titude and propriety of speech and of retort; and to such an extent had this faculty, that if he cannot actually aspire to be denominated a wit, at all events it must be universally conceded to him that he had the power of expressing himself with vigour and point. His best sayings are well known; but they have too much merit to be excluded from a compilation of the life of his queen.

The Bishop of Beauvais having been taken prisoner in battle, the pope claimed his restoration, as his spiritual son. Richard's reply was admirable; he sent to his holiness the ensanguined coat of mail worn by the captive prelate in the fight, accompanied by the scriptural quotation: This have we found: know now whether it be thy son's coat or no.

What can be more potent and significant than this species of verbal sledge-hammer? so strikingly appropriate too in the hands of the habitual wielder of the mace. If the pope were not felled by it, his head must have been far more thick than that of the great majority of the astute individuals who generally only wore the tiara, to make their brains still more conspicuous to the world.

Again; when he replied to the exhortations of Foulques of Neuilly, to rid himself of his three notorious vices, pride, avarice, and incontinence. You counsel well, he said, and I hereby dispose of the first to the templars; of the second, to the monks of Cisteau; and of the third, to my prelates.

His answer when John sued for pardon was touching and noble: I forgive him; and hope I shall as easily forget his offences as he will my pardon.

And another speech, in reference to the same bad man, shows an equally profound perception of character, and an equally pithy and cogent mode of expressing it. When first acquainted that this perfidious prince was in rebellion against him, he was much distressed; but quickly recovering himself,

he remarked, My brother John was never formed for conquering kingdoms.

Berengaria lived very many years after the death of her husband; but, if her married state did not attach to her celebrity, of course her widowhood was still more obscure. Nothing further is known of her than that she was occasionally engaged in pecuniary strife with that very fraudulent person John, and subsequently with Henry the Third. They did not pay her their stipulated composition for her English dower; and Berengaria, who seems to have considered the office of pope as by no means a sinecure, invariably summoned him to act as her advocate. We have seen how, when she was in distress at Rome, she succeeded in making the pope of that day, Celestine, intervene to assist her. Nor does she seem to have been less prevailing in subsequent times; for his holiness, like a good preux chevalier, always stepped effectively forward to her succour. Unfortunately, Innocent was a long-lived man; otherwise perhaps we might have had the amusing spectacle of her appeals to half a dozen successive popes. Evidently Berengaria had very strong convictions that the Papa of Rome was really the father of all the afflicted.

She died, at some period between 1230 and 1240, and was buried near Alans, in the abbey of L'Espan, which she had herself built. An existing writer thus concludes a memoir of her:-"From early youth to her grave, Berengaria manifested devoted love for Richard; uncomplaining when deserted by him, forgiving when he returned, and faithful to his memory unto death."

ELIZABETH WOODVILLE.

QUEEN OF EDWARD THE FOURTH.

ELIZABETH WOODVILLE-whose rise from the poor and destitute widow of John Gray, son of Lord Ferrers of Groby, to the throne of England, excited no small degree of astonishment and some displeasure, not only in the nation at large, but in certain high quarters-was born about the year 1431, at Grafton Castle.

It seemed as if love had resolved to do more than strike a balance in the fortunes of the family by thus elevating Elizabeth many more degrees above the station that Fate seemed to have assigned her, than he had caused her mother to descend below the high estate 'to which she was born, as well as below that which her first marriage gave her. A princess of the house of Luxemburgh, this lady became the wife of the Duke of Bedford; and some time after his death, captivated by the attractions of Richard Woodville, a squire of Henry the Fifth, and considered the handsomest man in England, she married him privately, and was for some years his wife before the secret transpired. Notwithstanding this mésalliance, and her indifferent circumstances,' the Duchess of Bedford could not but maintain a certain influence in the kingdom of which, on the deaths of the queens Katherine and Joanna, she became, for some period, the first lady.

1 Which were, at one time, particularly distressed; as, on the discovery of her second marriage, her dower was forfeited, but, on her petitioning parliament, subsequently restored.