vent; the peculiar style of reading, and the enthusiastic interest that was excited among the cloistered votaresses by dwelling on the lives of female saints and royal virgins, who consecrated themselves in the morning flower of life, to the service of God, had the natural effect of imbuing her youthful mind with mysticism and spiritual romance. There was an aunt of Mary Beatrice, scarcely fifteen years older than herself in the same convent, to whom she was very tenderly attached. This princess, who was her father's youngest sister by a second marriage, was preparing herself to take the veil, and Mary Beatrice was desirous of professing herself at the same time. Very rarely, however, does it happen, that a princess is privileged to choose her own path in life; the death of Anne Hyde, duchess of York, proved the leading cause of linking the destiny of this young innocent recluse, who thought of nothing but veils and rosaries, with that of the most ill-fated prince of the luckless house of Stuart, James, duke of York, afterwards the second king of Great Britain of that name.

The youthful career of this prince, though by no means so familiar to the general reader as that of his brother, Charles II., is scarcely less replete with events and situations of stirring interest.' He was born at St. James's Palace, October 14, 1633, at midnight. When only nine years old, he marched by his royal father's side in the front of the line at Edgehill, and stood the opening volley of the rebel's cannon as boldly as any gentleman there. He was not thirteen when he fell into the hands of the parliamentary forces at the surrender of Oxford in June, 1646. The next day, sir Thomas Fairfax, the commander of the rebel army, came with the other leaders to pay him a visit. Cromwell, who was among them, thought proper to kneel and kiss his hand; and this was the more remarkable, as he was the only person by whom this mark of homage was offered to the captive prince. James was conducted to London under a strong guard.

Within four miles of the metropolis, he was met by the

1 As it is perfectly impossible to compress these within the limits of the few pages, that could be devoted to a closely abridged summary of the leading events of his life, before he became the husband of Mary of Modena, I have decided on publishing a separate volume, to be entitled "The Early Days of James II."

earl of Northumberland, and committed to his custody. All his old attached servants were then dismissed by the order of parliament, not even excepting a little dwarf, of whom he was very fond, and begged to be permitted to retain; after this preliminary, he was conducted to St. James's Palace, where he found his sister, the princess Elizabeth, and his little brother Gloucester. His adventures while a prisoner in his natal palace, and the manner in which he effected his escape to Holland, are like the progressive scenes in a stirring drama.

While in France, James withstood the attempts of his mother, to compel him to forsake the communion of the church of England, with unswerving firmness. In the year 1652, he offered to serve as a volunteer in the royalist army, under the banner of Turenne, during the civil war in France which succeeded the outbreak of the Fronde. It was with great difficulty that he succeeded in borrowing three hundred pistoles for his outfit.

James fought by the side of Turenne on the terrible day of the barricades de St. Antoine, and was exposed to great peril in the assault.' On this and other occasions of peculiar danger, the princely volunteer gave proofs of such daring intrepidity and coolness, that his illustrious commander was wont to say, "That if any man in the world were born without fear, it was the duke of York." His keen sight and quick powers of observation were of signal service to Turenne, who was accustomed to call him "his eyes ;" and so high an opinion did that experienced chief form of his military talents, that one day, pointing to him with his finger, he said to the other officers of his staff," That young prince will one day make one of the greatest captains of the age." A bond of more powerful interest than the friendships of this world united the princely volunteer and his accomplished master in the art of war, they were of the same religion. Turenne and the duke of York were perhaps the only protestants of high rank in the royalist army. History would probably have told a fairer tale of both, if they had adhered to their early opinions.

James was in his twenty-first year when he commenced his second campaign as a lieutenant-general; he was the

J James's History of his Campaigns.

youngest officer of that rank in the French service, and the most distinguished. His great talent was as an engineer.

At the siege of Mousson, where he was at work with his company in the ditch of the envelope, under the great tower, a storm blew away their blinds, and left them exposed to the view of those on the ramparts. "Yet all of us," says he, "were so busily employed picking our way, the ditch being full of dirt and water, that not one single man observed that the blind was ruined, and we consequently in open view, till we were gotten half our way, and then one of our company proposed that we should return, to which I well remember I would not consent, urging that since we were got so far onward, the danger was equal; so we continued going on, but in all the way we were thus exposed, not one shot was fired at us, at which we were much surprised. After the town surrendered, the governor informed us, that being himself on the wall, and knowing me by my star, he forbade his men to fire upon the company."

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A very fine three-quarter length original portrait of this prince, in the royal gallery at Versailles, represents him such as he was at that time, and certainly he must have been one of the handsomest young cavaliers of the age. He is dressed in the light, graceful armour of the period, with a Vandyke falling collar, bareheaded, and his fine forehead is seen to great advantage with the natural adornment of rich flowing ringlets of beautiful chestnut hair, a little dishevelled, as if blown by the wind, instead of the formal disguising periwig with which we are familiar in his more mature portraits and medals. In the Versailles portrait James is in the first glory of manhood, full of spirit and grace: his features, at that time uninjured by the ravages of the small pox, are bold, but retain the softness of youth; the eyes are large, dark, and expressive, the lips full and red, and the natural fairness of his complexion embrowned with a warm healthful tint. This portrait bears a strong likeness to his daughter Mary at the same period of life.

When the royal English brothers were, in 1655, in consequence of the treaty between Mazarine and Cromwell, excluded by name from France, James resigned his command, having served four hard campaigns under Turenne. He was

Journal of James II.

offered the post of captain-general in the army in Piedmont, of which the duke of Modena, the grandfather of Mary Beatrice, was the generalissimo, but his brother Charles forbade him to accept it. It was in obedience to the commands of Charles, that James reluctantly entered the Spanish service, in which he also distinguished himself, especially in the dreadful battle among the sandhills before Dunkirk, where he and his British brigade of exiled cavaliers were opposed to the Cromwellian English troops.' "When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war."

James performed prodigies of unavailing valour that day; and finally, at the head of twenty men, the sole survivors of the two regiments he commanded, cut his way through the French battalions to the village of Zudcote.2 How incredible would it have appeared to those who fought under the banner of the princely knight-errant, and witnessed his fearless exposure of his person on so many occasions, that day, as well as during his four campaigns under Turenne, if any one had predicted that the injustice of a faction in his own country would ever succeed in throwing a stigma on his courage. The ardent love which he bore to his native land, and the lingering hope entertained by him that he might one day be able to devote his talents to her service, prevented James from accepting the brilliant offers that were made to him by the court of Spain in the commencement of the year 1660. These hopes were soon afterwards realized, when England called home her banished princes at the Restoration, and he shared in the rapturous welcome with which all ranks of people united in hailing the public entrance of his royal brother into London on the 29th of May.

James's marriage with Anne Hyde' was unfortunate in every respect. It had the effect of involving him in the unpopularity of her father, Clarendon, and of entailing upon him the enmity of Buckingham, Bristol, Shaftesbury, and the rest of that party, who, fancying that James would one day avenge his father-in-law's injuries on them, were unremitting in their efforts to deprive him of the royal succession.

1 Journal of James's Campaigns.

* Life of James II.

* The particulars of James's marriage with the daughter of Clarendon have been related in the memoir of his royal mother, Henrietta Maria.—Lives of the Queens of England, vol. viii. p. 220 to 233.

Clarendon appears perfectly satisfied with James's conduct to his daughter, and always speaks of the domestic happiness of the duke and duchess, as a contrast to the conjugal infelicity of the king and queen. James was an unfaithful, but not an unkind husband, and the duchess was too wise to weary him with jealousy. How merrily they lived may be inferred from some little circumstances recorded by Pepys, who notices in his diary," that he came one day into a room at Whitehall, whence the chairs and tables had been removed, and surprised the duke of York sitting with his duchess and her ladies on the hearth-rug, playing at the old Christmas game, 'I love my love with an A,' &c., with great glee and spirit."'

While James occupied the post of lord admiral of England his attention was bestowed not only on every branch of naval science, but in the foundation and encouragement of colonies in three different quarters of the globenamely, in Hindostan, at Long Island in America, which was called in honour of him New York, and others on the coast of Africa. These all became sources of wealth and national prosperity to England. The jealousy of the Dutch was excited. They had hitherto endeavoured to exclude the British merchants from the trade both of the East and West Indies, as well as to usurp to themselves the sovereignty of the seas. They committed aggressions on the infant colonies founded by the duke of York, and he prevailed on his brother to allow him to do battle with them in person on the seas. His skill and valour achieved the most signal triumph over the fleets of Holland that had ever been attained by those of England. This memorable battle was fought on the 3rd of June, 1665, off the coast of Suffolk, and the brilliant success was considered mainly attributable to the adoption of the naval signals and the line of battle at sea, which had been discovered by the naval genius of the duke of York. Eighteen great ships of the Dutch were taken or burnt, and but one ship lost of the British navy. The chief slaughter was on board the duke's own ship,

'This childish game merely consists in a series of droll alliterations, as, I love my love with an A, because he is amiable, I hate him with an A, because he is avaricious, he took me to the sign of the Angel, and treated me with apples: his name is Alfred Arnold, and he lives at Aldborough. The next person takes the letter B, and all in turn to the end of the alphabet.