conspired to perpetuate it.  Probably it was well for England that no offspring of hers inherited her throne.  By some strange ordinance of nature, it generally happens that these wonderful clever women produce idiots or madmen.—­Witness Semiramis, Agrippina, Catherine de Medicis, Mary de Medicis, Catherine of Russia, and Lady Wortley Montague.  One miniature of Elizabeth I have seen, which, though not beautiful, is profoundly interesting:  it presents her as she was in the days of her danger and captivity, when the same wily policy, keeping its path, even while it seemed to swerve, was needful to preserve her life, that afterwards kept her firm on a throne.  Who was the artist that produced it?  I know not; but it bears the strongest marks of authenticity, if to be exactly what a learned spirit would fancy Elizabeth—­young, a prisoner, and in peril—­be evidence of true portraiture.  There is pride, not aping humility, but wearing it as a well-beseeming habit;—­there is passion, strongly controlled by the will, but not extinct, neither dead nor sleeping, but watchful and silent; brows sternly sustaining a weight of care, after which a crown could be but light; a manly intellect, allied with female craft;—­but nonsense! it will be said; no colours whatever could represent all this, and that, too, in little, for the picture was among Bone’s enamels.  Well, then, it suggested it all.  Perhaps the finest Madonna ever painted would be no more than a meek, pious, pretty woman, and an innocent child, if we knew not whom it was meant for.

* * * * *

THE HAUNTED HOUSE.

(By Mrs. Hemans.)

    I seem like one
    Who treads alone
      Some banquet-hall deserted,
    Whose lights are fled,
    Whose garlands dead,
      And all but he, departed.

    MOORE.

  Seest thou yon grey gleaming hall,
  Where the deep elm shadows fall? 
  Voices that have left the earth
    Long ago,
  Still are murmuring round its hearth,
      Soft and low: 
  Ever there:—­yet one alone
  Hath the gift to hear their tone. 
  Guests come thither, and depart,
  Free of step, and light of heart;
  Children, with sweet visions bless’d,
  In the haunted chambers rest;
  One alone unslumbering lies
  When the night hath seal’d all eyes,
  One quick heart and watchful ear,
  Listening for those whispers clear.

  Seest thou where the woodbine-flowers
  O’er yon low porch hang in showers? 
  Startling faces of the dead,
    Pale, yet sweet,
  One lone woman’s entering tread
      There still meet! 
  Some with young smooth foreheads fair,
  Faintly shining through bright hair;
  Some with reverend locks of snow—­
  All, all buried long ago! 
  All, from under deep sea-waves,
  Or the flowers of foreign graves,
  Or the old and banner’d aisle,
  Where their high tombs gleam the while,
  Rising, wandering, floating by,
  Suddenly and silently,
  Through their earthly home and place,
  But amidst another race.