--The church.--The silver
font.--The presents.--Name of the infant princess.--Elizabeth made
Princess of Wales.--Matrimonial schemes.--Jane Seymour.--The
tournament.--The king's suspicions.--Queen Anne arrested.--She is
sent to the Tower.--Sufferings of the queen.--Her mental
distress.--Examination of Anne.--Her letter to the king.--Anne's
fellow-prisoners.--They are executed.--Anne tried and condemned.--She
protests her innocence.--Anne's execution.--Disposition of the
body.--The king's brutality.--Elizabeth's forlorn condition.

Travelers, in ascending the Thames by the steamboat from Rotterdam, on
their return from an excursion to the Rhine, have often their attention
strongly attracted by what appears to be a splendid palace on the banks
of the river at Greenwich. The edifice is not a palace, however, but a
hospital, or, rather, a retreat where the worn out, maimed, and crippled
veterans of the English navy spend the remnant of their days in comfort
and peace, on pensions allowed them by the government in whose service
they have spent their strength or lost their limbs. The magnificent
buildings of the hospital stand on level land near the river. Behind
them there is a beautiful park, which extends over the undulating and
rising ground in the rear; and on the summit of one of the eminences
there is the famous Greenwich Observatory, on the precision of whose
quadrants and micrometers depend those calculations by which the
navigation of the world is guided. The most unconcerned and careless
spectator is interested in the manner in which the ships which throng
the river all the way from Greenwich to London, "take their time" from
this observatory before setting sail for distant seas. From the top of a
cupola surmounting the edifice, a slender pole ascends, with a black
ball upon it, so constructed as to slide up and down for a few feet upon
the pole. When the hour of 12 M. approaches, the ball slowly rises to
within a few inches of the top, warning the ship-masters in the river to
be ready with their chronometers, to observe and note the precise
instant of its fall. When a few seconds only remain of the time, the
ball ascends the remainder of the distance by a very deliberate motion,
and then drops suddenly when the instant arrives. The ships depart on
their several destinations, and for months afterward when thousands of
miles away they depend for their safety in dark and stormy nights, and
among dangerous reefs and