ANNE BOLEYN,

SECOND QUEEN OF HENRY VIII.

THERE is no name in the annals of female royalty over which the enchantments of poetry and romance have cast such bewildering spells as that of Anne Boleyn. Her wit, her beauty, and the striking vicissitudes of her fate, combined with the peculiar mobility of her character, have invested her with an interest, not commonly excited by a woman, in whom vanity and ambition were the leading traits. Tacitus said of the empress Poppea, "that with her love was not an affair of the heart, but a matter of diplomacy; and this observation appears no less applicable to Anne Boleyn, affording, withal, a convincing reason that she never incurred the crimes for which she was brought to the block.

Sir Thomas Boleyn obtained for his wife the lady Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of the renowned earl of Surrey, afterwards duke of Norfolk, by his first wife Margaret Tylney. This noble alliance brought sir Thomas Boleyn into close connection with royalty, by the marriage of his wife's brother, the lord Thomas Howard, with the lady Anne Plantagenet, sister to Henry VII.'s queen.

No fairer spot than Blickling is to be seen in the county of Norfolk. Those magnificent arcaded avenues of stately oaks and giant chestnuttrees, whose majestic vistas stretch across the velvet verdure of the widely extended park, reminding us, as we walk beneath their solemn shades, of green cathedral aisles, were in their meridian glory three hun