KATHERINE OF ARRAGON, fusi ûmn nf litui! φ tÊigtrth. CÏÏAPTEE I, Katherine's birth—Successful rule of her parents in Spain—Her descent—Betrothment to Prince Arthur—Arrival in England—Pompous marriage—Accompanies Prince Arthur to Ludlow—The Prince dies there—She then returns to London, and settles at Croydon—Her marriage to Prince Henry, afterwards Henry the Eighth, negociated—Her objections to a second marriage in England—Betrothment to Prince Henry. jATHERINE OF ARRAGON, one of our most learned and virtuous Queens, was born at the small town of Alcala do Henares, on the fifteenth of De cember,1485. She entered the world about a fortnight before she was expected, her mother, Isabella of Castile, being brought to bed with her whilst on the road from the victorious Christian camp at the Moorish city of La Ronda to Toledo, then the capital of Spain, where she had intended to pass her Christmas. Ferdinand, the father of Katherine, was the son of John, King of Arragon and Sicily; and although unlearned, his sound sense, energy, and valour were such, that lie rendered Spain one of the most wealthy and prosperous nations in Christendom. Ry his marriage with Isabella, who was sole sister and heiress to Henry the Fourth, King of Castile and Leon, he became monarch of those important possessions. Ferdinand and his wife lived together in great har mony, " and together did many admirable things and holy works. They expelled the Moors out of Granada and part of Andalusia, and throughout their victorious career they destroyed the moslems of the Mahomeds, and built Christian temples of worship in their place. The magnitude of their operations may he imagined, when it is known that the wealthy city of Granada, which did not surrender till after it had sustained a siege of ten years, was encompassed by a wall twelve miles round, in which there were twelve gates and one thousand towers, and that, at last, it took an army of twelve thousand horse and one hundred thousand foot to conquer this stubbornly-maintained city. Nor was it war against the pagan Moors only that Ferdinand and his energetic consort so successfully engaged. It was their munificence that enabled Columbus to cross the Atlantic, and discover that land where freedom and progress have taken so firm a root, and which has been rather inappropriately named America. Katherine was the youngest child of a family of five. Her mother wa* a