of all is there anything in the history of the time to show
that he sacrificed his wife to his jealousy.[1576] The contrary is well
established by those of her own countrymen who had free access to her
during her lifetime,--some of them in the hour of her death,--whose
correspondence with her family would not have failed to intimate their
suspicions, had there been anything to suspect.

Well would it be for the memory of Philip the Second, could the
historian find no heavier sin to lay to his charge than his treatment of
Isabella. From first to last, he seems to have regarded her with the
indulgence of an affectionate husband. Whether she ever obtained such an
ascendancy over his close and cautious nature as to be allowed to share
in his confidence and his counsels, may well be doubted. Her temper
would seem to have been too gentle, too devoid of worldly ambition, to
prompt her to meddle with affairs for which she was fitted neither by
nature nor education. Yet Brantome assures us, that she exercised a most
salutary influence over her lord in his relations with France, and that
the value of this influence was appreciated in later times, when the
growing misunderstandings between the two courts were left to rankle,
without any friendly hand to heal them.[1577] "Her death," he continues,
"was as bitter to her own nation as it was to the Spaniards; and if the
latter called her 'the Queen of Peace and Goodness,' the former with no
less reason styled her 'the Olive-branch.'"[1578] "But she has passed
away," he exclaims, "in the sweet and pleasant April of her age,--when
her beauty was such that it seemed as if it might almost defy the
assaults of time."[1579]

The queen occupies an important place in that rich gallery of portraits
in which Brantome has endeavored to perpetuate the features of his
contemporaries. In no one of them has he traced the lineaments with a
more tender and delicate hand. Even the breath of scandal has had no
power to dim the purity of their expression. Of all that illustrious
company which the artist has brought in review before the eyes of
posterity, there is no one to whom he has so truly rendered the homage
of the heart, as to Elizabeth of France.

But from these scenes of domestic sorrow, it is time that we should turn
to others of a more stirring and adventurous character.

END OF VOLS. I. AND II.

LONDON C. WHITING, BEAUFORT-HOUSE, DUKE-STREET, LINCOLN'S-INN-FIELDS.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I