repartee, like her brilliant but less beautiful
predecessor, and she passed her regal life without uttering a sentence
or a sentiment which has been deemed worthy of preservation.

[Sidenote: Anne of Cleves--Catharine Howard.]

She had been dead about a month, when the king looked round for
another wife, and besought Francis I. to send the most beautiful
ladies of his kingdom to Calais, that he might there inspect them, and
select one according to his taste. But this Oriental notion was not
indulged by the French king, who had more taste and delicacy; and
Henry remained without a wife for more than two years, the princesses
of Europe not being very eager to put themselves in the power of this
royal Bluebeard. At last, at the suggestion of Cromwell, he was
affianced to Anne, daughter of the Duke of Cleves, whose home was on
the banks of the Rhine, in the city of Dusseldorf.

The king no sooner set his eyes on her than he was disappointed and
disgusted, and gave vent to his feelings before Cromwell, calling her
a "great Flanders mare." Nevertheless, he consummated his marriage,
although his disgust constantly increased. This mistake of Cromwell
was fatal to his ambitious hopes. The king vented on him all the
displeasure which had been gathering in his embittered soul.
Cromwell's doom was sealed. He had offended an absolute monarch. He
was accused of heresy and treason,--the common accusations in that age
against men devoted to destruction,--tried by a servile board of
judges, condemned, and judicially murdered, in 1540. In his
misfortunes, he showed no more fortitude than Wolsey. The atmosphere
of a court is fatal to all moral elevation.

But, before his execution, Anne of Cleves, a virtuous and worthy
woman, was divorced, and Catharine Howard, granddaughter of the victor
of Flodden Field, became queen of England. The king now fancied that
his domestic felicity was complete; but, soon after his marriage, it
was discovered that his wife had formerly led a dissolute life, and
had been unfaithful also to her royal master. When the proofs of her
incontinence were presented to him, he burst into a flood of tears;
but soon his natural ferocity returned, and his guilty wife expiated
her crime by death on the scaffold, in 1542.

Henry's sixth and last wife was Catharine Parr, relict of Lord
Latimer, a woman of great sagacity, prudence, and good sense. She
favored the reformers, but had sufficient address to keep her opinions