conscience to ten such crowns; but Gardiner well knew that the example would not have been tolerated, and she could only give the income to the poor.

Thus satisfied, Parliament passed a bill restoring Church matters to what they had been in the earlier years of Henry VIII., and Lord Montagu (Pole's nephew), the Bishop of Ely, and Sir Edward Carne were to be ambassadors to the Pope.

Christmas was kept splendidly. The great hall was lighted with 1,000 coloured lamps on Christmas Eve, and Mary kept her court, the pardoned Elizabeth and Earl of Devon both being there.

Elizabeth sat next to the Queen, and was treated as the next lady in the kingdom. She attended mass with her sister, dressed in white satin and pearls, and was beside her at the tournament fought on the 29th of December, by not only the English nobility, but by men whose names sound strangely in our ears as feasting and jousting together; for there was the stern and loyal Spaniard, Fernando de Toledo, Duke of Alva, and the genial and confiding Fleming, Lamoral, Count Egmont, and his friend Count Hoorne; and before the festivities were over arrived William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, the Emperor's trusted young friend, and Emanuele Filiberto, the Duke of Savoy, dispossessed by the French, and intended by Spanish diplomacy to marry the Lady Elizabeth.

Meantime prayers were put up for the safe birth of the Queen's expected heir, and Parliament, before being prorogued, petitioned Philip to undertake the regency in case the Queen should die leaving a living child.

Mary must have felt as if her hopes were crowned in all respects, and as if she could well die in peace. It is sad to think of one so honest and good in heart, so devout and earnest in purpose, who so entirely wasted all her hopes, and was so deluded by a phantom. After a long, weary time of patience, she had reached the pinnacle of her hopes. She had her chosen husband, her sister had come back to her, she had recalled her banished cousin, and seen him restore her country from schism, and she might well regard herself as the chosen instrument in the hands of Heaven that all her surroundings told her that she was.

When things done with such good and devout intention turn out so lamentably ill as did these actions of Mary Tudor, we look anxiously to detect what could be the flaw in them which made them bring no blessing, but rather sin and misery, on all concerned, and infinitely widen the breach they were meant to close.

To explain all is past all power. Much might be owing to the retributive justice which blinded men to the right, and gave them up to work their own will; but if we look at obvious causes, we see that the absolute, unconditional surrender to Rome was a mistake that Elizabeth would not have made, nor indeed Reginald Pole himself,

before his long absence from England had identified him with Papal interests and feelings. Mary was highly educated, so far as learning went, but had no breadth or grasp of mind, and was incapable of understanding that there was a grander, truer Catholicity than that of Rome. The seclusion and disgrace in which her whole youth had been passed, had further narrowed her scope of understanding, so that she had no knowledge of the traditions of English feeling, and of the spirit of unity without uniformity. The cause of the Reformation was to her identified with the terrible personal wrong which had broken her mother's heart and saddened her life. She had seen Churches despoiled and sacrilege committed in that name, her father disgraced, her poor little brother in the hands of greedy tyrants who cloaked their robberies under the name of godly zeal; and lawlessness and sacrilege, schism and heresy-heresy not only in Mary's sense of the word, but much besides of the deepest dye, had been growing worse and worse in the last seven years. She must have been a woman of most exceptional wisdom if she had not thought the only remedy was to bring things back to what they had been before the disruption, and the man she had married had been bred in even a narrower, harsher school than her own. Neither of them could perceive that there had been evils that called for remedy. The contumacious conduct of the German Protestants and the sacrilege of the Calvinists in France and Holland supported them in the belief that no compromise or concession would avail, and considering that all the framers and promoters of Edward's First Prayer-book had either died as traitors to her brother or were in prison as traitors to herself, she could not be expected to perceive its merits.

At the time of the first meeting at Trent, a strong force of English Bishops might have given the Germans the strength to accomplish such changes as would have saved the Christian unity. The time had gone by, spirits were embittered, and the evils and iniquities that had stained the beginnings of Reformation in England were to bring retribution, not only in the suffering that was coming, but in the hatred of what was truly Catholic which that persecution aroused, a temper that affected the English Church for centuries later, and confounded Catholicity with Romanism.

Julius III. was dead before Mary's embassy could reach Rome, and an excellent Cardinal, called Marcello Cervini, was at once elected, using his own name as Marcellus II., and verifying the fancy that it was dangerous to do so, for he only lived twenty-two days after his election.

Mary much wished Cardinal Pole to have become Pope, and wrote letters in his favour; but the Italians were jealous of any save a native Pontiff, and elected Gian Pietro Caraffa, a Neapolitan, seventynine years old but full of vigour. He was pious and austere, spending whole nights in study, and of blameless life. His tall, thin figure

seemed all sinew, but his great dark eyes were full of youthful fire, and his fiercely passionate temper knew no restraint. Paul IV., as he called himself, brought all his national feelings as a Calabrian to the Papal throne, and abhorred the house of Austria as the tyrants of his native land, so that he saw in the emperor his own enemy instead of the protector of the Church, and in the adhesion of England, less the restoration of a nation than the acquisition of another country by hateful Spain.

MAGNUM BONUM; OR, MOTHER CAREY'S BROOD.

BY CHARLOTTE M. YONGE.

CHAPTER IX.

ELLEN'S MAGNUM BONUMS.

WHETHER from the effects of the warnings, or from that of native good sense, from that time forward Mrs. Joseph Brownlow sobered down, and became less distressing to her sister-in-law. Mary carried off her brother to Wales, and the Acton and Ray party dispersed, while Dr. and Mrs. Lucas came for a week, giving much relief to Mrs. Brownlow, who could discuss the family affairs with them in a manner she deemed unbecoming with Mrs. Acton or Miss Ogilvie. Had Caroline heard the consultation, she would have acquitted Ellen of malice; and indeed her Serene Highness was much too good to gossip about so near a connection, and had only confided her wonder and perplexity at the strange phenomenon to her favourite first cousin, who unfortunately was not equally discreet.

With the end of the holidays finished also the trying series of first anniversaries, and their first excitements of sorrow, so that it became possible to be more calm and quiet.

Moreover, two correctives came of themselves to Caroline. The first was Janet's inordinate correspondence with Nita Ray, and the discovery that the girl held herself engaged to stay with the sisters in November.

'Without asking me!' she exclaimed, aghast.

'I thought you heard us talking,' said Janet, so carelessly, that her mother put on her dignity. 'I certainly had no conception of an invitation being given and accepted without reference to me.'

'Come, now, Mother Carey,' said this modern daughter; 'don't be cross! We really didn't know you weren't attending.'

'If I had I should have said it was impossible, as I say now. You can never have thought over the matter!'

'Haven't I? When I am doing no good here, only wasting time?' fault. We will set to work at once steadily.'

'That is

my

'But my classes and my lectures!'

'You are not so far on but that our reading together will teach you quite as much as lectures.'

Janet looked both sulky and scornful, and her mother continued— 'It is not as if we had not modern books, and I think I know how to read them so as to be useful to you.'

'I don't like getting behindhand with the world.'

'You can't keep up even with the world without a sound foundation. Besides, even if it were more desirable, the Rays cannot afford to keep you, nor I to board you

there.'

'I am to pay them by helping Miss Ray in her copying.' 'Poor Miss Ray!' exclaimed Carey, laughing. hand-writing?'

Does she know your

'You do not know what I can do,' said Janet, with dignity. 'Yes, I hope to see it for myself, for you must put this notion of going to London out of your head. the invitation-no, nor second it. Janet blushed a little, and muttered something about Miss Ray being afraid of stuck-up people.

I am sure Miss Ray did not give Did she, Janet?'

'I thought so! She is a good, sensible person, whom grandmamma esteemed very much; but she has never been able to keep her sister in order; and as to trusting you to their care, or letting you live in their set, neither papa nor grandmamma would ever have thought of it.'

'You only say so because her Serene Highness turns up her nose at everything artistic and original.'

'Janet, you forget yourself,' Caroline exclaimed, in a tone which quelled the girl, who went muttering away; and no more was ever heard of the Ray proposal, which no doubt the elder sister at least had never regarded as anything but an airy castle.

However, Caroline was convinced that the warnings against the intimacy had not been so uncalled for as she had believed; for she found, when she tried to tighten the reins, that her daughter was restive, and had come to think herself a free agent, as good as grown up. Spirit was not, however, lacking to Caroline, and when she had roused herself, she made Janet understand that she was not to be disregarded or disobeyed. Regular hours were instituted, and the difficulty of getting broken into them again was sufficient proof to her that she had been wrong to neglect them. Armine yawned portentously, and declared that he could not learn except at his own times; and Babie was absolutely naughty more than once, when her mother suffered doubly in punishing her from the knowledge of whose fault it was. However, they were good little things, and it was not hard to re-establish discipline with them. After

a little breaking in, Babie gave it to her dolls as her deliberate opinion that Wegulawity settles one's mind. One knows when to do what.' Janet could not well complain of the regularity in itself, though she did cavil at the actual arrangements, and they were altered all

round to please her, and she showed a certain contempt for her teacher in the studies she resumed with her mother; but after the dictionary, encyclopædia and other authorities, including Mr. Ogilvie, proved almost uniformly to be against her whenever there was a difference of opinion, she had sense enough to perceive that she could still learn something at home.

Moreover, after one or two of these references, Mr. Ogilvie offered to look over her Latin and Greek exercises, and hear her construe on his Saturday half-holidays, declaring that it would be quite a refreshment. Caroline was shocked at the sacrifice, but she could not bear to affront her daughter, so she consented; but as she thought Janet was not old enough to need a chaperon, and as her boys did want her, she was hardly ever present at the lessons.

Moreover, Mr. Ogilvie had a lecturer from London to give weekly lectures on physical science to his boys, and opened the doors to ladies. This was a great satisfaction, chiefly for the sake of Bobus and Jock, but also for Janet's and her mother's. The difficulty was to beat up for ladies enough to keep one another in countenance; but happily two families in the country, and one bright little bride in the town, were found glad to open their ears, so that Ellen had no just cause of disapproval of the attendance of her sister and niece.

Ellen had more cause to sigh when Michaelmas came, and for the first time taught poor Carey what money matters really meant. Throughout her married life, her only stewardship had concerned her own dress and the children's, Mrs. Brownlow's occasional talk of teaching her housekeeping had always fallen through, Janet being always her grandmamma's deputy.

Thus Janet and nurse had succeeded to the management when poor Carey was too ill and wretched to attend to it; and it had gone on in their hands at the Pagoda, Janet pleased to be respected accordingly by her aunt, who always liked her the best, in spite of her much worse behaviour, for were not her virtues her own, and her vices her mother's?

Caroline had paid the weekly books, and asked no questions, until the winding up of the executor's business; and the quarterly settlement of accounts made startling revelations that the balance at her bankers was just eleven shillings and fourpence halfpenny, and what was more, was that the discovery was made in the presence of her fellow executor, who could not help giving a low whistle. She turned pale, and gasped for breath, in absolute amazement, for she was quite sure they were living at much less expense than in London, and there had been no outgoings worth mentioning for dress or journeys. What were they to do? Surely they could not live upon less! Was it her fault?

She was so much distressed, that the good-natured colonel pitied her, and answered kindly