"Mr. Erskine, I must say more to you," she said, drawing closer, putting once more her hand on his arm. "It must not be on that ground nothing must be said of ine. Cannot you understand? He must not come; but not because of me nothing must be said of me. If it was your sister, oh would you not understand?" He took her hand into his in the profound feeling of the moment. "I will try to do what I should do if it were my own sister," he said, resting it in his. "It was my fault; I ought to have known." "There was no fault," she said faintly; "an accident. I knew it must happen some time. I was- -prepared. But, Mr. Erskine, it is not because I could not any one. Do not think that for It is because because But if you understand, that is "He will not come, I am sure, to give | through the opening in the trees over the you a moment's uneasiness." broad country, lying like a dream in that mystical paleness which was neither night nor day. Underneath, the river rushed joyously, noisily, through the night - not still, like a southern stream, but dashing over the stones, and whirling its white eddies in foam against the bank. The sound of the water accompanied the quick current of his thoughts. He had a long walk before him, having come without preparation and left in haste and displeasure. But seven or eight miles of country road in a night of June is no such punishment. And the thoughts that had been roused in him, made the way short. How different-how different would be the fate of that other daughter of Lindores'! It was only when he reached his own gate that he woke up with a start to remember indeed how different it would be. The bare little white house, with its little plantation, its clump of firs on the hilltop, its scanty avenue- the little estate, which could almost be said, with scornful exaggeration, to lie within the park of Tinto-the position of a small squire's wife, - was it likely that Lord Lindores would smile upon that for his daughter? John's heart, which had been so buoyant, sank down into the depths. He began to see that his dream was ridiculous, his elation absurd. He to be the brother, in that sweetest way, of Carry Lindores! But nevertheless he vowed, as he went home somewhat crestfallen, that he would be a brother to her. She had given him her confidence, and he had given her his promise, and with this bond no worldly prudence nor rule of probabilities should be allowed to interfere. meet me only all." "Let me walk back with you to the house," John said. 66 No, no; it is almost wrong to speak to you in this clandestine way. But what can I do? And you who know all parties If I said anything to my brother, it might make a breach. There is no one I could speak to but you. I should have had to suffer helplessly, to hold my peace." "Believe me-believe me," cried John, "all that a brother can do, I will do." In the midst of this misery, which he felt to the bottom of his heart, there ran through him a secret stir of pleasure. Her brother! the suggestion went through all his veins. Strange encounter of the dream with the fact! The cold, trembling hand he held in his gave him a thrill of warmth and happiness, and yet his sympathy was as strong, his pity as profound, as one human creature ever felt for another. He stood still and watched her as she flitted back to the house, like a shadow in the gathering darkness. His heart ached, yet beat high. If it should ever be so, how different would be the fate of the other daughter of Lindores'! - how he would guard her from every vexation, smooth every step of her way, strew it with flowers and sweetnesses! He resumed his way more quickly than ever, hastening along in the soft darkness which yet was not dark, by the scaur the short cut which had alarmed his groom. To the pedestrian the way by the scaur was the best way. He paused a moment when he reached it, to look out From The Modern Review. ELIZABETH STUART, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. II.* THE next great event which was of vital moment for Europe and for Elizabeth was the advent, from over-seas, of the great Schwedenkönig, Gustavus Adolphus. In July, 1630, the Swedish deliv erer landed on German soil. He had completed his conquest over Poland. He knew well that the Polish war had been fomented, he knew that Sigismund had been supported by Austria; he knew that, if Wallenstein could create a fleet, the house of Hapsburg, eager for universal • See LIVING AGE, No. 1976, p. 275. dominion, and then in the zenith of its power and success, would attack him in Sweden itself; and he defended his kingdom by attacking her enemies. The very successes of Ferdinand drew down Gustavus Adolphus upon him; the supineness of the German Protestant princes called forth the great Swedish defender of Protestantism. "Universal monarchy must be repressed by neighboring nations at great hazard and inconceivable expense, provided such nations are only protected by a small interposition of ocean." Wallenstein and Spain were preparing a fleet to attack the navy of Sweden when that navy bore Gustav Adolf and his army to German soil. Nor was it by any means the safety of Sweden alone which called Gustavus into the field. "Mich treibt ein anderer Geist" "I am actuated by other motives," said the king. It was the cause, the great cause, of Protestantism and of true religion, that weighed most heavily upon his soul. Hear him for a moment; his voice still seems to speak vitally to us across the abyss of two hundred and fifty years. "I embark in a war, far from my own dominions, and seem to court those dangers and difficulties which another man might labor to decline; but the Searcher of the human heart will see and know that it was neither ambition that tempted me, nor the avarice of extending my dominions, nor the appetite of fighting, nor the mischievous temper of loving to interfere in my neighbors' concerns. Other object I have none than to support the afflicted and oppressed, to maintain the religious and civil liberty of society, and to bear my testimony against a tyranny over the whole human race." And Gustavus described his lofty motives truly. If the Protestant princes of Germany were supine, her Protestant people were worthy; nor could the king endure the spectacle of Jesuit rule, through Kaiser and through pope, carried out by means of blood and fire, of force and fraud; of infrahuman persecution by the priest. Gustavus is a singular historical apparition in respect that he combined the earnestness of a Cromwell with the graces of a Cavalier. He was not Gott-betrunken, or God-intoxicated, as Novalis said of Spinoza, but he was Godinspired. A hero of conscience, he was also a hero of charm. He could not only command the reverence, but also win the love of men. In him force was tempered by sweetness. Intense as clear, there was nothing gloomy or morbid about the strong, bright Gustavus. No cause ever had a nobler champion; but his kingly and knightly mind was expressed through his broad, lofty forehead; through his well-opened, blue, and steadfast eyes; through a figure and bearing which approach to an ideal of great manhood. His religion was that of a royal man; his politics those of a noble king. Fervent, and even rash in fight, generous in victory, the first captain of his time, he fought for an abstract cause and defended oppressed humanity. Stern where sternness was necessary, he was full of "flowing courtesy "and princely manners. His army was well paid and was restrained within the limits of strict discipline. It was a moral force, which paid, and did not plunder its way through the territory of friend and foe. In this respect the Swedo-German army differed from those of the Liga, of the Empire; and even from the troops of Mansfeld. “Der Krieg müsse den Krieg ernähren" "War must support itself," said Wallenstein; and the armies of Tilly, of Wallenstein, of Mansfeld, simply devastated any territories that they had to occupy. In earlier years, Gustavus had been a half suitor for the hand of Elizabeth Stuart, and was therefore likely, being of noble mould, to have a kindly feeling toward an olden love. The Light of the North, the Aurora Borealis of the Baltic, was now happily married to Maria Eleanora, sister of the Kurfürst Johann Georg. Gustav was born on December 9th, 1594. James I. died in 1625, and had been succeeded by his son, Charles I. Charles was her brother, and Elizabeth might, perhaps, hope more from a brother than even from a father. Charles was very willing to do anything to help his sister - so long as the doing involved no action. So soon as Gustavus appeared victoriously upon the scene, Charles tried to delegate to him the task of restoring Elizabeth to the Palatinate. On November 7th, 1632, Sir Henry Vane, successor to Roe, met the Swedish king at Würzburg, and Vane thus reports Gustavus's answer: "If Charles wished sincerely to bring about the restitution of the Palatinate (no question more of Bohemia) and wished it in good faith, he must afford such assistance as justly merited the appellation of royal." If Charles contributed money and an English army of twelve thousand men, he, Gustavus, "would never sheath his sword until the Palatinate should be recovered." Vainly did Gustav expect anything royal (except, Frederick, should receive a small pension for his own life; that his eldest son should be bred a Catholic at Vienna, and then, having espoused an Austrian archduchess, be reinstated, at his father's death, in the Lower Palatinate. Further, that Frederick should, on his knees, ask pardon of the emperor. perhaps, the portraits of Van Dyck) from | tion was made from Vienna to the effect Charles, who was negotiating with Vi- that Frederick should resign the Upper enna when he should have been fighting Palatinate forever to Bavaria; that he, side by side with Sweden. If he had really wished well to his sister's cause, there was no way to help her but by fighting. Spannheim records that James I. felt, in his last days and hours, some compunction and remorse with respect to the Palatinate. Forty-eight hours before his death, James charged his son Charles, "as he hoped for a parent's benediction and that of Heaven," to exert all his powers in order to reinstate his sister and her children into their hereditary dominions; for (said James) it was my mistake to seek the Palatinate in Spain. The italics are ours. Charles was as incapable as had been his father of clear and noble action. It was clear that Charles, who was incapable of royal or other decisive action, desired to lean upon Gustavus for the reinstatement of his sister. Charles urged Elizabeth to allow her son to be educated as a Catholic in Vienna, but the ex-queen, whose character was much more positive than that of her unstable brother, replied with noble anger "My God, sire!" exclaimed Sir Rich- that, "sooner than see her children ard Glendale, to the Pretender, when that brought up as Catholics, she would kill prince landed "for a hunting expedition," them with her own hand." Both Elizain "Redgauntlet". "of what great and in-beth and Frederick remained always expiable crime can your Majesty's ances- steadfast in their religion, nor could any tors have been guilty that they have been prospect of advantage ever lure them punished by the infliction of judicial blind- from it. ness on their whole generation!" In this indignant burst of Sir Richard Glendale, Walter Scott summarized the essence of the career of the Stuarts. All that Charles could do was to permit - but not as king - English volunteers to fight for the Palatinate; and the Marquis of Hamilton led some six thouFerdinand never refused to negotiate. sand volunteers, who did not do very Negotiations, as for instance that for the much, to Germany. These were speedily restoration of the Palatinate, amused oth-reduced to one English and one Scottish ers and did not hurt him. Besides, while regiment, and after a quarrel with Banier, people were negotiating they were not Hamilton resigned and his force melted likely to act; and this was true of Charles away. as it had been of James. Conscious of his violent aggression in the Palatinate, the emperor was ready to restore that if any one could or would compel him to do so - but he would never give it up to mere negotiation. Charles's ambassador at Vienna, Sir Robert Anstruther, had been instructed to say to Ferdinand (22nd of July, 1630) that "the king, his master (Charles I.), acknowledged with grief and shame that his brother-in-law, the elector Palatine, disregarding his opinion and concurrence, had acted formerly in reference to the crown of Bohemia, not only rashly, but unadvisedly; which imprudent measures ought chiefly to be attributed to the ambition and inattention of youth; and that it would highly become the emperor, consistently with his accustomed clemency, to receive Frederick's submission, and reinstate him in his own dominions, inasmuch as such an act of free and gratuitous favor would oblige the kings of England to all posterity." To amuse Charles, a counter-proposi We cannot spare space to follow the great Swedish king through his glorious campaign. He would have recovered the Palatinate in due time, as he did recover for his kinsmen the duchy of Mecklenburg which Wallenstein had seized; but Gustavus could not turn aside from his main purpose, which was to prevent the extirpation of Protestants and Protestantism in Germany, in order merely to recover the Palatinate without help from Charles. Making it a condition that Frederick, if reinstated, should tolerate Lutheranism in his dominions, Gustavus sent to Holland for Frederick to join his armies. Frederick was unfit for any command in the warlike monarch's forces, but he "was present" at Nürnberg, and at that memorable passage of the Lech, at which Gustavus's valor and strategy so completely defeated the veteran Tilly, After Breitenfeld, the king thought that the Palatinate cause was hopeful, and wrote to that effect to Charles, requiring from the English king "magnanimous resolution," an assistance in men and | sitions high above their capacities. Fred. erick constantly addresses his wife, "Mon très cher Cœur." money, and the despatch of a fleet to cope with the fleet that Spain was sending to the Baltic. Charles refused the necessary co-operation, but explained that he was ready to negotiate. Elizabeth passed her widowhood at the Hague, or at Rhenen, in the province of Utrecht, secure under Dutch shelter. She was fond of hunting and of gardenAnd now Gustavus and Wallenstein, ing. Her children grew up around her, the two great captains of the age, each at and the still lively lady became the centre the head of an hitherto unconquered of a small but cultured circle of friends. army, met, for the first time, as opponents Elizabeth's little court was a model of in actual war on the fatal plain of Lützen. social gaiety, and flatterers called it the The battle was indecisive in result, though "home of all the muses and of all the victory leaned to the Swedes, as the Im-graces." Her elastic temperament was perialists vacated the field and retreated cheerful under misfortune. She could on Leipzig; but the battle involved the always enjoy any pleasure that the presmost terrible loss that could have hap-ent moment offered. Once, when huntpened to the Protestant cause Gustavus ing, she was nearly seized by some SpanAdolphus fell in the arms of victory. 'ish soldiery, but escaped owing to a fleet With the fall of Gustavus the cause of horse and her good riding. Henrietta the Palatinate seemed to be hopelessly Maria had been a bitter opponent at the lost. What other champion could replace court of England of the interests of the "Lion of the North"? Elizabeth; but when Henrietta Maria, herself a fugitive, came to Holland, Elizabeth received and comforted her. Both were Stuarts, the one by birth, the other by marriage; and their interests in Great Britain were imperilled by the same foes. There may have been policy in Elizabeth's kindness. Her eldest surviving son, Karl Ludwig, who had been educated by Fred: erick's brother, grew up headstrong, selfish, and avaricious. When in England, he sided with the Parliament, and even sat in the Westminster Assembly of Divines. After Lützen, Frederick became a prey to deep dejection. He died of a broken heart, of utter despondency, away from wife and children, at Mentz, on November 17th, 1636. His coffined corpse, after many wanderings, found its final resting. place in Sedan. His son and heir, Henry Frederick, a prince of promise, had pre-deceased his father. On January 17th, 1629, father and son went to see the trophies of Peter Hein as they floated in Dutch waters at Rotterdam. The small boat in which they sailed was run into by another craft, He ultimately obtained from the Enand speedily sank. Frederick was saved,glish Parliament a yearly grant of £10,but his heir was drowned. The son's 000 last vain cry was "Save me, father!" That last despairing cry of the sinking prince rings still pathetically through his.tory. Thus Karl Ludwig, the second son, became the representative of the banished Palatine family. Elizabeth and Frederick were united by a sincere affection and by a numerous progeny. Misfortune borne in common, a faith thoroughly shared, strengthened their union. Frederick's nature was capable of a deeper tenderness than was that of his wife. His fondness for her was unquestionably great. Many of his letters to her (see Bromley's "Royal Letters ") are still extant. In one he writes, "Would to God that we owned some little corner of the earth in which we could live together happily and in peace!" It were to be wished that his prayer could have been answered. As private persons, they would have been most estimable, most happy; but they were elevated into po £8,000 for himself, £2,000 for his mother; but Elizabeth was deeply grieved at her son's departure from the traditional and even natural politics of the house of Stuart. Her next sons, Rupert and Maurice, fought, as is well known, and with distinction, on the royal side, and this was some comfort to the daughter of James and sister of Charles. Ever after the execution of her brother, Elizabeth wore a mourning ring (a picture of which is now before me) on which a crown surmounts a skull and cross-bones, while both are encircled by a lock of Charles's hair. Cousin Max, who thought that all misfortunes arose from tolerance to Protestants, was getting on with the conversion to Catholicism of the Upper and Lower Palatinates. His plan was simple and direct; every person who would not become a Catholic was driven out of the territory. Max was fully determined to root out heresy. - The "counter-Reformation" in Ger- purest devotion. He was entrusted by many was being carried out with incredi- Elizabeth with the care of the fiery young ble cruelty and ruthless persistency. The Rupert, when both were taken prisoners hopeless and hapless "peasants' war" was by the emperor. Craven paid for his freeextirpated with terrible inhumanity. Prot- dom a ransom of £20,000. Rupert was estant parents were expelled, and their detained for three years in mild captivity, children detained to be brought up as the object being to convert him to the Catholics. Söltl, speaking of the oppres- Church of Rome. During the dark days sion then exercised upon the unhappy days dark for the Stuarts of the ProProtestants, says, "Davon schweigt die tectorate, Craven's estates were sequesGeschichte" "On that subject history is trated; though they were restored to him silent." In Bavaria the popular threat to at the Restoration; but he found means an enemy remains to this day – "Ich will still to help his mistress. In Elizabeth's dich schon Katholisch machen!". "I saddest hour, when she seemed to be will force you to become a Catholic!" and abandoned by all men, the faithful Craven this threat to tame and to compel dates remained by her side, and he returned from the counter-Reformation under the with her to England. There is no evihouse of Hapsburg. The Jesuit view dence of such a fact (indeed evidence on was, that heretics should be subjected to the subject would be very hard to proa yoke intolerable, but yet not to be cure), but history whispers that the pair shaken off. The papal ambassador, Ca- were privately married. Certain it is that raffa, agreed with the emperor that her- nothing could detach Craven from her etics should be rooted out without pity side, and that his life and fortune - all and without scruple. that he had were unceasingly and loyally devoted to her comfort and her service. In 1661 Pepys saw Elizabeth in London, "brought by my Lord Craven to the Duke's Theatre. A paladin of romance, Craven remains one of the noblest instances in history of a knightly, generous, unswerving devotion to a woman and her cause. On February 12th, 1637, Ferdinand II. died, and was succeeded by his son, Fer. dinand III., who carried on the lines of his father's policy. "Mi fili, parvo mundus regitur intellectu," said the wise Ox enstierna. The great war dragged its slow length along, but we cannot spare space to follow its fortunes. Among the partisans who were at tracted, in part by her personality, to the cause of Elizabeth, the most distinguished and the most constant was William, Lord, Craven, afterwards Earl Craven. Christian of Brunswick died May 6, 1626, and Prince Maurice, of Nassau, had passed away on April 23rd, 1625. Craven first met Elizabeth when she was already a refugee in Holland, and he quitted the Dutch service in order to devote himself to that of the ex-queen of Bohemia. History contains few instances of a more chivalrous, romantic, self-sacrificing friendship. His purse and person (Craven was rashly brave) were both zealously devoted to the service of his royal mistress. Munificent in outlay, indefatigable in military activity, reckless in contempt of danger, Craven might well have adopted Christian's motto, "All for glory and for her; the only difference being that Craven thought more of her than he did of glory. In Christian the passions had been mixed. Gustavus himself paid a compliment to Craven's valor; and of all the volunteers Reay, Hepburn, and others who fought for her, and for the Palatinate, Craven was animated by the Let us now glance for a moment at the domestic relations of Elizabeth. She had around her, in Holland, four daughters-Elizabeth, born 1618; Luise, born 1622; Henrietta Maria, born 1626; Sophia, born 1630; and her two younger sons, Edward and Philipp, were also for a time with her. Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, was the plainest of the sisters. She was quiet, melancholy, absorbed in study. In 1636. Ladislaus of Poland proposed for Elizabeth, but she peremptorily refused to marry a Catholic prince. Des Cartes (born 1596) was the friend, the tutor, the correspondent of this learned daughter of Frederick and of Elizabeth, who remained unmarried, and ultimately became abbess of the Protestant Stift of Herford, in Westphalia. She died in 1680. Of Henrietta Maria there is no vivid record, but she married, 1651, Prince Ragoczy von Siebenbürgen. Luise was pretty, and was lively. She was a paintress of repute in her own little circle, and seems to have loved gaiety and society. Sophia-the ablest and most beautiful of the daughters "one of the handsomest, the most cheerful, sensible, |