swiftly from his victim. It was not a sudden surprisal, temptation, or betrayal into crime. It was murder, deliberate, cold-blooded, avaricious murder.

And now the reign of Conscience commences. Now, as fast and as far as he flies, the work of retrospection hurries him back. Now the clouds of retributive vengeance lower around his soul. Now he would give the world, were it in his power to give, if he could take the place of his victim. The moment the dread deed was accomplished, the iron entered into his own soul. It was not the traveller whom he struck, but himself. It was not a man whom he thrust out of existence, but a Conscience into it. The sense of guilt, and of inexorable retribution, waits upon him. NEMESIS, the prediction, and, in part, the experience of justice is behind him, within him,

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around him. The whole world is a moor, a wilderness, across which, with a burning hand upon his heart, he flies. He flies from justice, from himself, from Conscience, but he meets them all. His crime is everywhere, his punishment is everywhere. Miserable, miserable man!

But justice, calm, noiseless, unimpassioned, nay, with a face almost of compassion, of deep melancholy, flies over him. His brow is dark as a thunder-cloud, in the darkness of his soul. NEMESIS, with her hour-glass and her sword as steady as inexorable fate, pursues him close through every lane of life, to the appointed moment of her blow. Can the murderer escape? Can he fly into a world where there is no Nemesis Nay, can he fly into a world where the past realities of his being can be annihilated, and the constitution of his being changed?

BY REV. JOHN

S. c. ABBOTT.

WHILE France was thus deluged with the blood of a civil war, young Henry was busily pursuing his studies in college. He could have had no affection for his father, for he had hardly known him. From his mother, who was most sincerely devoted to the cause of the Reformers, he had long been separated. But he cherished her memory with the most affectionate regard, and his predilections strongly inclined him towards the faith which he knew that she had so warmly espoused. It was, however, in its political aspects, that Henry mainly contemplated the question. He regarded the two sects merely as two political parties struggling for power. For some time he did not venture to commit himself openly, but availing himself of the privilege of his youth, carefully studied the principles and prospects of the contending factions, patiently waiting for the time to come, in which he should introduce his strong arm into the conflict. Each party, aware that his parents had espoused opposite sides, and regarding him as an invaluable accession to either cause, adopted all possible allurements to win his favor.

Catharine, as unprincipled as she was ambitious, allured him to her court, lavished upon him, with queenly profusion, caresses and flattery, and enticed him with all those blandishments, which might most effectually enthrall the impassioned spirit of youth. Voluptuousness, gilded with its most dazzling and deceitful enchantments, was studiously presented to his eye. The queen was all love and complaisance. She received him to her cabinet council. She affected to regard him as her chief confidant. She had already formed the design of perfidiously throwing the Protestants off their guard by protestations of friendship, and then, by indiscriminate massacre, of obliterating from the kingdom every vestige of the reformed faith. For various reasons she did not wish to include Henry in this massacre, if she could by any means win him to her side. She held many interviews with the highest ecclesiastics, upon the subject of the contemplated massacre. At one time, when she was suggesting the expediency of sparing some few Protestant nobles who had been her personal friends, Henry overheard the significant reply, from the Duke of Alva, "the head of a salmon is worth a

hundred frogs." The young prince meditated deeply upon the import of those words, and guessing their significance, and alarmed for the safety of his mother, he dispatched a trusty messenger to communicate to her his suspicions.

His mind was now aroused to vigilance, to careful and hourly scrutiny of the plots and counterplots which were ever forming around him. While others of his age were ever absorbed in the pleasures of licentiousness and gaming, to which that corrupt court was abandoned, Henry, though he had not escaped unspotted from the contamination which surrounded him, displayed, by the dignity of his demeanor and the elevation of his character, those extraordinary qualities which so remarkably distinguished him in future life, and which indicated, even then, that he was born to command. One of the grandees of the Spanish court, the Duke of Medina, after meeting him incidentally, but for a few moments, remarked, "It appears to me that this young prince is either an emperor, or is destined soon to become one." Henry was very punctilious in regard to etiquette, and would allow no one to treat him without due respect, or to deprive him of the position to which he was entitled by his rank.

Catharine, the better to disguise her infamous designs, now went with Henry in great splendor to make a friendly visit to his mother, the Queen of Navarre. She lavished upon Jeanne d'Albret the warmest congratulations and the most winning smiles, and omitted no courtly blandishments, which could disarm the suspicions and win the confidence of the Protestant queen. The situation of Jeanne, in her feeble dominions, was extremely embarrassing. The Pope, in consequence of her heresy, had declared her to be incapable of reigning. As her own subjects were almost all Protestants, she was in no danger of any insurrection upon their parts, but this decree in that age of superstition and of profligacy, invited each neighboring power to seize upon her territory. The only safety of the queen consisted in the mutual jealousies of the rival kingdoms of France and Spain; neither of them being willing that the other should receive such an accession to its political importance. Jeanne d'Albret, sincerely attached to the reformed religion, and

apparently from conviction and principle, was not at all influenced by the visit of the French court to her capital, though she looked with much solicitude upon the ascendency which, it appeared to her, Catharine was obtaining over the mind of her son. Maternal solicitude induced her soon to return the visit, that she might gradually draw him from the influence of the Queen of France, and educate him in accordance with her own views. But Jeanne could not withdraw Henry from the court of Catharine, for she detained him by a kind of polite captivity, which was yet of such a nature, that it was quite impossible for the young prince openly to depart. Jeanne consequently had recourse to stratagem.

One day, under the pretext of taking a tour of pleasure, the Queen of Navarre, with her son, and a few gentlemen of her own court, when at a little distance from Paris, turned from her course, and with the utmost speed hastened to her own dominions, leaving a very polite letter of leavetaking for the queen-mother and her son, Charles IX. Catharine was extremely annoyed at their escape, but it was impossible to overtake the fugitives.

Henry, again among his native mountains and placed under the tuition of a gentleman who had a high appreciation of all that was poetic and beautiful, devoted himself, with great delight, to the study of polite literature; and gave free wing to an ennobled imagination as he clambered up the cliffs and wandered over the ravines familiar

to the days of his childhood. His personal appearance in 1567, when he was thirteen years of age, is thus described by a writer who was in the habit of daily meeting him:

"We have here the young Prince of Bearn. One cannot help acknowledging that he is a beautiful creature. At the age of thirteen he displays all the qualities of a person of eighteen or nineteen.

He is agreeable, he is civil, he is obliging. Others might say, that as yet he does not know what he is But for my part, I, who study him very often, can assure you that he does know perfectly well. He demeans himself towards all the world with so easy a carriage, that people crowd round, wherever he is, and he acts so nobly in everything that one sees clearly that he is a great prince. He enters into conversation as a highly polished man. He speaks always to the purpose, and it is remarked that he is very well informed. I shall hate the reformed religion all my life, for having carried off from us 80 worthy a person. Without this original sin, he would be the first after the king, and we should see him, in a short time, at the head of the armies. He gains new friends every day. He

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insinuates himself into all hearts with inconceivable skill. He is highly honored by the men, and no less beloved by the ladies. His face is very well formed; the nose neither too large nor too small. His eyes are very soft, his skin brown, but very smooth, and his whole features animated with such uncommon vivacity, that if he does not make progress with the fair, it will be very extraordinary."

Henry had not escaped the natural influence of the dissolute society in the midst of which he had been educated; and manifested, on his first return to his mother, a strong passion for balls and masquerades, and all the enervating pleasures of fashionable life. His courtly and persuasive manners were so insinuating, that, without difficulty, he borrowed any sums of money he pleased, and with these borrowed treasures he fed his passion for excitement at the gaming table.

The firm principle and high intellectual elevation of his mother induced her to the immediate and vigorous endeavor to correct these radical defects in his character and education. She kept him, as much as possible, under her own eye; she appointed teachers to instruct him, of the highest mental and moral attainments; and by her conversation and example impressed upon his mind the sentiment that it was the highest honor, of one born to command others, to be their superior in intelligence, judgment, and self-control. The Prince of Bearn now found himself surrounded by Protestant friends and influences, and he could not but see and feel the superior purity of his mother's court.

Catharine worshipped no deity but ambition. She was ready to adopt any measures, and to plunge into any crimes, which would give stability and lustre to her power. She had no religious opinions or even preferences. She espoused the cause of the Catholics, because, on the whole, she deemed that party the more powerful; and then she sought the destruction of the Protestants that none might be left to dispute her sway. Had the Protestants been in the majority, she would, with equal zeal, have given them the aid of her strong arm, and unrelentingly would have striven to crush the opposing papal power. Jeanne d'Albret, on the contrary, was in principle a Protestant. She was a woman of reflection, of feeling, of highly cultivated intellect, and probably of sincere piety. She had read, with deep interest, the religious controversies of the day. She had prayed for light and guidance. She had finally and cordially adopted the Protestant faith as the truth of God. Thus guided by her sense of duty, she was exceedingly anxious that her