en days' royalty! Alas, how deeply fraught with tragic interest is
the historic page recording the events of that brief period! and how
immeasurable the results proceeding therefrom. Love, beauty, religious
constancy, genius, and learning, were seen in early womanhood
intermingling their glorious halo with the dark shadowings of
despotism, imprisonment, and violent death upon the scaffold!

"In the most sequestered part of Leicestershire, backed by rude
eminences, and skirted by lowly and romantic valleys, stands Bradgate,
the birth-place and abode of Lady Jane Grey. The approach to Bradgate
from the village of Cropston is striking. On the left stands a group
of venerable trees, at the extremity of which rise the remains of the
once magnificent mansion of the Greys of Groby. On the right is a
hill, known by the name of 'The Coppice,' covered with slate, but so
intermixed with fern and forest-flowers as to form a beautiful
contrast to the deep shades of the surrounding woods. To add to the
loveliness of the scene, a winding trout-stream finds its way from
rock to rock, washing the walls of Bradgate until it reaches the
fertile meadows of Swithland.

"In the distance, situate upon a hill, is a tower, called by the
country-people Old John, commanding a magnificent view of the
adjoining country, including the distant castles of Nottingham and
Belvoir. With the exception of the chapel and kitchen, the princely
mansion has now become a ruin; but a tower still stands, which
tradition points out as her birth-place. Traces of the tilt-yard are
visible, with the garden-walls, and a noble terrace whereon Jane often
walked and sported in her childhood; and the rose and lily still
spring in favourable nooks of that wilderness, once the pleasance, or
pleasure-garden of Bradgate. Near the brook is a beautiful group of
old chestnut-trees.

"'This was thy home then, gentle Jane,
This thy green solitude; and here
At evening from the gleaming pane,
Thine eye oft watched the dappled deer
(While the soft sun was in its wane)
Browsing beside the brooklet clear;
The brook runs still, the sun sets now,
The deer yet browseth--where art thou?'

"Instead of skill in drawing she cultivated the art of painting with
the needle, and at Zurich is still to be seen, together with the
original MS. of her Latin letters to the reformer Bullinger, a toilet
beautifully ornamented by her own hands, which had been