virtue, high wisdom, and excellent learning shall think convenient, and limit unto me, to whose presence I pray Godi may once more come ere I die, for every day is a year, till I may have the fruition of it. [Beseeching you, good Mr.] Secretary, to continue mine humble suit for the same, and for all other things whatsoever they be, to repute my heart so firmly knit to bis pleasure, that I can by no means vary from the direction and appointment of the same, and thus most heartily fare you well. From Ilunsdon, this Friday, at ten of the clock at night. "Your assured loving friend, ''During my life, " M ARY." On the same day that Mary wrote the above epistle, she addressed the following to the Xing :— "My bounden duty most humbly remembered to your most excellent Majesty; whereas I am unable and insufficient to renier and express to your Highness those most hearty and bumble thanks for your gracious mercy and fatherly pity, surmounting mine offences at this time extended towards me, I shall prostrate at your most noble feet, humbly and with the very bottom of mv stomach, beseech your Grace to repute that in me, which in my poor heart remaining in your mostnoble hand, I have conceived and professed towards your Grace, whiles the breath shall remain in my body, that is, that as I am now in such merciful sort recovered, being more than almost lost with mino own folly, that your Majesty may as well accept mo, justly your bounden slave, by redemption, as your most humble, faithful, and obedient child and subject, by the course of nature planted in this your most noble realm, so shall I for ever persevere and continue towards your Highness in such uniformity and duo obedience, as I doubt not, but, with the help of God, your Grace shall see and perceive a will and intent in me to redouble again that hath been amiss in my behalf, conformably to such words and writings as I have spoken and sent unto your Highness, from the which I will never vary during my life, trusting that your grace hath conceived that opinion of me, which to remember is mine only comfort ; and thus I beseech our Lord to preserve your Grace in health, with my very natural mother, the Queen, and to send you shortly issue, which I shall as gladly and willingly serve with my hands under their feet, as ever did poor subject their most gracious sovereign. "My sister Elizabeth is in good health, thanks be to our Lord, and such a child towards us as I doubt not but your Highness will have cause to rejoice of, in time coming, as knoweth Almighty God. " From Hunsdon, the twenty-first day of July. "Your Grace's most humble and " obedient daughter and " faithful subject, " M AEY." Mary's kind mention of the little Elizabeth in this letter, exhibits a commendable proof of her charitable, affectionate disposition. Lut two months previously, Anne Boleyn bad been beheaded as an adulteress, and Elizabeth, her only surviving child, Henry not only disowned as a Princess of the line, but also treated with neglect and contempt. How noble then, how generous, was it of Mary, to take this early opportunity to reply to Anne Boleyn's dying entreaty for forgiveness, by commending her unoffending little one to the notice of the brutal-minded monarch. Mary having, to use Cromwell's words, voluntarily signed her own degradation, was now permitted to hold a jointhouseliold with her sister Elizabeth. Her attendants and servants, selected for the most part by the privy council, were twenty-eight in number. They became sincerely attached to her, and only relinquished her service by the command of death. Being now her own mistress, she led a quiet, sedate, pious life; besides history, theology, and general literature, she studied geography, astronomy, mathematics, and natural philosophy ; a portion of each day she devoted to the exercise of religion, and in the evening worked with her