, at his best estate, is but the feeble instrument, to be left with no other record than in that "book of His remembrance," where all such feelings are written before Him for ever? Such feelings, indeed, need, and in the ordinary case tend to seek, no other record than that