Could this furious mænad have been the same as the pretty girl who landed, eager, seasick, and ready for chicken-pox, just before her wedding? We need not go through the whole melancholy history of the Wars of the Roses, which were really just the fifteenth-century murderous way of holding a general election, but without even our modern profession of principles. Everybody knows how Edward IV became king in one of the temporary lulls, how Henry VI, after another attack of melancholia, was captured in spite of the efforts of his strenuous wife; and how, at the battle of Bosworth Henry VII killed his rival Richard of Gloucester, and at last began modern history with the iron rule of the Tudors. Many of us have been to St. Albans, and will be interested in the two particularly savage elections that were held in that city; by a strange misnomer they have been called battles. The wounded used to run into the vast old cathedral for shelter while the election raged furiously up and down the pleasant streets of that dear old town. Of all the houses that looked down upon the fighting and resounded to the roar of the newly invented cannon I suppose that the only ones still standing are the cathedral itself and the ancient hostelry at which so many of us have had afternoon tea. Edward IV imprisoned poor hapless Henry for years; but at last the redoubtable Warwick the Kingmaker restored the rightful—and by that time melancholic and imbecile—monarch to the throne, amid general rejoicings. His second reign lasted only ten months, terminating in the Tower. There can be little doubt that Richard of Gloucester murdered him privily therein. In 1910 his remains were dug up, and his thin light skull was found with its remnants of hair still plastered with blood. It would appear that King Henry took to religion as a means of escape from the miseries of his youth. Probably he felt that in the Church only could he see the slightest sign of sympathy for little overthrashed boys. He was the gentlest and most virtuous of men. The most violent oath that even his worst sufferings ever wrung from his lips was “Forsoothe and forsoothe,” sometimes varied by “Fie for shame.” Queen Margaret could have done better. Once he fled from a ball because the clothes of the ladies displayed more than he thought proper. But even the fury of Margaret could not protect him when Richard Hunchback found him in the way. Henry’s obsessions took the form of impulsive and senseless generosity to his supposed friends, and of singing unduly loudly in church. Though he was meek enough, Richard of Gloucester showed him that he could not inherit the earth, and according to some religions Margaret, being a woman, would never have been allowed to show him the way past the golden gate into the kingdom of heaven. Poor, gentle, virtuous Henry; so well-meaning, yet so overwhelmed by the sense of his sin!