Till utter darkness closed her wing Then did their loss his foemen know; Their king, their lords, their mightiest, low, They melted from the field as snow, When streams are swoln and south winds blow. Tweed's echoes heard the ceaseless plash, To gain the Scottish land; To town and tower, to down and dale, Where shivered was fair Scotland's spear, Day dawns upon the mountain side:- Look northward with upbraiding eye; Nor cherish hope in vain, That, journeying far on foreign strand, May yet return again. He saw the wreck his rashness wrought; And fell on Flodden plain : And well in death his trusty brand, Coronation of Anne Boleyn.-Froude. [After having lived with Catharine of Aragon for sixteen years, Henry VIII., captirated by the charms of Anne Boleyn (bul'en), an attendant on the queen, determined to obtain a divorce from Catharine, on the ground that, she being the widow of his brother, his marriage with her had not been lawful. Not succeeding in an application to the Pope for the divorce, he caused a court to be opened under Archbishop Cranmer, by which the marriage was annulled. The king's marriage with Anne Boleyn, which had taken place in private, was then publicly announced, and her formal coronation took place (1533). The following account of that event is extracted from Froude's "History of England."] 1. NOTICE had been given in the city early in May, that preparations should be made for the coronation on the first of the following month. Queen Anne was at Greenwich, but, according to custom, the few preceding days were to be spent at the Tower; and on the 19th of May she was conducted thither in state by the lord mayor and the city companies, with one of those splendid exhibitions upon the water which in the days when the silver Thames deserved its name, and the sun could shine down upon it out of the blue summer sky, were spectacles scarcely rivalled in gorgeousness by the worldfamous wedding of the Adriatic. 2. The river was crowded with boats; the banks and the ships in the pool swarmed with people; and fifty great barges formed the procession, all blazing with gold and banners. The queen herself was in her own barge, close to the lord mayor; and, in keeping with the fantastic genius of the times, she was preceded up the water by a "foyst or wafter full of ordnance, in which was a great dragon continually moving and casting wildfire, and round about the foyst stood terrible monsters and wild men casting fire and making hideous noise." So, with trumpets blowing, cannon pealing, the Tower guns answering the guns of the ships, in a blaze of fireworks and splendor, * As an evidence of the king's death, the English produced his sword and dagger, which, Scott remarks, are still preserved in the Herald's College, London. An unhewn column marks the sp Chere King James fell, still called the " King's Stone." Anne Boleyn was borne along to the great archway of the Tower, where the king was waiting on the stairs to receive her. 3. And now let us suppose eleven days to have elapsed, the welcome news to have arrived at length from Dunstable, and the fair summer morning of life dawning in treacherous beauty after the long night of expectation. No bridal ceremonial had been possible; the marriage had been huddled over like a stolen love-match, and the marriage feast had been eaten in vexation and disappointment. These past mortifications were to be atoned for by a coronation pageant which the art and the wealth of the richest city in Europe should be poured out in the most lavish profusion to adorn. 4. On the morning of the 31st of May, the families of the London citizens were stirring early in all houses. From Temple Bar to the Tower, the streets were fresh strewed with gravel, the footpaths were railed off along the whole distance, and occupied on one side by the guilds, their workmen, and apprentices, on the other by the city constables and officials in their gaudy uniforms, "with their staves in hand for to cause the people to keep good room and order." Cornhill and Gracechurch street had dressed their fronts in scarlet and crimson, in arras and tapestry, and the rich carpet-work from Persia and the East. Cheapside, to outshine her rivals, was draped even more splendidly in cloth of gold, and tissue, and velvet. 5. The sheriffs were pacing up and down on their great Flemish horses hung with liveries, and all the windows were thronged with ladies crowding to see the procession pass. At length the Tower guns opened, the grim gates rolled back, and under the archway, in the bright May sunshine, the long column began slowly to defile. Two States only permitted their representatives to grace the scene with their presenceVenice and France. It was, perhaps, to make the most of this isolated countenance that the French embassador's train formed the van of the cavalcade. Twelve French knights came riding foremost in surcoats of blue velvet with sleeves of yellow silk, their horses trapped in blue, with white crosses powdered on their hangings. 6. After them followed a troop of English gentlemen, two and two, and then the Knights of the Bath, "in gowns of violet, with hoods purfled with miniver', like doctors." Next, perhaps at a little interval, the abbots passed on, mitred in their robes; the barons followed in crimson velvet, the bishops then, and then the earls and marquises, the dresses of each order increasing in elaborate gorgeousness. All these rode on in pairs. 7. Then came alone, Audeley, lord-chancellor, and behind him the Venetian ambassador and the Archbishop of York; the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Du Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne and of Paris, not now with bugle and hunting-frock, but solemn, with stole and crozier. Next, the lord-mayor, with the city mace in hand, and Garter in his coat-of-arms; and then Lord William Howard-Belted Will Howard of the Scottish Border, Marshal of England. The officers of the queen's household succeeded the marshal, in scarlet and gold, and the van of the procession was closed by the Duke of Suffolk, as high constable, with his silver wand. 8. It is no easy matter to picture to ourselves the blazing trail of splendor which in such a pageant must have drawn along the London streets,-those streets which now we know so black and grimed, themselves then radiant with masses of color,-gold, and crimson, and violet. Yet there it was, and there the sun could shine upon it, and tens of thousands of eyes were gazing on the scene out of the crowded lattices. 9. Glorious as the spectacle was, perhaps, however, it passed unheeded. Those eyes were watching all for another object, which now drew near. In an open space behind the constable there was seen approaching "a white chariot," drawn by two palfreys in white damask, which swept the ground, a golden canopy borne above it making music with silver bells; and in the chariot sat the observed of all observers, the beautiful occasion of all this glittering homage; fortune's plaything of the hour, the Queen of England-queen at last-borne along upon the waves of this sea of glory, breathing the perfumed incense of greatness which she had risked her fair name, her delicacy, her honor, her self-respect, to win; and she had won it. 10. There she sat, dressed in white tissue robes, her fair hair flowing loose over her shoulders, and her temples circled with a light coronet of gold and diamonds-most beautiful-loveliest -most favored, perhaps, as she seemed at that hour, of all England's daughters. Alas!" within the hollow round" of that coronet "Kept death his court, and there the antick sate, As if the flesh which wall'd about her life Were brass impregnable; and humored thus, Bored through her castle walls; and farewell, Queen." 11. Fatal gift of greatness! so dangerous ever! so more than dangerous in those tremendous times when the fountains are broken loose of the great deeps of thought; and nations are in the throes of revolution,-when ancient order and law and tradition are splitting in the social earthquake; and as the opposing forces wrestle to and fro, those unhappy ones who stand out above the crowd become the symbols of the struggle, and fall the victims of its alternating fortunes. And what if into an unsteady heart and brain, intoxicated with splendor, the outward chaos should find its way, converting the poor, silly soul into an image of the same confusion,-if conscience should be deposed from her high place, and the Pandora box be broken loose of passions and sensualities and follies; and at length there be nothing left of all which man or woman ought to value, save hope of God's forgiveness. 12. Three short years have yet to pass, and again on a summer morning, Queen Anne Boleyn will leave the Tower of London,--not radiant then with beauty on a gay errand of coronation, but a poor, wandering ghost, on a sad, tragic errand, from which she will never more return, passing away out of earth where she may stay no longer, into a presence where, |