th them to fulfil the sweet promise of
his youth.

Beauty is, perhaps, too strong a word to apply to the youthful bride.
It was the pensive sadness of her mild and pleasing features that so
attracted--natural enough to her position in a strange land, and the
thoughts of early severance from a mother she idolized, but recalled
some twenty years afterwards as the dim shadow of the sorrowing
future, glooming through the gay promise of the present. And there,
too, was Prince Henry, then only in his twelfth year, bearing in his
flashing eye and constantly varying expression of brow and mouth, true
index of those passions which were one day to shake Europe to the
centre; and presenting in his whole appearance a striking contrast
to his brother, and drawing around him, even while yet so young, the
hottest and wildest spirits of his father's court, who, while they
loved the person, scorned the gentle amusements of the Prince of
Wales.

Henry the Seventh and his hapless consort, Elizabeth of York, were, of
course, present--the one rejoicing in the conclusion of a marriage for
which he had been in treaty the last seven years, and which was at
last purchased at the cost of innocent blood; the other beholding only
her precious son, whose gentle and peculiarly domestic virtues, were
her sweetest solace for conjugal neglect and ill-concealed dislike.

Amongst the many noble Spaniards forming the immediate attendants of
the Infanta, had been one so different in aspect to his companions as
to attract universal notice; and not a few of the senior noblemen of
England had been observed to crowd round him whenever he appeared, and
evince towards him the most marked and pleasurable cordiality. His
thickly silvered hair and somewhat furrowed brow bore the impress
of some five-and-fifty years; but a nearer examination might have
betrayed, that sorrow more than years, had aged him, and full six,
or even ten years might very well be subtracted from the age which a
first glance supposed him. Why the fancy was taken that he was not a
Spaniard could not have been very easily explained; for his wife was
the daughter of the famous Pedro Pas, whose beauty, wit, and high
spirits were essentially Spanish, and was the Infanta's nearest and
most favored attendant; and he himself was constantly near her person,
and looked up to by the usually jealous Spaniards as even higher in
rank and importance that many of themselves. How, then, could he be a
fore